Dr. Jason Olson

United States Navy

Bio

Dr. Jason Olson is a Navy Foreign Area Officer and assigned to the White House Military Office. A former chaplain and Brandeis PhD, he builds education-centered counter-radicalization strategy.

Chama Mechtaly is co-founder and Executive Director of the Emma Lazarus Institute. A Casablanca-born artist and policy advisor, she advances Abraham Accords integration, peacebuilding, and deradicalization across the Middle East.

A Pedagogy for Peacemaking: Teaching the Abraham Accords as the Only Method of Deradicalization in Academia

Abstract

The field of Middle East studies in the American academy has, for decades, been shaped by a conflict-centered, post-colonial framework that has narrowed analytical inquiry while contributing to the ideological radicalization of students. By privileging grievance over statecraft and reductionist narratives over historical complexity, this paradigm has produced graduates fluent in critique yet unequipped to engage the region as it exists today. This paper aims to introduce a new pedagogy to change that dynamic.