(RNS) — Since Oct. 7, 2023, Jewish students, from kindergarten through high school and on college campuses, have reported rising antisemitism, social isolation and fear. Muslim and Arab students have likewise described harassment, suspicion and grief. All of these young people have witnessed the horrors of the Middle East conflict unfold on their phones, where extreme narratives and graphic images fracture friendships and harden identities.

The instinct in some communities has been to pull back: avoid the topic, protect students, keep school “neutral.” But silence is neither neutral nor protective. Avoidance can deepen the very divisions educators hope to prevent. 

Over the past year, our team at the newly launched Or Initiative at Chapman University has interviewed more than 75 middle and high school students across Jewish day, independent and public schools, along with educators and school leaders. We examined how young people are making sense of the Israel-Palestine conflict and other contentious issues in digital environments saturated with incomplete and emotionally charged claims.

Our findings, released in “Coming of Age in Polarized Times: Teaching Civil Discourse in a Digital Era,” complicate the dominant narrative. Encouragingly, students told us they still believe classrooms can be places of real connection — with ideas, history and one another. Teens are not as polarized as adults fear, and they believe their peers are more extreme than they actually are.

That perception gap matters. When students assume others hold rigid views, they are less likely to ask questions or engage across differences. Silence becomes self-protection. Dialogue feels risky.

This dynamic intensified after Oct. 7, when many young people felt pushed to “pick a side” before they had time to process events. Online rhetoric flattened complex identities into binary categories — “pro-Israel” versus “pro-Palestine” — as if a conflict this enduring could have only two positions. Students who might have found common ground in shared concerns about civilian suffering, antisemitism, Islamophobia and political violence instead became entrenched in their binary views.

We should not minimize the conflict’s emotional toll. Jewish students described feeling unsafe or unseen. Muslim students reported similar fears. Antisemitic tropes and dehumanizing language circulated widely online. Identity-based fear is real.

But often what these students lacked was not conviction. Instead, they were missing a forum that was structured for deeper understanding. Again and again they showed that they felt classrooms could be a place like this — if adults created the right conditions. They did not ask teachers to erase disagreement. They asked for shared evidence, clear norms and space to wrestle with complexity without losing friendships.

Educators have the power to anchor discussion in credible texts, rather than the viral fragments that students find online. They can help them distinguish intelligent critique from dehumanization and provide routine opportunities to practice disagreement. When they do, something shifts. Students who feel isolated begin to see listening doesn’t mean endorsing another person’s views. They learn that empathy is not agreement and that acknowledging multiple truths does not require abandoning identity.

In our study we found that when discussions were structured with developmentally appropriate guardrails, students reported feeling less alone and more capable of thoughtful engagement. But teachers in different kinds of schools have different kinds of opportunities. Teachers in Jewish day schools said they were more successful in balancing support for students’ connection to Jewish history with space to understand Palestinian narratives. In independent and public schools, however, teachers struggled to protect Jewish and Muslim students from being reduced to spokespersons for geopolitics. 

This is not only a Jewish issue. It is a model for addressing identity-based polarization more broadly. We see the same dynamics in conversations about immigration and other contested topics. When students believe others are more extreme than they are, they disengage. When schools retreat, the vacuum is filled by algorithms.

The third annual Civic Learning Week began on March 9 this year and runs through March 13. It is a time when schools across the country bolster young people’s knowledge of and appreciation for democracy. We think it is an opportunity to help them navigate conflicts that touch faith, culture and identity. That does not mean turning classrooms into battlegrounds. It means equipping educators with integrated tools that connect digital discernment, rigorous evidence and civil discourse practice.

Our research points to three commitments that schools can adopt now:

Make evidence central. Ground discussions in shared, verifiable sources and teach students how to evaluate what they encounter online.

Treat dialogue as a practice. Civil discourse is a skill set that must be rehearsed: asking clarifying questions, acknowledging uncertainty and staying in relationship through disagreement.

Teach tough topics with guardrails. Silence after a civic shock — whether a spike in antisemitism or anti-Muslim rhetoric — sends a message. Naming the moment and modeling thoughtful engagement signals that school is a place for meaning-making, not withdrawal.

Confronting antisemitism requires more than denunciation. It requires building digital discernment so students are less susceptible to conspiracy and dehumanization in the first place. It requires reinforcing identities strong enough to engage rather than shatter when challenged. And it requires classrooms that function as counterweights to a media ecosystem built for speed, not sense-making.

Democracy depends on practice. In this moment, that practice must include learning how to engage across religious and cultural differences without erasing pain or deepening division.

If we support educators to do this well, classrooms can become places where antisemitism and other forms of bigotry are not merely condemned, but interrupted — before they harden into lifelong intolerance.

Such work is difficult. But it is also sacred.

(Vikki S. Katz is executive director of Or Initiative and Fletcher Jones Foundation Endowed Chair in Free Speech at Chapman University. Michael H. Levine is director of partnerships and strategy at Or Initiative and senior adviser to iCivics. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)