On October 7, 2023, I was at a playground in Jerusalem with my two young children when the sirens began. As I shielded their bodies with mine, I did not yet realize that this moment would mark the beginning of a brutal war, nor that this war would soon compel me to question the very foundations of my professional life as a scholar of democratic civic education.
What does it mean to teach and research democracy when democratic norms are under siege? Can education still function as a foundation for civic renewal when civil discourse collapses under the weight of grief, rage, and fear?]
To grapple with these questions, I chose not to retreat into abstraction. Instead, I turned to those whose voices I trust: my graduate students – Jewish and Palestinian, women and men – drawn from across Israel’s diverse social and geographic landscape.
I posed a simple yet urgent question: What is the role of educational research in a time of war? Their responses helped me rediscover a truth I had momentarily lost: Educational research must not merely observe, it must act. It must respond.
A transformative force
It must become a transformative force that challenges the very conditions threatening democratic life.
Their testimonies offered a complex and sobering picture. Several students described the near impossibility of conducting fieldwork: Participants withdrew out of fear, interviews were disrupted by curfews, and research topics suddenly felt naive or politically perilous. Others reflected on how the war reshaped their own identities.
One student, researching peace education initiatives, confessed that quotes from Palestinian youth she had once embraced now felt difficult to read.
Another, studying minority students’ experiences in higher education, wrote about how the conflict fractured the fragile trust essential to such work.
Yet amid the uncertainty, my students also insisted that education and research remain vital. One explained that in the wake of civic breakdown, studying civic education becomes not only important but urgent.
What emerged from these reflections is a collective call to move beyond research that merely describes the world. We need research that interrogates the given, that opens space for imagining alternatives.
My students reminded me of the imperative to deploy our research tools not only to interpret reality but to challenge it and envision something more just.
In contexts of armed conflict, this requires asking difficult questions: Whose voices are silenced? How can coexistence be fostered when the broader society gravitates toward separation? How can democratic values be taught when democratic institutions are weakened? As critical pedagogy theorist Henry Giroux noted decades ago, educators are not merely technicians of knowledge but “transformative intellectuals.”
In times of rupture such as ours, posing these difficult questions must become integral to our research, underscoring the vital nature of our public role.
If there is one lesson I take from my students, it is this: Educational research must be both rigorous and contextually responsive.
In times of war, democratic civic education cannot rely on abstract principles alone. It must grapple with real-world dilemmas and offer tools to think, speak, and act with responsibility and hope.
Fostering change
The role of educational research, therefore, is not to retreat from such challenges but to confront them directly, to document, analyze, critique, and ultimately contribute to the difficult work of fostering change toward a more just and inclusive shared future.
If we are to move beyond this harsh reality and begin envisioning a future in which democracy is more than a slogan, then educational research must be demanded to serve purposes beyond mere description and analysis. It must be understood as a form of transformative action that is critical, public, and brave.■
Aviv Cohen is an associate professor at the Seymour Fox School of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and co-head of its undergraduate program in educational and social leadership. He holds a PhD from Teachers College, Columbia University. His work focuses on democratic civic education, multiculturalism, teaching, and qualitative research. To read more: https://www.dravivcohen.com/