School desegregation: Cross-cultural perspectives

In 1968 the Israel Knesset (Parliament) set into motion a process of school desegregation and ethnic integration of the Jewish population who had come to Israel from countries throughout Europe, Africa, the Americas, and the Middle East. Implementation of the desegregation policy was accompanied by extensive research in Israel by social scientists and educators. In 1978, 10 years after the initiation of the desegregation program, prompted by the accumulation of this data bank on the effects of desegregation, an interuniversity and multidisciplinary seminar was organized whose participants represented most of the institutions of higher learning in Israel and the Ministry of Education and Culture. All the Israeli contributors to this volume were members of this seminar. A grant from the Ford Foundation made it possible to maintain this seminar, which met once every 3 weeks for over 2 years.