Changing Hearts and Minds: An Interview with Hillel Teach-In Tour Educator Dalia Ziada
Responding to the unprecedented rise in global antisemitism and campus antisemitism following the October 7 attacks on Israel, Hillel International organized the Hillel Teach-In Tour, a program that brings experts, educators, and thought leaders to college campuses around the United States. Speakers include U.S. Ambassador and Georgetown University professor Dennis Ross, former Palestinian negotiator Ghaith al-Omari, and Egyptian writer and political analyst Dalia Ziada. Since the program’s inception in 2023, more than 30 thousand students and 150 campuses have participated in a Teach-In session.
To learn more about what it’s like to speak with students across the country as part of the Teach-In Tour, Hillel caught up with one of its many participating experts: award-winning writer, political analyst, and human rights activist Dalia Ziada. Check out her interview below.
Editor’s note: In sharing her experiences, Dalia references the actions of Hamas, as well as past terror attacks and violence. Please read with care.
Hillel International: By the end of this academic year, you will have visited 45 campuses with the Hillel Teach-In Tour which is incredible! How did you come to be involved with the Hillel Teach-In Tour?
Dalia Ziada: It’s unbelievable, actually! I didn’t expect in one year to visit that number of campuses, but it’s been a wonderful experience.
You know, I was forced to leave Egypt in 2023 after I publicly condemned Hamas. On my way to the United States, I really thought that I had left all the bad guys behind — all the extremists, the people trying to manipulate the truth, who are supporting Hamas. So it was a shock to see that their new battlefield was actually American college campuses, where young people are being targeted so aggressively.
These are Americans who don’t necessarily have an Islamic or Arab background, but they’re being manipulated to support the rhetoric or narratives that groups like Hamas want them to support. So with my background, I felt like I could have a role in countering that. I started out on my own, visiting some campuses and doing talks, and that was when Hillel reached out to me and said, “We want to amplify what you’re doing. We want to help you keep doing it.”
Being part of this program has let me visit so many more campuses than I could have on my own, and it’s been amazing in so many ways. Nothing is as rewarding as the ability to affect the hearts and minds of young people, to help them see the world from a different perspective.
Hillel: In addition to being an educator and activist, you’re a political analyst, specializing in governance, geopolitics, and defense policy in the Middle East. How did you originally get involved in this kind of work?
Dalia: I grew up in a very conservative environment in Egypt, one that was very hostile to Israel. I was 18 years old at the time of the Second Intifada in Gaza. I was an undergraduate student, and I remember my campus in Cairo being full of protests. There was a lot of misinformation about Israel, about the Jewish people, and about Judaism in general, so it was natural for me to join those protests.
My perspective changed when the people organizing the protests, who I later learned were the Muslim Brotherhood, started burning flags — first the Israeli flag, then the American flag, and finally, the Egyptian flag. And it was really shocking to me, because at that moment, I just felt that those couldn’t be good people claiming that they were standing for a humanitarian cause while also doing something as bad as burning my flag. For me, it was this moment of, “Something’s wrong here.”
That was the moment I got out of the ideological box. I took a step back, and I decided to educate myself about the Islamists, about Judaism, about Israel, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and about the geopolitics of the Middle East.
Since then, it has become my passion to use education to change the conversation. I became an advocate of Muslim-Jewish dialogue, Arab-Israeli dialogue, and fighting against radical Islamists. I’m glad now that I’m able to bring that same opportunity of change to the young people who come to my lecture — to give them that same experience of cognitive dissonance that makes them ask questions about what they’re hearing and what they’re dealing with.
Hillel: You’ve been doing these visits as part of the Teach-In Tour since last spring. Has anything changed in the way students or campuses have approached your lectures?
Dalia: At the beginning, there was definitely some opposition — this was the time when the encampments were really at their height, and things were often very tense. People would try to interrupt my activities, interrupt the lectures, even harass the students who attended. But we insisted on continuing, and I’m so grateful to Hillel for not giving up, even in the midst of all that harassment and terrorizing.
I think a real turning point came in the last few months, especially after the ceasefire began. The propaganda theater that Hamas created in returning the hostages, especially, you know, the bodies of the Bibas family, the mother and her children — I think even the more radicalized students really started to see Hamas in a different way. It created that cognitive dissonance in the minds of those students who were supporting Hamas, thinking they were freedom fighters, and those students actually started coming to my lectures seeking the truth or at least an answer to their moral dilemmas.
Hillel: Are there moments from any of your visits that really stand out to you?
Dalia: Definitely. I remember having one conversation with a student who had been a member of Students for Justice in Palestine. He came up to me and said he’s been listening and thinking, and he’s changed his mind about a number of things. He said he isn’t exactly sure where to go from here, but he knows something wrong is happening in his movement, and he came to listen to me because he was curious to hear something different from what was being said to him, and it changed things for him.
Another moment that stood out was when two Egyptian students came to one of my lectures. Based on my experience with other Egyptian and Arab students who had come, I was expecting them to be protestors, and I started preparing for trouble. But it turned out that they actually come to Hillel regularly. They told me that with the food, the culture, even the type of students, it’s a place where they feel closest to home. And even though they’re treated badly by other Arab students for that connection, they still keep going.
One of the most meaningful experiences I had was immediately after that horrible spectacle Hamas made of the Bibas family. I was visiting campuses and speaking to students about the importance of peace and the potential for change, and while I was speaking, they were crying. And I don’t think I will ever forget it — the way Jewish students here in the United States were impacted. I think part of me wondered whether these students, who live so far away from what’s happening, should care. But when I saw the tears in their eyes and the pain they were experiencing, it made me so grateful that I could be there in that difficult moment to give a message of hope and solidarity to those students, and to let them know that I see this as my fight, too.
Hillel: What do you hope students — and anyone else who reads this article — will take away from your perspective and experiences?
Dalia: I hope that they know that there are Arabs who want peace with Israel, and that Hamas and other extremist groups don’t speak for all of us. We have this fight in common. And I would also encourage people to look outside of their own experiences, and learn from people who are different from them, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Hearing other perspectives, challenging what we’re taught, and being willing to be curious — it will make all the difference in helping you learn and grow.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Visit the Hillel Teach-In Tour website to learn more about the impact of these campus visits, the speakers, and to find a Teach-In event near you.