Science Diplomacy: Bridging Divides — Building Peace Through Cross-Cultural Scientific Collaboration

Explore the transformative power of science diplomacy and cross-cultural communication in this compelling episode of Reading the World. Dr. Zafra Lerman, a renowned chemist and peacebuilder, shares how the Malta Conferences forge critical connections between scientists from conflicted regions, promoting reconciliation and hope through a unique blend of equality, trust, and embodied friendship. This discussion delves into how these innovative efforts embody principles rooted in global humanities and cultural studies, emphasizing the potential for science to transcend political boundaries and foster lasting peace. You'll hear remarkable stories of collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian scientists, illustrating how a critical reading of political and cultural narratives can lead to profound understanding and change. Perfect for listeners interested in world literature, academic discourse, and the broader humanities, this episode highlights how the universal language of science helps humanize conflict and build bridges where diplomacy often fails.

Human Rights and Peace: A Personal Odyssey

Reading the World | قراءة العالم
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Transcript

This transcript has been edited for clarity, continuity, and length.

Science, Diplomacy, and Human Connection: A Conversation with Dr. Zafra Lerman

Ali Alhajji:
We often speak about science as though it were beyond language: neutral, universal, untouched by history. But anyone who has watched knowledge move across borders knows that this is never quite true. Ideas do not travel in the abstract. They travel through institutions, through trust, through translation, through unequal histories, and through the difficult work of making another person imaginable.

So today I want to ask a different kind of question: not simply what science knows, but what science does when it becomes a meeting place. What happens when knowledge becomes a shared space in a region marked by conflict, mistrust, and political division? What kind of language is science, then? And what kind of reading does it require of us?

Welcome to Reading the World. I’m Ali Alhajji. On this podcast, we think about how meaning travels across languages, across institutions, across histories, and across the interpretive habits that shape what becomes legible and what does not.

My guest today is Dr. Zafra Lerman, an Israeli-American chemist, educator, author, and president of the Malta Conferences Foundation. For more than two decades, her work around the Malta Conferences has brought scientists from politically divided countries in the Middle East into sustained conversation about shared scientific and environmental problems. She has also developed educational programs that teach science through art, music, dance, drama, animation, and rap. Her memoir, Human Rights and Peace: A Personal Odyssey, brings together science, education, human rights, and peace as part of a single intellectual and ethical life.

Dr. Lerman, welcome to Reading the World.

Zafra Lerman:
Thank you very much for having me.

Ali Alhajji:
I want to begin not with your biography but with the form of the Malta Conferences themselves. When you first imagined these gatherings, what did you feel ordinary political discourse, or even ordinary academic life, was not making possible? What kind of space were you trying to create?

Zafra Lerman:
I was trying to create a space where scientists from countries that do not normally have a chance to interact with one another could meet and see what unites them rather than what separates them. I wanted to give them a space where they could stop demonizing one another, because once they meet, there are no “others” anymore.

I also wanted to create a space for collaboration on problems that no single country can solve alone in the Middle East. Water is one example. Underground aquifers do not recognize the lines drawn on maps. They move through many countries, and if you want to address a problem like water in the Middle East, countries must work together.

So I came up with the idea of organizing a conference that would bring together scientists from across the region—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Bahrain, and others, with no exception. When I first proposed the idea in Egypt, people thought I was completely crazy. They asked, “You want to bring all these people together for five days and have them sit and talk to one another?” I said yes—and I said they would be happy to experience something they had never experienced before.

I also invited several Nobel laureates, not just one or two, to help elevate the scientific conversation for everyone involved. At the first dinner, each country sat at a separate table. I walked around and told them: you did not come here to sit with your own friends or colleagues. We work very hard to raise the money to bring everyone here, and once you arrive, everyone is equal.

That equality mattered a great deal. As Palestinian participants told me, this was the only conference where they did not have to hear that they could not pay and therefore needed special treatment. Rich or poor, Nobel laureate or graduate student, everybody stayed in the same hotel, ate together, and participated on equal terms. After the first night, you could no longer tell who belonged to which country. People started talking. By the end of the conference, there were tears, hugs, and a feeling almost like a family reunion. Everyone voted to continue.

And why science? Because science is an international language. A chemist in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and a chemist in Bethlehem in the West Bank can understand the same chemistry. In that sense, science diplomacy can sometimes succeed where other forms of diplomacy fail.

Science does not erase politics, but it gives scientists a shared language. And scientists have a special responsibility in society. Science can prolong life, but it can also shorten it. You cannot build weapons of mass destruction without science and scientists. That is why scientists have an obligation to use science for peace. That is what I wanted the Malta Conferences to do.

Ali Alhajji:
That word—space—feels important to me here, because you are not describing only a conference in the administrative sense. You are describing a condition for an encounter. So let me ask it this way: what had to exist in the room before meaningful scientific exchange could even begin? Was it safety, slowness, a sense of equality, a willingness to suspend national scripts, even temporarily?

Zafra Lerman:
Equality is one of the most important things, and people often do not think carefully enough about that. At the Malta Conferences, everybody is equal. We may have university presidents, science ministers, Nobel laureates, and graduate students, but everyone participates on equal terms.

Of course, there are differences in scientific stature and achievement. So how do you preserve equality? We did it by deciding that plenary lectures would be given only by Nobel laureates. That way, no country or organizer is deciding who is “good enough.” That decision has already been made elsewhere. Everyone else presents their work in guided poster sessions and interactive workshops.

The workshops cover subjects like water, energy, food security, medicinal chemistry, nanotechnology, climate change, and science education. People present their work in the areas most relevant to them, but the structure remains equal. That matters deeply.

The conference is also built from the bottom up, not the top down. It is not the organizers who decide what matters most; the participants decide what needs to be discussed. That gives everyone the same power to participate.

And then there are the social events. They are just as important as the workshops, because that is where people learn to meet one another, to become friends, and to overcome distrust and intolerance. By the end, people feel that they share a common purpose: they want peace, and they want to use science to make life better. What we provide is the platform, or the space, in which that becomes possible.

Ali Alhajji:
People often say that science is a universal language, and I understand the appeal of that phrase. But I also think such phrases can conceal as much as they reveal. In your experience, what is actually true in that claim, and what is not? What in science genuinely travels across political and cultural differences, and what still has to be translated?

Zafra Lerman:
Science is a universal language in a very real sense. I am a chemist, so I think in chemical examples. A reaction I carry out in Chicago can be understood by a chemist anywhere in the world. We do not even need words. We can write the equation, draw the structures, and the science is legible.

That is what makes science so powerful in this context. Scientists begin with a shared language. The moment you mention a type of reaction, they understand one another. That removes a barrier and makes it possible to begin a conversation immediately.

This is why science diplomacy can be so beautiful. It uses science to build bridges and bring people together. We all share a common humanity, and science can make that visible. When you come to the Malta Conferences and see scientists from countries whose governments are in conflict sitting together, working together, and solving problems together, you see that humanity can overcome a great deal.

Ali Alhajji:
I think one of the clichés we inherit is that peacebuilding means producing agreement. But often what matters first is not agreement. It is the creation of a relation in which disagreement no longer makes the other person unintelligible. Did you ever witness a moment when trust was built not through consensus but through working alongside one another on something concrete?

Zafra Lerman:
I see it in every Malta Conference. People arrive from countries that are in conflict, and then they spend five days together, almost twenty-four hours a day. No one disappears for sightseeing. Everyone stays together. Very quickly, trust begins to form.

It is remarkable to see Israelis and Palestinians, Israelis and Iranians, sitting together like one family. That trust is not produced by an agreement imposed from outside. No one tells them, “Now you must be together.” They choose it. They build that trust themselves.

I often say that my goal is to build a critical mass of scientists that can start a chain reaction for peace. In chemistry and nuclear science, a critical mass is the amount needed to start a chain reaction. My hope is to bring enough scientists together that the same thing can happen for peace.

Ali Alhajji:
What did the conference teach you about the difference between cooperation and reconciliation, between collaboration and friendship, between solving a shared problem and solving a conflict?

Zafra Lerman:
The Malta Conferences taught me that problems are not solved simply by watching the news or reading about war from a distance. Problems are addressed by bringing people together and building trust.

I see that every time. We make sure that about half of the participants are returning and half are new. When the new participants see the returning ones already interacting as a community, the trust builds much more quickly. People call themselves the “Malta family.” That name was not given by us; they gave it to themselves.

The network now includes hundreds of scientists and many Nobel laureates. They genuinely think of one another as part of a shared community.

Of course, these conferences do not erase political conflict. They do not solve everything. In fact, just as we were speaking, we had to postpone the next Malta Conference in Baku because of regional instability and airport disruptions. The fragility of the larger political context is always there.

But even within those limits, the experience of friendship, collaboration, and trust is real.

Ali Alhajji:
I also want to resist the temptation to romanticize this, because one danger in conversations like this is that science becomes a redemptive metaphor promising more than it can deliver. So, where, in your experience, are the limits of science diplomacy? What can scientific exchange do, and what can it not do?

Zafra Lerman:
We do not promise more than science diplomacy can actually do. Its purpose is not to solve every political problem. Its purpose is to use science as a means of diplomacy because scientists can communicate with one another relatively easily.

At the Malta Conferences, we focus on issues that matter directly to people’s lives and to the region’s future: water, energy, food security, medicinal chemistry, education, health, climate, and related areas. We are not there to debate abstract questions detached from human need. We focus on the well-being of people in the Middle East.

We want people to have enough water, enough energy, enough food, access to medicine, and an education that allows them to succeed. If a young person is thirsty, uneducated, unemployed, and hungry, that is not a life. Such a person has been denied a future. So our work stays close to the conditions of life.

That is where science diplomacy can make a real difference. But it does not replace politics, and it does not magically resolve conflict.

Ali Alhajji:
This brings me to your educational work, because it seems deeply connected to all of this. You have taught science not only through conventional classroom methods, but through art, music, dance, drama, animation, and performance. That strikes me as a profound claim about knowledge itself: that understanding is not just abstract, but embodied, imaginative, and interpretive. What did that work teach you about how people come to know something?

Zafra Lerman:
Usually, only a small percentage of the population goes into the sciences, and many people stop learning science at a very early age. But in a technological and scientific society, everyone needs some background in science. Otherwise, we create a two-class society divided by scientific and technological knowledge.

If people do not have that background, they cannot fully participate in public debate, political discussion, or even understand the news. They may hear terms like “enrichment of uranium” and have no idea what they mean.

The future scientists will usually become scientists no matter how badly they are taught. But the rest of the population depends very much on how science is taught. That is why I came to believe that science education is a human right.

What I learned from my students is that there is no single method that works for everyone. People learn differently. If you teach them in the way they can learn, they will learn science.

I began teaching science in ways that were relevant to students’ lives. Instead of beginning a chemistry course with the abstract structure of the atom, I would begin with something concrete—how electricity is generated in Chicago, for example, and how different kinds of power plants work. From there, we could move from the relevant to the abstract.

I also asked students to bring in newspaper articles related to science so they could see that even reading the news requires scientific understanding. One day I wrote an equation on the board, and a student who was majoring in dance said, “I know how to explain this.” She got up, assigned chemical roles to the students, choreographed the movement, and suddenly I saw that this was how some of them learned.

So I began allowing students to demonstrate knowledge in different ways. They could dance, sing, act, or perform—as long as the science was correct. I did not want to force them into the format I myself had hated as a student.

The results were extraordinary. Theater students staged Romeo and Juliet as a lesson in the formation of table salt, explaining atoms, electrons, and chemical bonds through the structure of the play. We worked with homeless children. Some of those students later went on to college and even earned PhDs in biochemistry. One student said she never understood ozone depletion until she danced it.

That taught me that knowledge can be embodied. It can move through imagination, performance, and creativity without losing rigor.

Ali Alhajji:
I wonder whether that educational philosophy also shaped your diplomatic one, because in both cases, you seem to be working against exclusion. You are asking how a person becomes able to participate in a domain from which they were once kept at a distance. Would that be fair? Do you see a continuity between science education, rights, and diplomacy?

Zafra Lerman:
Yes, absolutely. It is all connected.

I had done research at some of the best institutions—Cornell, Northwestern, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the Weizmann Institute—but then I was given the opportunity to build a science institute at a university in Chicago whose students were largely from artistic and communications backgrounds and included many minority students. Science was not something they had previously seen as belonging to them.

That experience taught me how to combine science with the humanities, the arts, music, and dance. I have always cared about those things. The opportunity to bring them together showed me that what we often call “two cultures” do not have to remain separate. Each becomes richer when brought into relation with the other.

Science without the humanities can be very dangerous.

Ali Alhajji:
After all these years, through so many disappointments and difficulties, what still persuades you that encounter matters? What keeps you from cynicism?

Zafra Lerman:
My belief in the human being. I believe human beings can be better than what we often see, especially now. I believe that if more people do this kind of work—if we create more opportunities for meaningful encounter—we can bring out the best in people rather than the worst.

Right now, we see so much bad in the world. But I still believe that the human being is capable of more.

Ali Alhajji:
Because this is Reading the World, I want to end with a question about reading in the broadest sense. Has there been a book, a thinker, a poem, or even a sentence that has stayed with you in this work—something you return to when you need to remember what human connection is for?

Zafra Lerman:
A sentence that has stayed with me from a very young age is: “Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it.” For me, it means: do good for others. Later you will see that it was not lost.

I used to tell my students that before going to sleep at night, they should ask themselves: What did I do today that was good for somebody else? If you did something good for someone else, then you had a good day.

Ali Alhajji:
Thank you very much for that. It means a great deal.

Would you like to share anything we have not talked about?

Zafra Lerman:
Only that I hope more people will think seriously about this work and about what it means to help make the world better and move toward peace. One of the most difficult parts of organizing the Malta Conferences is simply getting visas for everyone. There is no country that can easily issue visas to such a politically complex group. In some ways, that challenge is even harder than fundraising.

But despite all of that, I continue because I believe the work matters.

Ali Alhajji:
Dr. Zafra Lerman, thank you. This was a rich and moving conversation.

You’ve been listening to Reading the World. My guest today was Dr. Zafra Lerman. What I take from this conversation is not the easy claim that science transcends politics, but the harder and more interesting proposition that knowledge can sometimes create a form in which people meet one another differently—not without history, not beyond conflict, but through the disciplined and fragile work of attention, translation, and trust.

Thank you for listening. I’m Ali Alhajji, and this is Reading the World.