The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) have announced grants totaling $1.3 million from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation and a donor who wishes to remain anonymous in support of efforts to deter school violence.

The proposed UCLA-Hebrew University Center for Safe Schools—operated jointly by the two universities—will run a two-year pilot UCLA-HU Collaboration for Safe Schools program to connect scholars across disciplines to share research and insights related to the complex underlying causes of school violence, as well as knowledge on gun violence, bullying and cyberbullying, youth suicide, and substance abuse, as well as forms of hate including antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, and bias against LGBTQ and immigrant communities. In addition, through research exchanges and conferences, the partnership will work to bring top U.S. and Israeli scholars together with K-12 educators, administrators, and social workers; policy makers and experts in law and criminology; and university students focused on fields related to social education.

Recruitment of partnering research teams is slated to begin in fall of 2023, and the first conference will focus on how to ensure safety at schools in areas that are experiencing extreme strife in the political and social realms.

“In our current unprecedented and unsettling times, such collaborations are more important than ever,” said Ron Avi Astor, the Marjorie Crump Endowed Professor of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, with a joint appointment in the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies.

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