Re-purposing old research

When I met with Professor Seybert last week, she asked me if I could think of any real-world applications for my research. In other words: policy recommendations. At first, I was just thinking of the obvious. My research could be used to better understand and work out the Israel-Palestine conflict. But that felt stale, untrue, and obviously, Jared Kushner has the whole situation under control, so my research felt irrelevant in that sense. But then, I thought back to my very first research design and literature review. At first, I was focusing on Israeli education and the school system's treatment of minorities. The initial research I did for the first lit review pointed to a lot of bias in the education system that painted Arabs very negatively. My new research could be used to look at education policy in a new way. My research is discourse analysis of the way a Palestinian NGO talks about human rights abuses versus the way an Israeli NGO talks about human rights abuses. My research could be used to show that the conflict comes down to more than just territory; it comes down to identity. Identity can be expressed through our words, and if NGOs focused on human rights cannot separate themselves from the identities they grew up with, then how could anyone else? My research could show that the identities Palestinians/Israelis are ingrained with are problematic towards creating peace, so maybe making education policy that is more driven towards accepting different groups.