Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the perspectives of academic staff on issues of diversity and social schisms: capturing their perceptions of the complex relations at an academic campus positioned in an intricate sociopolitical context. It also explored how the faculty’s construal of diversity and social divisions inform their educational practices. Design/methodology/approach The study employed a qualitative approach using grounded theory methodology. Data collection was based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 20 diverse faculty members from different departments in a Northern Israeli college. The interviews were transcribed and processed into main themes and categories. Findings The findings revealed two main themes: “Diversity awareness” depicting recognition and sensitivity to the complex social context in the college, strategies of directly engaging with it, downplaying or overlooking the intricacies, and “Practices” describing the practical translations of the educational credos into teaching practice. Both themes reflected a myriad of faculty voices. Social implications The study illuminated the challenges posed by social schisms, inequalities, and diversity for the faculty who need to grapple with the intricacies on a daily basis. More open dialogue and debates by the protagonists are needed to increase awareness of diversity and experimenting with different ways of addressing the intricacies. Originality/value Empirical evidence of the organizational actors’ predicaments, their diverse patterns of coping with intricacies, and the factors underlying their choices contribute to the body of knowledge on managing diversity in vivo by real women and men with different backgrounds and experiences.

The present article describes several methodological questions with which I have had to contend over the past four years regarding teaching a qualitative research seminar. The topic of the seminar is 'Intimate Violence against Women', and the students come from very diverse backgrounds (Arabs, Druze, Jews, young and mature students, and new immigrants from Ethiopia and Russia). The present article addresses two principal subjects: (1) The epistemological resistance, which discusses the basic difficulties my students, especially the younger ones, express in accepting qualitative epistemology; and, (2) various questions regarding my own difficulties in deciding what are the recommended limits of reflexivity at each stage of research. The question of reflexivity relates to the fact that the seminar's subject matter is a 'sensitive issue ' (Renzetti and Lee, 1993). The present article draws on examples and verbatim quotes from my students, presented with my own questions and reflections. KEY WORDS: epistemology qualitative research reflexivity sensitive issues teaching ARTICLE 347

This research describes and analyzes the strategies for reconciling love and violence among battered women and their abusive partners. The data were chosen from a purposive sample of 14 couples, and the research was conducted in the phenomenological tradition. Two avenues of reconciling emerged from the findings: one that presents love and violence as mutually functional and the other that creates a complete split between the two. These findings point to two important conclusions: (a) Feelings of love often exist between spouses, even in a violent environment, and (b) battered women and their partners often attach similar meanings to the connection between love and violence, or use the same strategies to split the two.

Constructing a life story is a need shared by all humans to give their lives meaning and coherence. This article explores some of the narrative devices that batterers use to achieve a sense of coherence when telling their stories and justifying their violent behavior. A central theme that emerged from these stories centered on the men's perception of their wives as the embodiment of their own emotions and inner world. Two narrative strategies were identified in this context: (a) The construction of a "couple narrative" that focused on an idealized marital relationship rather than "allowing" the wife her story and (b) constructing a story around the theme of "she's not the same woman I married," which portrays the wife as "a shrew" and the violence as an attempt to discipline her. The stories of 18 batterers were used for this analysis, and two narratives were used to illustrate these strategies.