This programming attracts prominent public intellectuals and distinguished scholars of Palestine.

CPS aims to advance the academic understanding of Palestine’s past and present through research and analysis, teaching, public lectures, book launches, and conferences on such topics as the assaults on Gaza, settler colonialism, and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement.

To encourage and present the vital work of Palestinians in the arts, CPS hosts poets, authors, playwrights, actors, and film and theater directors.

From the outset, Palestinian film has been the centerpiece of CPS arts programming. With its incisive and turbulent artistic imagination this cinema eloquently expresses the depth and range of Palestinian predicaments and possibilities.

To promote and communicate legal scholarship on Palestinians living under Israeli rule, CPS brings together leading lawyers and international legal scholars in workshops on such topics as military law in the West Bank, the legal aspects of the Palestinian state question, the ongoing nature of the legal Nakba, citizenship issues, and property dispossession.

Palestine Library events focus on new books on Palestine and Palestinians. Discussions with authors and Columbia faculty members engage audiences around recently published research.

Palestine Cuts is a space for emerging and established filmmakers and video-artists to present and discuss their work in an engaging and encouraging environment. It promotes stimulating audiovisual projects (documentary and fiction film, video, installations, etc.) that challenge existing conventions and offer critical and alternative views about Palestine and Palestinians.

The latest addition to CPS programming and research areas, our Jerusalem project also includes a web presence, starting with a historical newspaper collection (beginning with al Quds, 1908-1914, the first private Palestinian newspaper), a map collection, a postcard collection, and the full searchable archive of the Jerusalem Quarterly—a journal dedicated to the history, present status, and investigative journalism on the city of Jerusalem. The core material will be continuously replenished with new data as new items are acquired.