ATTEND | Teach-In: A Third Intifada? Palestinians and the Struggle for Jerusalem

Thursday, May 20, 2021
1:00 – 2:30 p.m.
Register to obtain your access link.
View the event page on The Center for Middle East Studies, Brown University website.

Are recent events yet another cycle of age-old ethnic and religious conflict over Jerusalem, or are we witnessing a third intifada by Palestinians against decades of systematic dispossession and displacement following the nakba of 1948? And how is the Palestinian condition relevant to global justice struggles against settler colonialism and racism?

The teach-in is organized by the Center for Middle East Studies and the New Directions in Palestinian Studies Initiative at Brown University; co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, the Departments of Africana Studies, American Studies, History, and Religious Studies.

Moderator:
Nadje Al-Ali, Brown University

Introductory words by event cosponsors:
Tony Bogues, Brown University, Director, Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice
Brian Meeks, Brown University, Chair, Africana Studies

Speakers include:
Rana Barakat, Birzeit University
Beshara Doumani, Brown University
Aya Ghanameh, RISD
Weeam Hammoudeh, Birzeit University
Adrienne Keene, Brown University
Adi Ophir, Brown University

ATTEND | Ongoing Nakba: Reflections on Palestine from Sheikh Jarrah to Gaza

Wednesday, May 19, 2021, 12:00pm CDT / 1:00pm EDT

Visit the event website for more info and to register.

The ongoing attempts to expel Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah are not new, but they have brought fresh attention to the movement for Palestinian liberation worldwide and triggered mobilizations across Palestine unlike anything that has been seen in recent years. New and amplified mobilization across Palestine has created a variegated landscape of resistance connecting Palestinians on either side of the Green Line, in Gaza, and in exile, along with massive crowds of supporters and a surprising cast of liberal journalists and politicians.

Join us as we bring together panelists to discuss the latest developments and various mobilizations across Palestine.

Panelists:

• Jehad Abusalim

• Hadeel Badarni

• Rabea Eghbariah

• Lucy Garbett

• Randa Wahbe

Moderated by Hadeel Assali

This event is free and open to the public: register here to join the Zoom webinar, or visit Jadaliyya’s Facebook page for the livestream. Please email us at ccct@uchicago.edu if you require any accommodations to enable your full participation.

Presented by 3CT, the Global Studies Program, the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Arab Studies Institute.

WATCH | Rashid Khalidi in Conversation with Lana Tatour

A conversation between Rashid Khalidi and Lana Tatour about recent events and the historical context, laid out in Khalidi’s book, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (2020).

READ | JOINT STATEMENT BY PALESTINE STUDIES CENTERS

We the undersigned, directors and operators of Palestine Studies Centers are anxiously following the events unfolding in historic Palestine. We are as committed as ever to using our academic skills and scholarly know-how to help the Palestinian people, wherever they are, in their just struggle for freedom and liberation. We strongly condemn the Israeli ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem and the brutal Israeli violation of the sacred Haram al-Sharif and al-Aqsa mosque, which are not just religious but also national symbols of the Palestinian struggle.

We ask the world to immediately intervene to stop the callous Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, which costs the lives of many civilians - among them children - and end the blockade immediately. We ask the world to protect the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and inside Israel from the brutal force of the police and the violence of Israeli settlers and their supporters.

Only when Israel treats Palestinians inside Israel as equal citizens, recognizes the right of the Palestinian refugees to return and the right of the Palestinians to live free of colonization and occupation, will there be hope for peace and reconciliation in historic Palestine.

Dina Matar and Gilbert Achcar
Center for Palestine Studies, SOAS, UK

Ilan Pappe and Nadia Naser-Najjab
European Center for Palestine Studies, Exeter, UK

Khaled Faraj and Muhamad Ali Khailidi
Institute of Palestine Studies, Beirut, Lebanon

Nadia Abu El-Haj and Brian Boyd
Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University, New York, USA

WATCH | Rashid Khalidi and Hanan Ashrawi on Democracy NOW! 14 May 2021

Watch the 14 May 2021 segment with Rashid Khalidi and Hanan Ashrawi on Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, the impacts of Joe Biden’s continued defense of Israeli actions and how the historical events since 1948 continue to echo into the present.

Transcript of the segment is also available on Democracy NOW!’s website.

ATTEND | The Palestinian Nakba: What Happened in 1948 and Why It Still Matters

Join The Middle East Institute and Project48 for

The Palestinian Nakba: What Happened in 1948 and Why It Still Matters
Monday, May 10, 2021 at 11 AM ET / 6 PM Palestine

Every year on May 15th, millions of Palestinians around the world commemorate the Nakba, or the catastrophe that befell them in 1948. This catastrophe resulted in the dispossession of an estimated 750,000 refugees from historic Palestine, and the uprooting of two-thirds of the Palestinian Arab population and their society in the process of the creation of the State of Israel.

73 years later, the Nakba remains central to Palestinian national identity and political aspirations, as evidenced by the 2018-19 Gaza March of Return and even the recent protests in Jerusalem. However, despite being a core Palestinian grievance, the Nakba continues to be whitewashed or denied outright by pundits, lobbyists, and even policymakers.

The Middle East Institute and Project48 are pleased to host an esteemed group of experts to shed light on what transpired in 1948 and why the events of the Nakba still resonate today and remain central to understanding Israel and Palestine. This event is co-sponsored by the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Institute for Palestine Studies.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
​
Keynote address:
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is Representative, 13th District of Michigan, US House of Representatives.

​Speakers:
Rashid Khalidi is Professor, Columbia University, President of Institute for Palestine Studies-USA.
Lubnah Shomali is Executive director, BADIL.
Umar Al-Ghubari is Program director, Zochrot.
Mohammed El-Kurd is an Author and Poet.
Nooran Alhamdan, (moderator) is Graduate research fellow, Program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs, MEI.
Khaled Elgindy, (moderator) is Senior fellow and director, Program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs, MEI.

WATCH | The Trouble with the Archive, public talk by Nadia Abu El-Haj

A public talk by Dr. Nadia Abu El-Haj, as part of the inaugural lecture series of the Palestine Land Studies Center. Dr. Abu El-Haj is Ann Olin Whitney Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, Co- Director of the Center for Palestine Studies, and Chair of the Governing Board of Columbia’s Society of Fellows/Heyman Center for the Humanities. She is the recipient of numerous awards and the author of journal articles on topics ranging from the history of archaeology in Palestine, to the question of race and genomics, to the workings of American militarism during the post 9/11 wars. Dr. Abu El-Haj is the author of two books: Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (University of Chicago Press, 2001), which won the Albert Hourani Annual Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association in 2002, and The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology (University of Chicago Press, 2012). Her third book, to be published by Verso (2022), is a study of contemporary American militarism as it operates in and through the idiom of combat trauma and the obligation of American citizens to care for soldiers sent off to war in their name. Abstract: For decades now, post-colonial studies has been invested in the work of re-reading the archive –– reading “against” or “along” the archive grain in order to recuperate histories suppressed or erased by colonial projects. Recovering the histories of the colonized or enslaved is understood as a radical political project, important not just as a scholarly project but also, as crucial to contemporary anti- and post- colonial struggles. In this talk, I draw on my work on Palestine and Israel in order to reconsider this faith in the power of historical recuperation, and suggest a very different configuration of knowledge and power with which we need to contend today.

READ | Interview with Palestinian artist Rana Bishara by Lila Abu-Lughod

Rana Bishara, Bannest—Cactus Nest (2020), prickly pear cactus fruit in a nest.
Photo credit: Rana Bishara.

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Art, Activism, and the Presence of Memory in Palestine: Interview with Palestinian Artist Rana Bishara

In this interview conducted by Lila Abu-Lughod on October 17, 2020, Palestinian artist Rana Bishara discusses the three artworks that appear on the covers of volume 41 of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, as well as numerous other multidisciplinary and multimedia artworks she has made and exhibited from the 1990s to the present, focusing specifically on art as a form of political activism.