Academic Praxis and the Question of Palestine: The Legacies of Edward W. Said

[Please note that, due to a technical error, the first 15 minutes are missing from the event recording but are included in the three-part event transcription.]

Part One ~ Influences
Part Two ~ The Role of Law
Part Three ~ Academic Freedom, BDS & Tactics

WEDNESDAY 29 NOVEMBER
10:30 NEW YORK | 3:30pm LONDON | 6:30pm AMMAN

Edward W Said was a leading public intellectual and twenty years after his passing his influence continues to be formative in diverse fields from literature to music, history to international relations. Said was committed to justice in Palestine and utilized the privileges of public intellectual life to this end. He was committed to democratizing knowledge production and pushed for institutional change in academia and beyond, and his self-awareness of the intellectual as a political actor remains a crucial example. This panel considers the challenges of academic praxis for the question of Palestine today and what we can learn from Said’s legacy. 

On the international day for solidarity with the Palestinian people, this panel unites six international law scholars to discuss how tactics of solidarity for Palestine have evolved over the last two decades. Said’s tactics changed significantly over his lifetime as he became disillusioned with the Oslo Accords and what followed. What role can international laws and institutions play, particularly the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court? What is the role of movements such as Boycott-Divest-Sanctions? How have debates over academic freedom evolved? How do we assess the coherence and effectiveness of contemporary tactics?

Speakers

Professor Katherine Franke is James L Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University, Director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, and on the Executive Committees of the Institute for Study of Sexuality & Gender, and Center for Palestine Studies. She is an expert on law, sexuality, race, and religion.

Dr. Shahd Hammouri is an international law lecturer at Kent University with expertise on the Arab region, war economies, and corporate accountability. She is finalizing her manuscript on corporate war profiteering and international law, and is a member of the Executive Committee at Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights.

Dr. Ardi Imseis is Assistant Professor of Law at Queen’s University and author of United Nations and the Question of Palestine (2023). He served as senior legal expert at the UN Human Rights Council and UNRWA, and provided expert testimony before the UN Security Council, UK House of Lords & French Senate.

Dr. Darryl Li is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago and an attorney. His scholarship and legal practice are in the areas of war, law, migration, empire, and racialization. He is the author of the prize-winning text, The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity (2020).

Dr. John Reynolds is Associate Professor of International Law at Maynooth University, National University of Ireland. His research focuses on international law in relation to colonialism, racism/apartheid, emergency, and political economy. John’s book, Empire, Emergency and International Law (2017) was awarded the Kevin Boyle Book Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship.

Dr. Nahed Samour is Associate Researcher at Radboud University, Nijmegen in the Race-Religion-Constellations research project. She studied Law and Islamic Studies at the universities of Bonn, Birzeit/Ramallah, London (SOAS), Berlin (HU), Harvard, and Damascus. She is a member of the Arab-German Young Academy and edited the book Arab Berlin (2023).

Moderator

Dr. Usha Natarajan is Law and Political Economy Faculty Fellow at Yale Law School. Her interdisciplinary work uses postcolonial theory for an interrelated understanding of development, environment, migration, and conflict. She was Edward W Said Fellow at Columbia University (2020-2023) and Associate Professor at American University in Cairo (2010-2020).