Gaza in Context: A Collaborative Teach-In Series — Session 25

The Intersection of Academic Freedom and the war on Gaza:
A View from the Region

Featuring:
Sami Al-Arian

Moderator:
Bassam Haddad

27 Feruary 2024

Teach-In Session 25

February 5 of this year marked the ninth anniversary of Dr. Sami Al-Arian leaving the US for Turkey after living in America for 4 decades. It was the culmination of a 12 year saga that started in 2003 when he was targeted and arrested by the US government because of his activism on Palestine. After a 6 months trial in 2005, he was not convicted on a single charge. Yet he was kept in prison and house arrest until the charges were dismissed in 2014.

We sit down across an ocean and a sea to discuss a view from the region regarding recent developments in the War On Gaza. Our guest will delve into the current situation ahead of an impending total Israeli invasion of Rafah by the IDF, the ICJ ruling and its (lack of) concrete consequences on the ground, and scenarios for the future of Palestine.

Gaza in Context Collaborative Teach-In Series

We are together experiencing a catastrophic unfolding of history as Gaza endures a massive invasion of potentially genocidal proportions. This follows an incessant bombardment of a population increasingly bereft of the necessities of living in response to the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7. The context within which this takes place includes a well-coordinated campaign of misinformation and the unearthing of a multitude of essentialist and reductionist discursive tropes that dehumanize Palestinians as the culprits, despite a context of structural subjugation and Apartheid, now a matter of consensus in the human rights movement.

The co-organizers below are convening weekly teach-ins and conversations on a host of issues that introduce our common university communities, educators, researchers, and students to the history and present of Gaza, in context.

Co-Organizers: Arab Studies Institute, Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, George Mason University’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Program, Rutgers Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Birzeit University Museum, Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Brown University’s Center for Middle East Studies, University of Chicago’s Center for Contemporary Theory, Brown University’s New Directions in Palestinian Studies, Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies, Georgetown University-Qatar, American University of Cairo’s Alternative Policy Studies, Middle East Studies Association’s Global Academy, University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, CUNY’s Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center, University of Illinois Chicago’s Arab american cultural Center, George Mason University’s AbuSulayman’s Center for Global Islamic Studies, University of Illinois Chicago’s Critical Middle East Studies Working Group, George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies, Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies, New York University’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies