Letter Concerning Suspension of Dr. Mona Prince of Suez University

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Letter Concerning Suspension of Dr. Mona Prince of Suez University

By : Committee on Academic Freedom (MESA)

[The following letter was issued by the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA).]

7 May 2013

Dr. Maher Musbah
President, Suez University
Cairo-Suez Road
Suez
Arab Republic of Egypt

Dear President Musbah,

I write on behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) of North America in strong protest of the current investigation and informal suspension without pay of Dr. Mona Prince by officials at your university. We believe that this investigation is unwarranted by the facts of the case and badly undermines the principles of academic freedom. We are troubled, in addition, by evidence that the mistreatment of Dr. Prince by the university is politically motivated.  

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 3,000 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression, both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and elsewhere.

As has been widely reported in Egyptian print and broadcast media, Dr. Prince stands accused by one of her students of expressing untoward sentiments about Islam during a class discussion about the problem of sectarian tensions in Egypt. We use a vague formulation because the exact complaint against Dr. Prince seems to change every few days. Originally, she was told she would be investigated for “contempt of religion.” In a 28 April interview with al-Youm al-Sabi‘, you indicated that this charge would be downgraded to “insulting Islam.” On 3 May, an article in al-Masry al-Youm suggested that she faces allegations of “contempt of religion and insults to certain Salafist sheikhs.”

As might be guessed from the fuzzy nature of the charges, the precipitating incident appears to have been a simple misunderstanding by the student of Dr. Prince’s points or at most a disagreement between the two of them. Dr. Prince’s April 16 appearance on Mona al-Shazli’s television program, “Gumla Mufida,” was instructive in this respect. When the student called in to the program to voice her grievances, she could not offer any examples of wrongdoing on Dr. Prince’s part. It was clear that the student had been offended by certain turns of phrase in readings that Dr. Prince had assigned about sexual harassment in Egypt and by Dr. Prince’s opinions about sectarian discord in the country. But that was all.

It seems to us, indeed, that Dr. Prince acted precisely as a professor should, particularly in a discussion section of a course designed to teach critical thinking skills. She encouraged her students to tackle matters that, while sensitive and unpleasant, are among the most pressing socio-political issues in contemporary Egypt.

We understand that several of Dr. Prince’s students oppose the complaint against her but are too intimidated by the atmosphere on campus to speak out on her behalf.

We are quite disturbed, therefore, that the university has opened an investigation at all. The mere fact that the university deems this innocuous incident worthy of inquiry could exercise a chilling effect upon academic freedom. Must every professor worry that, if a student is displeased by what s/he teaches, s/he will be subjected to questioning by administrators and suspended from his job?

Other aspects of Dr. Prince’s case are even more disconcerting. She has received death threats, as garbled versions of what transpired in her classroom have spread across campus and through the media. According to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) and the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, university officials’ first response to the student’s accusations was to advise Dr. Prince not to come to campus because they could not guarantee her personal safety. Shortly afterward, according to press sources, Dr. Prince’s department brought a fresh charge against her—which she denies—to the effect that she regularly skips her lectures. We are very skeptical of these allegations, given the timing. Finally, we are greatly concerned by Dr. Prince’s statement that she was suspended for six months last year because she is “one of those Tahrir Square people.”

We urge you to drop the investigation of Dr. Prince immediately. We echo the words of our Egyptian colleagues who have been quoted in the press decrying the inquiry as a threat to academic freedom and freedom of expression in all of Egypt. We hope that you will welcome Dr. Prince back to her job at Suez University, recompense her back pay, and take all necessary steps to protect her from anyone who would harm her. We appeal to you, finally, to affirm publicly that the principle of academic freedom will be upheld at Suez University in the future.

Sincerely,

Peter Sluglett
MESA President
Visiting Research Professor, Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore

cc: Dr. Mustafa Mus‘ad, Minister of Higher Education

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412