Letter of Support by Colleagues and Personal Friends of Emad Shahin

Letter of Support by Colleagues and Personal Friends of Emad Shahin

Letter of Support by Colleagues and Personal Friends of Emad Shahin

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following letter was issued on 26 May 2015 in support of Emad Shahin, a professor at the American University of Cairo (AUC) whose was charged, tried, and recently sentenced to death (in absentia) as part of a broader set of cases brought forth by the regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.]

For those familiar with even the barest facts of the case, the provisional sentence of Emad al-Din Shahin,  to death seems appalling.  Professor Shahin is a widely respected and accomplished academic who has taught at Notre Dame, Harvard, Georgetown, the American University in Cairo, and George Washington University.  He has no record of organized political activity. The list of the other alleged participants—a group that resembles a list of political opponents and associates and technocratic aides of ousted President Muhammad Morsi far more than it does a real set of plotters—makes the charges seem even more improbable.

We, the undersigned colleagues and personal friends of Professor Shahin, wish to add our voices to those who have expressed deep concern over the provisional sentence of death.  But we do more: based on our personal knowledge of Professor Shahin’s character, activities, and scholarship, we state that the charges are so utterly alien to his character as to lack any credibility whatsoever.  Professor Shahin is a figure known for his integrity and dedication to his work. Like many of us, he is not afraid to draw on his expertise to speak on public issues.  He was also clearly distressed by the polarization that took place in Egypt and shared the aspirations of millions of Egyptians for a more democratic and accountable political order.  These are not crimes by any stretch of the imagination.

Espionage and treason—the sorts of vague allegations included in the indictment of Professor Shahin—should not be associated with his name.

We provide this information to Egyptian judicial, security, and political authorities in order to clear Professor Shahin’s name. We call on governments throughout the world to speak out and communicate their concern to their Egyptian counterparts and to rebuff any efforts to restrict Professor Shahin’s movements, speech, and activities.

(Names in alphabetical order, titles and institutions for identification purposes only)

  • Osama Abi-Mershed, Director, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
  • Abdullah Al-Arian, Georgetown University
  • Dr. Walter Armbrust, Associate Professor, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford and Albert Hourani Fellow of Modern Middle Eastern Studies, St. Antony`s College
  • Holger Albrecht, American University in Cairo 
  • Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Stanford University
  • Eva Bellin, Myra and Robert Kraft Professor of Arab Politics, Brandeis University
  • Jonathan A. C. Brown, Georgetown University
  • Nathan J. Brown, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University
  • Jason Brownlee, Professor of Government and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin
  • Sheila Carapico, Professor of Political Science, University of Richmond and formerly of the American University in Cairo 
  • Elliott Colla, Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Georgetown University
  • Christian Davenport, Professor of Political Science and Faculty Associate with Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan
  • Rochelle Davis, Georgetown University
  • Larry Diamond, Director, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Stanford Universit
  • Michele Dunne, Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
  • John P. Entelis, Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science and Director, Middle East Studies Program, Fordham University; President, American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS)
  • John L Esposito, University Professor & Founding Director, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University
  • Dalia Fahmy, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Long Island University
  • Khaled Fahmy, Professor of History, American University in Cairo
  • Ellis Goldberg, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
  • Joel Gordon, Professor of History and Director, King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies, University of Arkansas
  • Nader Hashemi, University of Denver
  • Clement M. Henry, Visiting Research Professor, Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore
  • Amaney Jamal, Associate Professor of Politics,  Princeton University
  • Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt
  • Mark LeVine is Professor of Middle Eastern History at University of California at Irvine
  • Abdel-Fattah Mady, Alexandria University
  • Radwan A. Masmoudi, President, Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy
  • Michael McFaul, Director, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, and Professor, Department of Political Science, Stanford University
  • Roger Owen, Harvard University
  • James Piscatori, Professor of International Relations, Durham University
  • William B. Quandt, Professor Emeritus, Department of Politics, University of Virginia
  • Dr. Andrea Rugh Adjunct Scholar, Middle East Institute
  • Ambassador (retired) William A. Rugh
  • Hesham Sallam, Stanford University
  • Samer Shehata, University of Oklahoma
  • Robert Springborg, Professor of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School (retired)
  • Joshua Stacher, Associate Professor of Political Science, Kent State University
  • Alfred Stepan, Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, Columbia University
  • Judith E. Tucker, Professor of History, Georgetown University
  • John Voll, Professor Emeritus of Islamic History, Georgetown University.
  • Dr. Michael J. Willis, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford
  • I. William Zartman is Professor Emeritus, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University 

 

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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