GMU Event: A Teach-In on Global Migrations and Refugees - the US and the Middle East (24 February)

GMU Event: A Teach-In on Global Migrations and Refugees - the US and the Middle East (24 February)

GMU Event: A Teach-In on Global Migrations and Refugees - the US and the Middle East (24 February)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Saturday, February 24, 2018, 9:00am-3:30pm,  George Mason University, Merten Hall #1204

The current global policy environment surrounding migration and immigration reflects urgent humanitarian needs. At the same time, global responses are being shaped by resurgent exclusionist tendencies that also defined earlier migration policies in the twentieth century. This Teacher/ Student Outreach Workshop will be held at George Mason University on Saturday, February 24, 2018 from 9:00 am to 3:30 pm. It will feature a session on historical background in the morning, and multiple speakers on issues emerging from 21st century migration in the afternoon. The workshop will explore facets of migration in the context of the Middle East & North Africa from a regional and contemporary perspective of 21st century issues, as well as from a historical and policy perspective as it relates to migrants from the region in the United States since the 19th century.

The event is co-sponsored by the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University and the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Center for Global Islamic Studies at GMU, as well as the Arab Studies Institute. It is made possible in part by a Title VI grant from the U. S. Department of Education, with additional funding from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies for education outreach and public events. Co-sponsors at George Mason University include Global Programs, Global Affairs, History, Schar School, Film and Media Studies, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Film and Video Studies, and Cultural Studies.

Register here for teachers and here for members of the public

Lunch and Refreshments will be provided.


Teach-In on Global Migrations and Refugees:

The US and the Middle East

 

Saturday, February 24, 2018, 9:00am-3:30pm, at George Mason University, Merten Hall #1204

 

MORNING SEGMENT For Educators and Interested Members of the Public

9:00 - 9:15 am   Welcome & Introductions

9:15 - 10:15   “History of Migration to the United States: Issues and Flows,” Elizabeth Chacko, Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University

10:15 - 10:25  Q & A/discussion

10:25 - 10:35  BREAK

10:35 - 11:20 am   “History of Migration in and out of the Middle East and North Africa in the 20th century, Rochelle Davis, Director, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies

11:25 - 11:35  Q & A/discussion

11:35 - 12:15  Film Screening: Flight of the Refugees, Directed by Elias Matar 

12:15 - 1:00 pm  LUNCH (for educators attending morning & afternoon segments)

 

AFTERNOON SEGMENT – Open to the Public

1:00 - 2:30 pm  Panel on 21st Century Migration Issues

  • “Where the Wild Things Are: Youth Using Religion and Women to Protect Christian and National Identity in Central Europe,” Elzbieta Gozdziak, Institute for the Study of International Migration, Georgetown University
  • “Current Dilemmas in Protection and Humanitarian Action,” Elizabeth Ferris, Institute for the Study of International Migration, Georgetown University
  • “Policies of Immigration Exclusion,” Kristin Sekerci and Azza Al-Tiraifi, Georgetown University

2:30 - 3:30 pm  Panel on Experiences of Migration

  • Aysenour Kara, George Mason University
  • Musab al-Balchi, George Mason University
  • Nana Brantuo, University of Maryland, formerly Black Alliance for Just Immigration

3:30 - 4:00 pm  Wrap-up

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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