Live Event with Author Ahmad Dallal: Third Arab Social Science Monitor Report (29 Dec.)

 Live Event with Author Ahmad Dallal: Third Arab Social Science Monitor Report (29 Dec.)

Live Event with Author Ahmad Dallal: Third Arab Social Science Monitor Report (29 Dec.)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

 Live Event with Author Ahmad Dallal

Third Arab Social Science Monitor Report


Tuesday, 29 December 2020
10:00 AM EST/5:00 PM EST


 
On Tuesday, 29 December, at 10 AM EST (5 PM Beirut), Bassam Haddad will interview the author of the "Third Arab Social Science Monitor Report,” Ahmad Dallal. The title of the report is “The Academic Universes of Social Scientists in the Arab Region: Career Trajectories and Networks in Universities.” The event will be broadcast live on ACSS Facebook Page and on Jadaliyya’s Facebook Page
 

Featuring

 

Ahmad Dallal is Dean of Georgetown University in Qatar. Until Summer 2017, he was a professor of History in the Department of History and Archaeology at the American University of Beirut, where he served as Provost from 2009-2015. Between 2003 and 2009, Dr. Dallal served as chair of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. He had previously held positions at Stanford University (2000-2003), Yale University (1994-2000), and Smith College (1990-1994).Dr. Dallal has written and lectured widely on a variety of topics, including the Islamic disciplines of learning in medieval and early modern Islamic societies, the development of traditional and exact Islamic sciences, Islamic medieval thought, the early-modern evolution of Islamic revivalism and intellectual movements, Islamic law, and the causes and consequences of 11 September 2001 attacks. He is the author of An Islamic Response to Greek Astronomy: Kitab Ta‘dil Hay’at al-Aflak of Sadr al-Shari‘a (1995); Islam, Science and the Challenge of History (2012); The Political Theology of ISIS, Prophets, Messiahs and the "Extinction of the Greyzone" (2017); and Islam without Europe – Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth Century Islamic Thought (2018). Dr. Dallal earned his PhD from Columbia University in Islamic Studies, and his BE in Mechanical Engineering from the American University of Beirut.

أحمد سليم دلّال عميد جامعة جورجتاون في قطر. عمل قبل ذلك في لبنان والولايات المتحدة، حيث نمت اهتماماته بالأبحاث والتدريس في موضوعات التقاليد الثقافية للعالم الإسلامي. بين عامي 2009 و 2017 شغل الدكتور دلّال منصب أستاذ التاريخ بالجامعة الأمريكية في بيروت. وفي الفترة ما بين عامي 2009 و 2015، عمل كوكيل للشؤون الأكاديمية بالجامعة الأمريكية في بيروت. وقبل ذلك، في الفترة ما بين عامي 2003 و 2009، شغل الدكتور دلّال منصب رئيس قسم الدراسات العربية والإسلامية بجامعة جورجتاون. وقبل ذلك عمل بالتدريس في جامعة ستانفورد، وجامعة ييل، وكلية سميث. تناول الدكتور دلّال مواضيع عديدة في كتاباته وحاضر فيها، من بينها النظم الثقافية في المجتمعات الإسلامية في العصور الوسطى ومطلع العصر الحديث، وتطور العلوم الإسلامية التقليدية والتطبيقية، والفكر الإسلامي في العصور الوسطى، ونشوء وتطور الصحوة الإسلامية والحركات الثقافية في مطلع العصر الحديث، والشريعة الإسلامية، وأسباب وعواقب هجمات 11 سبتمبر/أيلول 2001. للدكتور دلّال مؤلفات عديدة منها كتاب رد إسلامي على علم الفلك اليوناني: كتاب تعديل هيئة الأفلاك لصدر الشريعة (1995) An Islamic Response to Greek Astronomy: Kitab Ta‘dil Hay’at al-Aflak of Sadr al-Shari‘a ؛ وكتاب الإسلام والعلم وتحديات التاريخ (2012) Islam, Science and the Challenge of History؛ والعقيدة السياسية لتنظيم داعش: الأنبياء والمخلصون ومحو المنطقة الرمادية (2017) The Political Theology of ISIS, Prophets, Messiahs and the "Extinction of the Greyzone"؛ ومؤخرا صدر له كتاب بعنوان الإسلام بدون أوروبا – تقاليد الإصلاح في الفكر الإسلامي في القرن الثامن عشر Islam without Europe – Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth Century Islamic Thought 2018. وقد حاز الدكتور دلاّل على شهادة الدكتوراه من جامعة كولومبيا في الدراسات الإسلامية، وعلى بكالوريوس الهندسة في الهندسة الميكانيكية من الجامعة الأمريكية في بيروت.

Bassam Haddad is Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies InstituteHe serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the acclaimed series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam serves on the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and is Executive Producer of Status Audio Magazine and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book titled Understanding The Syrian Tragedy: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).

 
 

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