Gaza in Context: A Collaborative Teach-In Series
Questioning the State
State Department Briefings on Palestine
Featuring:
Said Arikat
Moderator:
Bassam Haddad
As we approach the realm of the absurd regarding the professionalism and veracity of State Department Spokespersons’ responses on Gaza developments, Said Arikat addresses his recent experience during foreign policy briefings at the US State Department. We feature often heated exchanges with DOS representatives that became emblematic of strategies of evasion, double standards, and misinformation employed by spokespersons of the state, including on last week’s flour massacre in northern Gaza, documented on camera.
Gaza in Context Collaborative Teach-In Series
We are together experiencing a catastrophic unfolding of history as Gaza endures a massive invasion of genocidal proportions. This accompanies 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
Featuring
Said Arikat has been the Washington Bureau Chief of the prominent Al Quds Daily Newspaper and an adjunct professor at American University. Currently, his reporting centers around the United States Department of State. He is a frequent guest on Arab Satellite TV as commentator on U.S politics, and its foreign and security policies. From the summer of 2005, he served as the United Nations Chief Spokesman for Iraq and was based in Baghdad 2005-2010. He traveled and worked in every region/city in Iraq and became intimately involved with the Constitution and the 10 different national and regional elections that occurred during his tenure there. Said holds a B.S degree from the University of San Francisco and an M.S degree from California State University in Long Beach.
Bassam Haddad (Moderator) 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 Institute. He 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 is Executive Producer of Status Podcast Channel 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).