In Defense of Academic Freedom:
Defamation, Intimidation, and Suspension
Featuring:
Jodi Dean
and Mohamed Abdou
Moderators:
Bassam Haddad
Mariam Durrani
Organized by DC, Maryland, & Virginia Faculty for Academic Freedom and Gaza in Conrtext Collaborative Project; Cosponsored by MESA Task Force on Civil and Human Rights, MESA's Committee on Academic Freedom, Faculty for Justice in Palestine Network (115+ chapters nationally)
Tuesday, 30 April 2024
12:00 PM EST
In this third installment, our faculty guests have been suspended or relieved of their teaching duties for their support of Palestine in Israel’s ongoing Genocide in Gaza. They will tell their own story and address the context of their scholarship and advocacy, as well as how their academic freedom was violated. They are not alone.
In Defense of Academic Freedom
The assault on academic freedom is growing on University campuses. We are launching this series to address the cases of defamation, intimidation, and suspension that faculty are being subjected to in the United States and beyond. This series aims to raise awareness of the conditions and pretenses under which such violations occur and provide resources to contend with them, not least in support of the most vulnerable targets.
This event is Co-Sponsored by the Gaza in Context Collaborative Project
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
Jodi Dean is Professor of Politics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY. A political theorist, she is the author or editor of 14 books, including "Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies," "The Communist Horizon," "Crowds and Party," "Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging," and "Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women's Political Writing," co-edited with Charisse Burden-Stelly.
Mohamed Abdou is a North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar. He is the Arcapita Visiting Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University and is a former Assistant Professor at the American University of Cairo. He is author of Islam & Anarchism: Relationships & Resonances (Pluto Press, 2022). He wrote his transnational ethnographic and historical-archival PhD dissertation on Islam & Queer-Muslims: Identity & Sexuality in the Contemporary (2019).
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).
Mariam Durrani (Moderator) is a Professorial Lecturer at the School of International Service and a faculty affiliate with the Anti-Racism Research and Policy Center at American University. As a decolonial feminist anthropologist, Dr. Durrani's scholarship seeks to shift how academia, media, and public discourse reflect on and reckon with the racialized "Muslim" subject and the impact of global wars on higher education in the US and Pakistan.