Sustaining Higher Education in Gaza
WEDNESDAY, 23 OCTOBER 2024 10:00 AM EST | 5:00 PM GAZA
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Organized by @MESA_1966 and Gaza in Context, Co-Sponsored by @jadaliyya @ScholarsAtRisk @ScholarRescue @OfficialBrismes @NSMES_ME @UIEConsortium.
In this panel six professors from the Gaza Strip discuss their efforts to sustain higher education in the face of genocide and scholasticide. Our guests will also address avenues for rebuilding higher education in Gaza as well as the sorts of contributions others can make.
Dr. Ahmad Abu Shaban, Al-Azhar University and York University
Dr. Wesam Amer, Gaza University and Cambridge University
Dr. Yousef Algherbawi, Al-Azhar University and AUC
Dr. Mohammed Hamdona, Islamic University of Gaza and AUC
Dr. Osama Hamdouna, Al-Azhar University
Dr. Mohab Sawali, Al-Azhar University and AUC
Moderated by Prof. Asli Bali, Yale Law School and President of MESA.
Aslı Ü. Bâli is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Bâli’s teaching and research interests include public international law — particularly human rights law and the law of the international security order — and comparative constitutional law, with a focus on the Middle East. She has written on the nuclear non-proliferation regime, humanitarian intervention, the roles of race and empire in the interpretation and enforcement of international law, the role of judicial independence in constitutional transitions, federalism and decentralization in the Middle East, and constitutional design in religiously divided societies. Bâli’s scholarship has appeared in the International Journal of Constitutional Law, University of Chicago Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Yale Journal of International Law, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Chicago Journal of International Law, Cornell Journal of International Law, Virginia Journal of International Law, American Journal of International Law Unbound, Geopolitics, Studies in Law, Politics and Society, and in edited volumes published by Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press. She has also written essays and op-eds for such venues as The New York Times, The Boston Review, The London Review of Books, Jacobin, and Dissent.
Ahmad Abu Shaban is Associate Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine at Al-Azhar University, where he has played a pivotal role in shaping the institution's academic and research agendas. He is currently a visiting professor in environmental sociology at York University.
Yousef Algherbawi is a Palestinian researcher and academic specializing in law. He is also a certified legal arbitrator. He holds a Ph.D. from Alexandria University and is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Law at Al-Azhar University. His research focuses on private law in its various branches, examining the principles of justice, the rule of law, and equality.
Wesam Amer is a Cara Fellow at Cambridge University. He was also a visiting researcher at Hans Bredow Institute in Hamburg and GIGA Institute-Hamburg (Germany) in 2023 and 2024. Since 2020, Amer has been the Dean of the Faculty of Communication and Languages at Gaza University.
Mohammad Hamdona is Assistant Professor of Public Law at the Faculty of Law, Al-Azhar University, and Assistant Professor of Public Law at the Faculty of Sharia and Law, Islamic University of Gaza. He received his doctorate in law in the Department of Economics and Public Finance at Mansoura University in 2019.
Osama Hamdouna is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Al-Azhar University. His research centers on social psychology and mental health, focusing on psychosocial phenomena and their impact on mental health, such as the impact of delayed childbearing on the mental health of wives and husbands, the role of education in the mental health of children, and the impact of the current situation in Gaza.
Mohab Sawali is Assistant Professor of Criminal Law in the Faculty of Law at Al-Azhar University and a member of the Legal Affairs Committee. He has been a Palestinian lawyer for 10 years and a member of the editorial board of the Palestinian Bar Association magazine. He obtained a doctorate degree from Ain Shams University.
Bassam Haddad (Moderator) is Founding 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 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 Calamity: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).
Gaza in Context Collaborative Teach-In Series
We are together experiencing a catastrophic unfolding of history as Gaza awaits a massive invasion of potentially genocidal proportions. This follows 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 depict Palestinians as the culprits, despite a context of structural subjugation and Apartheid, 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