In Defense of Academic Freedom Session 13
The Circus of Academic Complicity (Part 1)
A Tragicomic Spectacle of Evasion on the World Stage of Genocide
Featuring:
Gert Van Heck
Bassam Haddad
Thursday, 15 October | 2 PM ET
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 (140+ chapters nationally)
Join us this Thursday, 14 October at 2 pm EST, for a new series on “The Circus of Academic Complicity, Part 1” featuring its author, Gert Van Hecken, in conversation with Bassam Haddad.
This session starts our third series of In Defense of Academic Freedom: “The Circus of Academic Complicity,” 3 years into the Journey of curtailing, silencing, and penalizing free speech and academic freedom.
In this series, we pull back the curtain and marvel at what happens backstage, at the Circus of Academic Complicity with genocide, including magical institutional relationships and funding arrangements/partnerships, purchased disciplinary mechanisms, duplicitous governance, optional standards, and the myriad mechanisms of evasion, gaslighting, legal and procedural acrobatics, and all the smoke and mirrors cynical evasion requires to hide the genocidal elephant in the room.
This event is Co-Sponsored by the Gaza in Context Collaborative Project
Featuring
Gert Van Hecken is an associate professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and an associate researcher at Nitlapan, Nicaragua. His research and teaching focus on social and environmental justice and the politics of knowledge in global environmental policies, critically analysing processes of green colonialism and uneven development, with a particular emphasis on how communities and social movements resist capitalism and colonialism. He is actively involved in organizing solidarity actions for Palestine, working alongside students and staff across universities.
Bassam Haddad 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 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 Calamity: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).