After the Midterms
Palestine on the Ballot?
Featuring Josh Ruebner and Linda Sarsour
Moderated by Bassam Haddad and Alexander Monea
Wednesday, 11 November 2026 | 1:30 PM EST
George Mason University | Fairfax, VA | Merten Hall - Room 1203
Organized by Global South Network at GMU and Gaza in Context Project
This conversation will address the implications of the midterm election results for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East with emphasis on Palestine, as well as related domestic matters including Medicare for all, reproductive rights, immigrant rights, and consequences for Arab and Muslim Americans. We will also address both the euphoria and false hopes regarding meaningful political change here at home. Join us in person or online.
Featuring
Josh Ruebner is Policy Director at the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project (IMEU Policy Project). He is also faculty in Justice and Peace Studies at Georgetown University. Prior to joining IMEU Policy Project, Ruebner worked at Americans for Justice in PalestineAction and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights after a stint as an Analyst in Middle East Policy for Congressional Research Service. He is the author of Shattered Hopes: Obama’s Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace and Israel: Democracy or Apartheid State? His upcoming book is entitled The United States and the Palestinian Nakba: A Transnational History, 1947-1950.
Linda Sarsour is an award-winning racial justice and civil rights activist, seasoned community organizer, direct action strategist, and mother of three. She is a Palestinian Muslim American and a self-proclaimed “pure New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn!” She is the co-founder of the first Muslim online organizing platform, MPower Change and co-founder of Until Freedom, an intersectional racial justice organization focused on direct action and power building in communities of color. Linda was one of the national co-chairs of the largest single day protest in US history, the Women’s March on Washington. She has been named amongst 500 of the most influential Muslims in the world.
Bassam Haddad (host) 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).