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.
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.
Find more information at: https://www.palestineincontext.org/
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