By Coco Tait
Throughout the past academic year, CCAS has responded to the war in Gaza by holding more than a dozen workshops and teach-ins to help educate the Georgetown community and general public on the history of the conflict, as well as a wide range of subtopics. We have hosted Palestinian scholars and professionals, partnered with departments, universities, and organizations across our campus and the country. Here are a few of the highlights.
Gaza in Context Teach-In Series
CCAS has supported and contributed to the Gaza in Context Teach-In Series, which is part of the Palestine in Context Project, an initiative led by the Arab Studies Institute and supported by 21 partner organizations. The project convenes weekly conversations, teach-ins, and other activities that introduce our common university communities, educators, researchers, and students, as well as the general public, to a host of issues related to the ongoing war on Gaza. This project has hosted prominent speakers such as Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and analyst based in Haifa; Rana Barakat, an Associate Professor of history at Birzeit University in Palestine; and Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University.
Israel-Gaza War Event Series
CCAS partnered with the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) over the academic year to hold two event series focused on the conflict in Israel and Gaza and its global impact. In the fall, the series featured MAAS alum and political analyst Mouin Rabbani; Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist and author; and Peter Beinart, a political commentator and journalist. Each speaker discussed unfolding events as they have unfolded through the escalating conflict, as well as the impact on the broader Palestinian and Jewish diasporas. In the Spring, CCAS and ACMCU, along with the African Studies Department and Georgetown University Qatar, hosted the four-part Gaza Lecture Series. The first event featured Raz Segal of Stockton University and Shannon Fyfe from the Department of Philosophy at George Mason University, who discussed Israel’s assault on Gaza and the question of genocide in the conflict. For the second event, Ilana Feldman of George Washington University explored the multiple forms of humanitarian danger confronting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Tareq Baconi, president of the board of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, was the speaker for the third event and provided a broader historical context for Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on October 7. The fourth and final event in the series featured Ussama Makdisi, Professor of History and Chancellor’s Chair at the University of California Berkeley, who drew attention to a long denial of Palestinian history and humanity, and the question of genocide.
Campuswide Partnerships
In addition to these events focusing primarily on foreign policy and SWANA academia, CCAS fostered new partnerships and collaborations to diversify our programming on Palestine. In the fall, CCAS partnered with the Sports Industry Management Program at Georgetown to host the event “Not Allowed to Win: Exclusionary Policies Towards Palestinian Athletes” featuring Georgetown University Qatar professor Danyel Reiche. Reiche’s talk provided an overview of political issues around Palestinian sport and presented case studies on Palestinian athletes living in Lebanon and the discrimination they face due to their statelessness. In the spring, CCAS, along with Georgetown University Medical Students for Palestine and Doctors Against Genocide, hosted a panel of five healthcare workers for the event “Voices from Palestine: Healthcare Advocacy in a Humanitarian Crisis.” The speakers shared their firsthand experiences working in Gaza and Palestine and the challenges of providing complex medical care with little resources during a humanitarian crisis.
Coco Tait is the CCAS Events & Program Manager.
This article was published in the Fall 2023-Spring 2024 issue of the CCAS Newsmagazine.