Being Palestinian: An Enduring Identity
This session will illuminate the resilience of Palestinian identity amidst historical and ongoing efforts to fragment and erase it. Panelists will examine how Palestinians assert their identity across different geographies and contexts, navigating pressures from Israel and the broader Arab world.
Ayman Mohyeldin (Moderator)
Ayman Mohyeldin is the host of MSNBC’s “AYMAN,” airing from 7-9 pm ET on Saturdays and Sundays. The perspective program is Ayman’s take on the world of politics, current affairs, culture, and more. His program features global leaders, US politicians, journalists, and analysts on pressing US and international political, social, and cultural news items. He has anchored MSNBC’s breaking news coverage of the Israel-Hamas war and was involved in special coverage of the 2020 Election and the insurrection at the US Capitol. Mohyeldin has also field anchored during some of the biggest domestic and international news stories over the past decade. Previously, Mohyeldin spent many years as a foreign correspondent covering the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. He has reported from dozens of countries during times of war, political turmoil, and natural disasters. His coverage of the Arab Spring was praised for its distinction around the world. Mohyeldin also covered major conflicts including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Iraq war, revolutionary protests in Ukraine, and nuclear tensions on the Korean peninsula. Mohyeldin developed and hosted the award-winning podcast from MSNBC, ‘American Radical.’ Mohyeldin was named by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2011. He has received multiple international awards including a Peabody, a Sigma Delta Chi Award, and the European Union’s Anna Lindh Foundation Award. He has been named as Journalist of the Year by both GQ Magazine and Esquire Magazine.
Nadia Abu El-Haj
Nadia Abu El-Haj is Ann Whitney Olin Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies, and Chair of the Governing Board of the Society of Fellows/Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. She also serves as Vice President and Vice Chair of the Board at The Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington DC. She is the author of numerous journal articles published on topics ranging from the history of archaeology in Palestine to the question of race and genomics today. Abu El-Haj has published three books: Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (2001), which won the Albert Hourani Annual Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association in 2002, The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology (2012) and Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post 9/11 America (Verso 2022)
Nadim Bawalsa
Nadim Bawalsa is a historian of modern Palestine and author of Transnational Palestine: Migration and the Right of Return before 1948 (Stanford University Press, 2022), winner of the 2023 Nikkie Keddie book award by the Middle East Studies Association and the 2023 Palestine Book Award by Middle East Monitor. His other work has appeared in the Jerusalem Quarterly, NACLA Report on the Americas, the Journal of Palestine Studies, Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, and in two edited volumes—The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates (2015) and the Routledge Handbook on Middle Eastern Diasporas (2022). He currently serves as the associate editor for the Journal of Palestine Studies and as an editorial board member of the Jerusalem Quarterly, the Journal of Palestine Studies, and Al-Shabaka. From 2020-2023, he was commissioning editor at Al-Shabaka, and prior to that, he worked as a history instructor in New York City. In 2019/2020, Bawalsa was awarded a PARC-NEH fellowship to complete research in Palestine toward his book manuscript.
Beshara Doumani
Beshara Doumani is a Professor of History and the Mahmoud Darwish Chair for Palestinian Studies at Brown University. His research focuses on communities, places, and time periods marginalized by mainstream scholarship on the early modern and modern Middle East. He also writes on academic freedom, the politics and ethics of knowledge production, and the Palestinian condition. His books include Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, and Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean: A Social History. He is the former President of Birzeit University in Palestine. He is the founding director of Brown University’s Center for Middle East Studies and of the New Directions in Palestinian Studies Research Initiative. From 2008-2011 he led a team that produced the strategic plan for the establishment of the Palestinian Museum. He is currently serving as the co-editor of the Jerusalem Quarterly and working on a modern history of the Palestinians through the social life of stone. He joined Brown University in 2012 after fourteen years at the University of California, Berkeley, and eight years at the University of Pennsylvania. He was awarded fellowships by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University; and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton.
Safwan M. Masri
Safwan M. Masri is the Dean of Georgetown University in Qatar and a Distinguished Professor of the Practice at Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. Prior to joining Georgetown in October 2022, Professor Masri was Executive Vice President for Global Centers and Global Development at Columbia University, and a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Prior to that, Dean Masri was a professor at Columbia Business School, where he also served as Vice Dean. He previously taught engineering at Stanford University and was a visiting professor at INSEAD (Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires) in France. Dean Masri is the author of Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly (2017). He is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an honorary fellow of the Foreign Policy Association. Dean Masri led the establishment of King’s Academy and Queen Rania Teacher Academy in Jordan. He is a trustee of International College in Beirut and serves as a director of AMIDEAST and of Endeavor Jordan.