Reimagining Palestine

In Conversation with Dean 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.

Jehad Abusalim

Jehad Abusalim is the Executive Director of the Washington, DC-based Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS-USA). He grew up in Deir el-Balah in the Gaza Strip, where he spent most of his life. He co-edited the anthology Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, published by Haymarket Books in 2022. His writings have been featured in the Washington Post, Al-Jazeera, The Nation, Journal of Palestine Studies, and Vox. He has also appeared on Al-Jazeera, CNN, ABC, TRT World, Russia Today, and various radio stations and podcasts in the United States and internationally.

Ghassan Abu-Sittah

Ghassan Abu-Sittah is an Associate Professor of Surgery and a Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeon. In 2011 he was recruited by the American University of Beirut Medical Center. In 2012 he became Head of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the AUBMC, Clinical Lead of its Pediatric War injuries program and War Injuries Multidisciplinary Clinic. In 2015 cofounded and became director of the Conflict Medicine Program at Global Health Institute at the American University of Beirut. He is an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at the Centre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College University of London and a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Conflict & Health Research Group at Kings College London University. He is the Clinical Lead for the Operational Trauma Initiative at the World Health Organization’s EMRO Office and serves on the board of directors of INARA, a charity dedicated to providing reconstructive surgery to war-injured children in the Middle East, and the Board of Trustees of the UK based Medical Aid for Palestinians. He serves on the UK’s National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) International Funding Committee. He has published extensively on the health consequences of prolonged conflict and on war injuries including a medical textbook, Reconstructing the War Injured Patient and Treating the War Injured Child. He has worked as a war surgeon in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, South Lebanon, and during the 4 wars in the Gaza Strip. On the 9th of October 2023, he entered the Gaza Strip and worked in Shifa Hospital and then AlAhli-Baptist Hospital for 43 days. Evidence he provided was part of the South African submission to the International Court of Justice. In April 2023 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. His work was featured by numerous newspapers and media outlets notably La Monde, The Independent, Telegraph, BBC, and CNN.

Tareq Baconi

Tareq Baconi is a writer. He is the author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford University Press, 2018). His writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, the Washington Post, among others. He is the former senior analyst for Israel/Palestine at the International Crisis Group based in Ramallah. He serves as the president of the board of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network.

Noura Erakat

Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney and Professor of Africana Studies and the Program of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is the author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019), which received the Palestine Book Award and the Bronze Medal for the Independent Publishers Book Award in Current Events/Foreign Affairs. She is co-founding editor of Jadaliyya and an editorial board member of the Journal of Palestine Studies. Noura is a co-founding board member of the DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival and a Board Member of Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights. In 2024, she served as the Co-Chair of an Independent Task Force on the Application of National Security Memorandum-20 to Israel, which submitted a report to the White House recommending suspending U.S. weapons transfers to Israel. She has served as Legal Counsel for a Congressional Subcommittee in the US House of Representatives, as Legal Advocate for the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights, and as national organizer of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. Noura has also produced video documentaries, including “Gaza In Context” and “Black Palestinian Solidarity.” Her writings have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, Al Jazeera, and the Boston Review. She is a frequent commentator on CBS News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, Fox News, the BBC, and NPR, among others. She has been awarded fellowships at Harvard Divinity School and Brown University’s Center for Middle East Studies. In 2022, she was selected as a Freedom Fellow by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. 

Diala Shamas

Diala Shamas is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she works on challenging government and law enforcement abuses perpetrated under the guise of national security in the U.S. and abroad. She also litigates a range of international human rights issues, particularly focusing on Palestinian rights. She has most recently been counsel on a landmark case in U.S. federal court challenging Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza in U.S. Federal Court and worked on related international accountability efforts. Prior to joining CCR, Diala was a Clinical Supervising Attorney and Lecturer at Stanford Law School and supervised the CLEAR project at CUNY School of Law. Her practice includes working with social justice movements and advocates, including those in support of Palestinian rights, as they face suppression, helping them craft creative legal and advocacy strategies that build their power. She has worked to challenge the Muslim Ban, and represented individuals targeted for surveillance or placed on federal watch lists.