Academic Freedom Under Attack

Speakers: Samer Abdelnour, Marwa Fatafta, and Muhannad Ayyash

Convenors: Carlos Azevedo and Ronald Hartz

Collaborator: Yousaf Nishat-Botero

23rd November 2023, 14:00-15:30 United Kingdom Time

In this third webinar, we will debate specifically the silencing of Palestine and Palestinian voices. Though attempts to silence speech on Palestine and Palestinian voices is not new, there has been an intensification of repression across the West, particularly in parts of Europe, the UK and in the US. Some of this occurs though specific tools such as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance ‘working definition’ of antisemitism (IHRA), which conflates criticism of Israel and Zionism with anti-Jewish racism. Much of this represssion is also happening across social media platforms, which are employing various tactics to subdue speech deemed supportive of Palestinians or critical of Israel.

The current war in Gaza—which has included the destruction of every university in Gaza—has considerably aggravated the attack on the academic freedom of Palestinians and those who speak out about Israel-Palestine and Palestinian rights. Government officials across the West have condemned anti-war protests, and Palestine-related events at several universities have been cancelled. This is also happening in cultural spaces. For instance, Adania Shibli, a Palestinian writer, had her award ceremony at the Frankfurt Book Fair cancelled.

For this webinar, we decided it would be essential to centre Palestinian voices, so we invited three Palestinians to speak about the topic: Samer Abdelnour, Marwa Fatafta, and Muhannad Ayyash. Our speakers will give us both an overview of what is happening at universities and the social media landscape, with a focus on the UK, Germany, and Canada. Moreover, we thought it relevant to have a Palestinian involved in the whole process, so we invited Samer Abdelnour, one of our speakers, to collaborate with us.

REGISTRATION

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SPEAKERS

Samer Abdelnour is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh Business School. His ongoing research projects examine how collective enterprise and technology interventions influence new forms of organising in humanitarian and postwar settings, research methods and ethics in relation to violent contexts, and interconnections between innovation ecosystems and military technologies. Samer also co-founded the global think-tank Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network, and occasionally speaks and writes about Israel-Palestine, including on the topic of academic freedom.

Marwa Fatafta leads Access Now’s policy and advocacy work on digital rights in the Middle East and North Africa region. She is an advisory board member of the Palestinian digital rights organization 7amleh, and a policy analyst at Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network working on issues of political leadership, governance and accountability. Before joining Access Now, Marwa worked as the MENA Regional Advisor at Transparency International Secretariat in Berlin and coordinated regional and global efforts to mainstream gender into anti-corruption policies and norms. She previously served as a Communications Manager at the British Consulate-General in Jerusalem. She was a Fulbright scholar to the US and holds an MA in International Relations from Syracuse University and an MA in Development and Governance from the University of Duisburg-Essen. Marwa is a feminist killjoy, a painter, and a chocolate addict. 

M. Muhannad Ayyash was born and raised in Silwan, Al-Quds, before immigrating to Canada, where he is now Professor of Sociology at Mount Royal University. He is the author of A Hermeneutics of Violence (UTP, 2019), and has recently finished writing another book, Lordship and Liberation in Palestine-Israel. He has published several academic articles on topics such as political violence, vaccine apartheid, anti-Palestinian racism, and Palestinian decolonial movements in journals such as the European Journal of International Relations, the European Journal of Social Theory, Distinktion, and Critical Sociology. He has co-edited two books, the most recent with Jeremy Wildeman titled, Canada as a Settler Colony on the Question of Palestine. He is also the author of multiple book chapters, and has written opinion pieces for Al-Jazeera, The Baffler, Middle East Eye, Mondoweiss, The Breach, and Middle East Monitor.