Now's as good a time as any to share that UNMENTIONABLES is ready for preorder. On the textile industries of the Syrian diaspora, the book appears with
@stanfordpress
this Winter. It will launch at the Lawrence History Center in Massachusetts in December!
In 2020, the UC Regents announced divestment from fossil fuels, selling $1 billion in assets.
In 2006, the UC Regents voted to divest from companies linked to Sudan as it committed genocide.
In 1986, the UC Regents voted to divest $3.1 billion from South Africa over apartheid.
The
@UofCalifornia
is rejecting calls for boycott/divestment from Israel. New statement says a boycott "impinges on the academic freedom of our students and faculty and the unfettered exchange of ideas..." Also says tuition & fees don't fund investments.
CALIFORNIA educators: state officials are considering a slate of bills this month that, if passed, will dramatically circumscribe our ability to teach histories of Palestine, ethnic studies, and genocide at all levels.
A 🧵on why I oppose SB 1277, SB 1287, AB 2918, and AB 2925.
A few days ago I tweeted about cognitive dissonance and Palestine. The tweet got quite a bit of hate, but for the rest of us, here are some thoughts about how teaching Palestine at a *public* university when a *popular* university appears in the quad.
I did a Palestine Teach In with students at the UC Davis veterinary school last night. My takeaway was that students want to learn about Palestine and make meaningful sense of this history.
Concerns about hate speech can never shut down needed, worthy, important conversations.
I won't be voting for
@JoeBiden
again. Preaching progressive values at home while supporting genocide abroad sickens me and the Democratic Party needs a deep rethinking of its priorities and its leadership.
Now's as good a time as any to share that my book project on Syrian American textile workers has a home! The book will join some excellent titles in MENA migration at Stanford University Press's "Worlding the Middle East" series. Title TBD. Very excited!
Thinking about the moral clarity and uncommon strength of professors like Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard (UC Irvine) and President Mike Lee (Sonoma State University), and all California faculty and students facing arrest, censure, and retaliation for standing up to genocide today.
I'm offering the inaugural History of Modern Palestine and Israel course at UC Davis this Spring. The course has been much bigger than the room we're assigned to (max capacity: 100), which is so hopeful and wonderful, is also frustrating.
Faculty silence in the face of genocide shapes our working conditions.
Refusal to engage amid an unprecedented upsurge of student activism shapes student learning conditions.
Fuck cognitive dissonance; speak if you know, learn if you don't, but talk about Palestine!
UNMENTIONABLES arrives this Dec from
@stanfordpress
!
On the Syrian mahjar's textile industry, the book tells the story of garment workers who shut down factories; child laborers who threw snowballs at cops; and emigre capitalists who contended with them.
Today 150 historians, scholars of Middle East studies sent this Letter of Concern to
@UofCalifornia
President Michael Drake, whose recent commitment to impose a political test ("viewpoint-neutrality") on our teaching threatens our ability to do our work.
Despite all the ongoing stated concern over antisemitism on campus, there is a stunning lack of concern over how much of this antisemitism targets antizionist Jewish students specifically, because of their refusal to support genocide.
University faculty can connect with this initiative to donate expertise to the students of Gaza.
608,000 Palestinian students remain in everyday peril and have been denied their right to education. Please read and consider contributing.
It turns out that students are quite good at decoupling "comfort" from "safety" and remaining open to hard lessons.
It turns out, actually, that it's the public university that needs a refresher in cognitive dissonance. We're at a tipping point. I believe the students will win!
This is where the *popular* university comes in.
Because the *public* university impeded urgent conversations on Palestine, we made ourselves irrelevant.
The students at the Davis encampment are providing daily, world-class education about Palestine right there on the quad!
SB 1287 seeks to bully university students into silence by threatening them if they violate new codes of conduct. Our campuses already have anti-discrimination laws and codes of conduct in place.
This bill targets pro-Palestine speech specifically.
Watching all of you demand
@AHAhistorians
do something while scrolling through videos of cops shoving my proposed
#AHA25
panel chair to the ground is wild.
AHA, your members are being assaulted and arrested for standing with students. Do something already!!
The popular university is a confrontation with the institutionalized cognitive dissonance of the public university. The public university's response to a genocide in Gaza is risk management; repress, silence, and weather this crisis the same way it does COVID and labor strikes.
@varsha_venkat_
He was late for our third date at the MFA. I was about to be annoyed when the train rolled by and I subsequently spied him RUNNING from the platform to the museum steps.
Teaching history necessarily pushes students into confrontation of beliefs, assumptions, stereotypes, sometimes with identities. Being a teacher is 25% about pushing content, and 70% about helping students assimilate new ideas that conflict with old ones (the last 5% is grading).
If you're still with me:
1. read the bills and notice who opposes them
2. think about what it means if we (as teachers) cede our curricula to focus groups who are not trained disciplinary peers
3. look up your electeds, and call to express your concern:
Teaching Palestine is like any other history of oppression, colonialism, & struggle, in that students engage material some find offensive.
However, teaching Palestine also often means your university opposes your work in both subtle and obvious ways.
SB 1277 invests state funds into the California Teachers Collaborative for Holocaust and Genocide Education to create curricula on genocide education. This group run by pro-Israel organizations and seeks to exclude critical discussion of Palestine.
AB 2918 proposes a new oversight measure to shift decisions about Ethnic Studies curricula from teachers to an ill-defined group of “stakeholders” with no disciplinary expertise.
It violates a core principle of academic inquiry: scholarly peer review.
Virtually everyone I know is working to protect their students, staff, or one another from campus speech suppression and other forms of retaliation. It's a third job. No one who does this work has time to get book deals or paid research assistants. Watch out for people who do.
In a year when the Regents are imposing political tests on faculty, undermining academic freedom, & repressing conversation on Palestine, the popular university embodies what the public university says is its mission.
The popular university is restoring the university's soul.
This year I taught Palestine in California as a genocide against Palestinians continues, supported by my government.
The first thing I experienced aside from overwhelming student demand to learn this history, was my university's distress with making any space for it.
Teachers are trained to work with students as they are discomfited. We decouple "discomfort" from "lack of safety." We don't infantilize, shield students from certain topics, or shut down discussion. Instead we help them learn while coping with History's moral implications.
Tomorrow I start a new role as my dept's Graduate Program Chair. Trying to learn everything I can and anticipate what's next. So twitter folks, tell me:
What is the best thing your grad chair did to help you get through your PhD?
AB 2925 would fund new campus anti-discrimination training. However, though this bill names Islamophobia, its project excludes Islamophobia, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian racism from its focus areas, and its drafters did not consult these communities.
Interestingly, I'm currently teaching at the public university. My classroom is next to the popular university, and my students are attending both.
The popular university's presence has completely transformed my classroom for the better in just 2 weeks. Let me reflect on how:
Yesterday's UCOP announcement will have you believe that the University of California always, necessarily separates its money from its values.
That's a lie.
The UC has a responsibility to use its financial instruments to mirror our stated commitment to the public good.
This is not the first time this has happened to me in my six years at UC Davis. It's not even the first time this year. I remain willing and able to donate my time and expertise to promote discussion of Middle East history on campus! But I won't submit to political tests.
This year I'm co-leading a UC Davis Humanities Center research group called REFUGEE CALIFORNIA. A History Dept-Middle East/South Asia Studies venture, we'll do events related to post-displacement diasporas in the Golden State.
Some images from state digital archives (links ↓)
I want to be very clear that the students who organize this festival are exceptional, talented, and motivated by desire for good conversation.
It is the institutional structures that preempt and exclude conversation on Palestine and Israel that I object to.
The Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at
@UCBerkeley
published this statement today, in solidarity with the Palestinian people facing genocide in Gaza and pledging support for UC students facing harassment, doxxing for speaking out.🍉
Migration studies is one of those fields with a very difficult history of being weaponized toward all manner of shit.
The current discourse seeking to stage Israel's genocide on Palestinians as a "refugee resettlement" to the south is a textbook example of it.
So much advice given to new tenure-track faculty basically amounts to "make yourself invisible."
That advice also enables punishing the same faculty who can't opt for invisibility for reasons of race, gender, or the reality that silence is career killing.
It's shit advice.
3. Not only have my students benefitted from the PULP camp's speakers, but the popular university has shattered the artificial barrier that existed between the public university and the world around it. Students are connecting classroom history to what they observe more broadly.
A new encampment is built at UC Merced, just days before the UC Regents meeting is scheduled to come to town.
This means that students are demanding disclosure, divestment from Israel's genocide on 9 out of the UC's 10 campuses.
Today, we at
@ucmerced
have joined our sister universities and set up an encampment DEMANDING the
@UofCalifornia
regents divest from Israel's genocide at their upcoming meeting on our campus. Support our students until all demands are met!
Pedagogy experts talk about cognitive dissonance all the time: talk about "teachable moments," "tipping points," and "student resiliency" refers to how learners must not only write down new facts, but assimilate ideas that clash with beliefs/ideologies. This causes distress.
1. my course is on Modern Palestine and Israel. I started this class with a conversation about how it's important to talk through discomfort and not conflate that with lack of safety. The mood was anxious, shaped in part by the public university's stances on Palestine teach-ins.
2. My students are amazing. They have been doing the work of talking through Palestinian & Israeli histories, studying primary sources in class. There are 100 of us and the conversations have been 🔥, and the popular university's arrival transformed the culture of the course too!
Cancelled co-sponsorships. Imposition of political tests. Denial of resources for events on Palestine. Angry colleagues. Invitations by the university to present my work as a "subject matter expert" only to then have those invitations revoked for political purposes.
University administrators do more harm than good with their public statements.
What if they got out of the statement writing game altogether, and instead platformed/supported faculty expertise on the topics of public interest?
This seems like a more productive response to me.
So many conversations with students this week. One pervasive point keeps coming up: they see *plainly* Israel's settler colonialism, atrocities against Palestinians.
What they struggle with is why tf our national political discourse pretends not to see those very basic facts.
This QT is exactly right. If you care about these issues and want your elected reps to know that, NOW is the time to let them know that. Write and email, make a call, this week is absolutely crucial.
This Spring I'm doing a directed readings course in the field of "mahjar studies."
Each week features a book, a couple of articles, and a collection of archives/primary sources to review.
Want to come along? I'll post some stuff here each week.🧵
A vital resource to anyone planning a Palestine teach-in on their campus. Or for anyone who is wondering how to broach a discussion on Palestine in their classroom.
None of us is off the hook on this. We are all responsible for the conversations we start (or stanch) right now.
We have compiled and made accessible a reading list of 15 articles from the Journal of Palestine Studies providing historical context and analysis on nearly two decades of Israeli incursions, siege, and blockade on Gaza. Read 🧶⬇️:
This year remains energizing, because even if campus admins seem hopelessly mired in "time and place" debates, students and scholars genuinely do want to talk about what's happening in the world... and they are finding times, places for that.
The Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) has issued their statement on campus protests affecting 10 University of California campuses.
The statement in summary: no disciplinary actions, no cops, meet this moment, & listen to student demonstrators.
Pass 2 opened today, and the course is already overfull and a waitlist is mounting. We are already in my campus's largest Socratic room. Students are clearly eager to understand this history, to gather and talk about it!
This Spring Quarter, a History of Modern Palestine and Israel course will run for the first time at
@ucdavis
. Registration opened yesterday (students, please join us!) and I'm looking forward to this work very much.
Oh hey, nice! We just learned that in AY 23-24, UC Davis will host a research cluster called "Refugee California," focusing on post-displacement experiences of Middle Eastern and South Asian communities in our state. More details to come!
This Spring Quarter, a History of Modern Palestine and Israel course will run for the first time at
@ucdavis
. Registration opened yesterday (students, please join us!) and I'm looking forward to this work very much.
🎉Congrats to the first cohort of the
@UCDavisResearch
SEED Funding Program!
@UCDLandS
awardees include Stacy Fahrenthold
@sdfahrenthold
, Laura Grindstaff, Nicole Ranganath, Shingirai Taodzera, Yael Teff Seker
@YaelTeff
and Li Zhang:
This May, Mashriq & Mahjar hosts its conference in Middle East & North African migration studies. The gathering will focus on emerging research, critical theory and lead to the publication of a state of the field book. Please submit an abstract!
CFP:
Dep. Commissioner Daughtry says he found "a book on terrorism" at Columbia. (The book is not a how-to book, but a history written by a renowned British historian.)
It was amazing to present Beshara Kehdi at this year's PhD commencement at
@ucdavis
yesterday! Beshara and his peers have done so much to contribute to this institution and challenge the UC to become a better, more just version of itself. Alf mabrouk!
I love my online writing group. We just started Session 28 (as in 28 months!) and, counting up the various projects that happened here, I see 3 books, 1 dissertation, 9 journal articles, 2 grants, several public essays. I can't think of a better way to co-work for real.
Discrimination and repression of Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian voices comes cloaked in the language of "safety" yet again.
Shame on
@USC
for this disappointing refusal to let their own valedictorian speak.
USC has canceled the commencement speech of 2024 valedictorian Asna Tabassum, citing safety concerns. Asna says
@USC
gave no evidence of threats but noted that "anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian voices" have subjected her to "racist hatred." Her statement:
I attended a meeting yesterday with a Democratic congressman to press for a ceasefire in Gaza. He kept telling the group that we need to "plan for the day after." And those words reverberating in my head, I want to scream:
"The day after WHAT, Congressman?"
There are loads of reasons why university presses must actually pay the people who review book manuscripts. Among them: reviewers trend toward emerging, precariously employed scholars. It's unethical to ask them for volunteer labor, esp to support authors who enjoy job security.
Today I will give a brief lesson on Palestine at the
@ucdavis
Whole Earth Festival. The festival has moved to Russell Field, and I go on at 5:40 pm at the Education stage.
Students from my course attended Ussama's talk. Coincidentally we recently learned about the Farhud, arrival of Iraqi Jews to Israel and their struggle against racism. For them this exchange illuminated history's misuse, an interrupter seeking not to learn more but to silence.
I was giving a talk at the Palestine solidarity student encampment
@ucdavis
last week. One of my prefatory remarks was that Zionist academics rarely if ever engage with us intellectually or ethically because they know, I suspect, that the evidence of colonial Zionism is
Looking forward to joining
@nyukevo
next week to discuss Arab American labor history. This year's Summer Institute for K-12 Educators focuses on global migration, housing, and labor in New York City.
Full program in the 🧵👇
@favela_regina
@mnj_b
@NYUGallatin
Delighted to feature Stacy Fahrenthold (
@sdfahrenthold
), Associate Professor of History,
@ucdavis
, as a guest speaker for our Summer Institute for K-12 Educators! Stacy’s expertise in Middle Eastern diasporas and labor movements will enrich our program