Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello everyone. My name is Dana al
Speaker 1: Kurd and this is it could happen here. I'm a
Speaker 1: professor and researcher of Arab and Palestinian politics and a
Speaker 1: senior non resident fellow at the Arab Center Washington. Today
Speaker 1: we're joined by Shadin Sakudie, a professor of history at
Speaker 1: the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her book Men of Capital,
Speaker 1: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine explores economy, territory, the home,
Speaker 1: the body, and she's also editor in chief of the
Speaker 1: Journal of Palestine Studies. Today I wanted to invite Shadin
Speaker 1: on to discuss the importance of Palestinian knowledge production and
Speaker 1: Palestinian spaces for writing, researching, analyzing, etc. So, yeah, Shdein,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: So let's maybe start with a very basic question, what
Speaker 1: is the Journal of Palestine Studies? Could you give us
Speaker 1: kind of overview?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: So, the Journal of Palestine Studies is the flagship journal
Speaker 3: of Palestinian studies in the English language. It was established
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy one, so that makes it fifty four
Speaker 3: years old.
Speaker 2: First it was part.
Speaker 3: Of the then be Rout based and still be Rout
Speaker 3: based Institute for Palestine Studies and Kuwait University, which sponsored
Speaker 3: what was understood at the time as an international forum
Speaker 3: to discuss all aspects of the Palestine question and the
Speaker 3: Arab Zientist conflict. And really the people who established it
Speaker 3: were looking for shaping a space that could discuss these
Speaker 3: matters freely. And the story of the founders is a
Speaker 3: really interesting one because they were people like cham Chobi,
Speaker 3: Walid Relidi, Bandosheni Fuatzauf, and con Stantine Zurich, who actually
Speaker 3: was the person who coined the way that we name
Speaker 3: the Nekba in his book Man and Nekba that he
Speaker 3: wrote in nineteen forty eight, in which he coined this
Speaker 3: term the catastrophe to think about nineteen forty eight, which
Speaker 3: would you know, be our ongoing condition. And I think
Speaker 3: the way to think about these people in there, in
Speaker 3: the way that they began the journal is to think
Speaker 3: about them as really confronting a landscape of erasure, denial
Speaker 3: and urgency and occupying this kind of steady, incessant pain
Speaker 3: of the original inception of the Nekba, you know, think
Speaker 3: about it in nineteen seventy one, it was not that
Speaker 3: long before a decade and a half, yeah, right, And
Speaker 3: I think what's important about you know, in the last
Speaker 3: couple of years, people have been kind of making demands
Speaker 3: about Palestinian studies as part of you know, some of
Speaker 3: the student movements and the staff and faculty movements, and
Speaker 3: I think it's really important for people to know that
Speaker 3: this comes from a much longer tradition of the production
Speaker 3: of knowledge as a real insistence on existence.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Palestinians have been producing knowledge about their state of affairs,
Speaker 1: you know, just like today academics and gaza are producing knowledge, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm always like struck by how just ahead of
Speaker 1: its time, you know, the general Palistine studies is like
Speaker 1: a lot of our understanding of the conflict that are
Speaker 1: now finally starting to seep into the mainstream. We're first
Speaker 1: discussed in these pages.
Speaker 2: Some of the.
Speaker 1: Research findings about the history were first articulated in these pages.
Speaker 1: And so that kind of knowledge production is just it
Speaker 1: is a form of resistance to.
Speaker 3: Erasure, absolutely, and just you know, some of those would
Speaker 3: be for example, Plandalit, which was the you know, the
Speaker 3: plan which would lead to the destruction of four hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty to five hundred and thirty seven Palestinian villages,
Speaker 3: and this plan would come to be recognized through the
Speaker 3: work of Benny Morris as a Israeli historian who had
Speaker 3: access to Israeli documents, but it's actually was Wulid Rearidi
Speaker 3: who had been evidencing and showing the empirical foundations of
Speaker 3: Plan Dalit, and it was in the Journal of Palestine
Speaker 3: Studies that he published those findings. In that case, I
Speaker 3: think that again, for people who are really engaging the
Speaker 3: movement for free Palestine and free Palestinians, we really have
Speaker 3: to be approaching the political economy of who gets to
Speaker 3: speak right and whose knowledge production is uplifted as legitimate
Speaker 3: and worthy. And I think you see a lot of
Speaker 3: this kind of centering of Israeli voices, and I think
Speaker 3: we really have to in this moment it's urgent to
Speaker 3: center Palestinian knowledge production.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's just so many ways that we witness this
Speaker 1: all the time that it's not something worthy of discussion
Speaker 1: unless an Israeli a voice says it. And there's an
Speaker 1: inherent suspicion about the Palestinian scholar, the Palestinian analyst, the
Speaker 1: Palestidian knowledge producer of some kind. Now, of course, the
Speaker 1: last two years have been a true upheaval. The genocide
Speaker 1: and Gaza, a tragedy that we, honestly we haven't really
Speaker 1: absorbed and possibly can't. And we've seen in the last
Speaker 1: two years a concerted effort to erase Palestinians further from
Speaker 1: the American Academy, but from also like scholarship generally speaking.
Speaker 1: But before I get into that, I wondered if you
Speaker 1: could kind of give your impression of what did doing
Speaker 1: Pawstenian studies look like before October seventh? How was it easy?
Speaker 1: Was it acceptable? I mean, I know the answers, but
Speaker 1: I'd like you to say though, So.
Speaker 3: I think one of the things that's been interesting to observe,
Speaker 3: and I would date this as happening around COVID when
Speaker 3: our colleagues and various disciplines started confronting the reality of
Speaker 3: their archives closing.
Speaker 2: So I'm a historian, so I speak from that place.
Speaker 3: You know, people who study Europe, people who study the
Speaker 3: United States kind of confronting that the reality that they
Speaker 3: might not access archives that they are accustomed to accessing,
Speaker 3: and in a similar way, facing the kind of targeting
Speaker 3: and surveillance, the bipartisan targeting and surveillance of academic knowledge production,
Speaker 3: and trying to explain to people this is what we've
Speaker 3: existed under all along.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I think there are similarities across communities of knowledge production.
Speaker 2: So I think people who.
Speaker 3: Work in black studies, who work in Indigenous studies, who
Speaker 3: work in queer studies, gender and sexuality have also been
Speaker 3: under the dress of surveillance and targeting. I think for
Speaker 3: those of us who have been doing Palestinian studies, what
Speaker 3: does it mean, especially if you're a Palestinian doing it,
Speaker 3: but whoever you are, It means you have to show
Speaker 3: up ten times more ready than anybody else. It means
Speaker 3: you have to conduct yourself as if you are always
Speaker 3: being recorded.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It means that every single.
Speaker 3: Word that you say you should be able to stand
Speaker 3: up for in a court of law, and all of
Speaker 3: those kinds of restrictions. Actually, you know, you give us lemons.
Speaker 3: We're going to make lemonade because those restrictions have imposed
Speaker 3: on us a kind of rigor.
Speaker 2: That is the least that we can do.
Speaker 3: It also means, I mean, I think for a lot
Speaker 3: of us, yourself included, right, I was just somebody was
Speaker 3: interviewing me yesterday about oh, have you have you faced
Speaker 3: harassment or censorship or something? And I think, at least
Speaker 3: in my case, I'm I'm constantly, you know, experiencing these
Speaker 3: things and just kind of swallowing it, do you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, just getting along with the business of
Speaker 3: the every day. So, you know, there was this moment
Speaker 3: back in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen where for whatever reason,
Speaker 3: every couple of months, one of the bots of one
Speaker 3: of these surveillance websites would start highlighting me and insulting
Speaker 3: me on Twitter, you know, liable calling me names, going
Speaker 3: after how I look like really vulgar, misgendering me, that
Speaker 3: kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And I'd come out.
Speaker 3: Of my lecture, you know, and you know, I teach
Speaker 3: big classes, and I'd come out of a big you know,
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty percon lecture, which requires so much
Speaker 3: focus and energy and being present and you know, that
Speaker 3: adrenaline rush, and I'd look at my phone and I'd
Speaker 3: have fifty notifications and it would just be one insult
Speaker 3: after another.
Speaker 2: And that's just.
Speaker 1: Part of the job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's just how it's been, right, like you know,
Speaker 3: from the beginning at least of my graduate career, and
Speaker 3: I I started grad school. You know, September eleven happened
Speaker 3: when I was in grad school, and I was in
Speaker 3: New York when it happened. And you know, we've been
Speaker 3: under surveillance, We've been named, we've been watched as part
Speaker 3: of what we do, as you said, And in fact,
Speaker 3: I got my masters at the Center for Contemporary Studies
Speaker 3: and they wrote a book back in the eighties about
Speaker 3: the surveillance and I think it's called they Dare to
Speaker 3: Speak well, right, right, yeah, these early accounts of the
Speaker 3: concerted attempt to silence us. And so what I like
Speaker 3: to remind people is at this moment, you know, you said, oh,
Speaker 3: they're trying to erase Palestinian scholars. I mean, at least
Speaker 3: they're trying to erase the voices who are putting forward
Speaker 3: a critical take on Israeli sellar colonialism and genocide. And
Speaker 3: I think what I like to remind people is that
Speaker 3: there is way more of us now than there's a
Speaker 3: been before. Yeah, good point, ten years ago, people like
Speaker 3: you and me wouldn't have jobs in the academy. It
Speaker 3: may be in a couple of years we won't have jobs,
Speaker 3: but I don't know, Like I'm not I don't want
Speaker 3: to sit on our laurels and think, oh, okay, we've arrived.
Speaker 3: In any case, the whole concept of arrival and career
Speaker 3: arrival at this moment has completely changed for me. I
Speaker 3: don't know how it is for you, but the effect
Speaker 3: of the genocide has made it so that the bankruptcy
Speaker 3: of the institutions we work for, the rapid ways in
Speaker 3: which they are engaging with obedience and authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like what we've worked for our whole careers.
Speaker 3: It's like, I don't think this makes sense, actually, do
Speaker 3: you know? So, I would say it's been like that
Speaker 3: all along, people even saying to you things like, oh there,
Speaker 3: what do you mean you study Palestine?
Speaker 2: You know, like, what is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So yeah, yeah, I mean I'm in a different discipline,
Speaker 1: but certainly it was I remember as a student hungry
Speaker 1: for information. I mean, it was rare to find something
Speaker 1: about the Middle East to be taught, let alone Palestine.
Speaker 1: The level to which they delegitimized Arab and Palestinian sources
Speaker 1: or questions of importance to Palestinians and Arabs normatously speaking,
Speaker 1: politically speaking, also theoretically speaking, I mean the amount. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can tell you so many stories, Like every person
Speaker 1: who's ever wanted to study Palasad, especially as you said,
Speaker 1: if you are Palestinian, is discouraged from it and is
Speaker 1: told not to, is told this doesn't fit, is told
Speaker 1: you know, I'm in political science. The theories don't account
Speaker 1: for Palestine. It's just outside of space and time and theory,
Speaker 1: and you can't account for it, you can't discuss it.
Speaker 1: And the harassment, the harassment campaigns all of us have
Speaker 1: been facing, I mean, it's it takes such a mental
Speaker 1: and emotion toll, and yet we produce, and yet we
Speaker 1: get tenure, and yet we teach our classes and we're
Speaker 1: excellent in our teaching, and our students love us and
Speaker 1: want to learn. But you know, as you said, like
Speaker 1: it really has exposed the degree to which these universities
Speaker 1: because they have been well one like we are in America,
Speaker 1: but also because they have been so divorced from their
Speaker 1: actual missions. Like how meaningless the space this has now become.
Speaker 1: But that's like on the harassment and like kind of
Speaker 1: these kinds of obstacle side. I also think like people
Speaker 1: don't recognize like the resources that are needed to teach
Speaker 1: and study and research Palestine that other people in the academy,
Speaker 1: other knowledge producers get very easily. And it's there is
Speaker 1: so little for people who study Palestine, and of course
Speaker 1: that impacts what kind of academics are able to do
Speaker 1: this and how many people we even missing from this discussion. Right,
Speaker 1: I agree with you that has been the condition before
Speaker 1: October seventh. I think now after October seventh, that after
Speaker 1: they have attempted to use Palestine as kind of a culgel, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to attack the higher education generally, like not people are
Speaker 1: recognizing it, maybe more, but that has always definitely been
Speaker 1: the case. Oh. Also, I just wanted to remind listeners
Speaker 1: and bring it up, Like I remember Barry Weiss who
Speaker 1: is now the head of CBS. I mean she made
Speaker 1: her claim to fame attacking Arab and Palestinian professors in
Speaker 1: Colombia as an undergrad. Yeah, and that's seen us totally valid. Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I mean I think you know, Palestine is culturl
Speaker 3: and also you know I've been saying this for a while,
Speaker 3: Palestine is paradigm, right, you know, if you look at them, mdenuine,
Speaker 3: I think it reveals also kind of what Palestine also
Speaker 3: stands for, which is the way that both the Democratic
Speaker 3: and the Republican Party have really no link to the
Speaker 3: popular realities on the ground, right, and that in effect,
Speaker 3: you know, part of the Trump base was really responding
Speaker 3: to this disparity, right, this lack of investment and in
Speaker 3: the political system. And I think, you know, that for
Speaker 3: me was the I don't have hope in electoral politics.
Speaker 3: And you know, I don't want to be cynical or anything,
Speaker 3: but I think what the Memdenni wind shows us is
Speaker 3: that people are disgruntled and they're sick of the kind
Speaker 3: of extractive billionaire class doing what they want to do
Speaker 3: at the expense of the rest of us. And I
Speaker 3: think the media is really complicit in all of this,
Speaker 3: so absolutely complicit in the genocide. It's been absolutely complicit
Speaker 3: since the you know, War on Iraq, since the Second
Speaker 3: War on Iraq, in rendering news as entertainment, you know.
Speaker 3: And and it's like you could see the freak out
Speaker 3: that people had the media had about Memdnni across the board.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just the Fox News.
Speaker 1: No New York Times, everybody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and all of the you know television media too.
Speaker 3: So it's just I think it's I think there's also
Speaker 3: a link to higher education in that way because I
Speaker 3: think there has been an investment in making people stupid.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean that's exactly what I was going to say.
Speaker 1: Is the Palestinian issue and Palestine studies and research and
Speaker 1: knowledge production, the fact that there exists the few Palestinians
Speaker 1: in higher education has been used to attack higher education.
Speaker 1: But it's not really about Palestine. I mean, it is
Speaker 1: a little bit about palistinde of course, these peop Antipastinian,
Speaker 1: but it's about preventing social mobility. So you're saying, like,
Speaker 1: there's all this disgruntlement in the public space. Our students
Speaker 1: are disgruntled, they want to learn, they've been promised something
Speaker 1: with this college education. And you know, even the slight
Speaker 1: bit of social mobility that has existed as a result
Speaker 1: of higher education is too much for the Trump administration. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's too much for this right wing so house. That
Speaker 1: is a class issue. Absolutely, No, it absolutely is. You know,
Speaker 1: are as are all of the kind of struggles we
Speaker 1: stand on solidarity with. You know, it's like, really it
Speaker 1: is intersectional and We didn't need Trump to teach us that.
Speaker 1: But that's the lesson that keeps being delivered time and again.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that's really struck me, and
Speaker 1: this has been the case for the last ten years,
Speaker 1: eleven years, long before Trump, and I think one of
Speaker 1: the challenges we faced today is not to over determine
Speaker 1: the Trump administration as the site of all of the
Speaker 1: catastrophes that we're in today. And one of the things
Speaker 1: I've noted for the last fourteen years is I don't
Speaker 1: have to teach students that history isn't about things always
Speaker 1: getting better.
Speaker 2: That's not a lesson. They need to know.
Speaker 3: They understand that teleology and the fallacy of advancement is
Speaker 3: a lie. They understand that because they live it, as
Speaker 3: you say. You know, they're in debt, especially those of
Speaker 3: us who teach at public universities. You know, most of
Speaker 3: our students are indebted. A lot of them have two
Speaker 3: or three jobs. They're housing insecure, their food insecure. They
Speaker 3: don't have a clear vision of the future.
Speaker 1: And if they protest genocide, they're labeled antisemitic. Yeah, their
Speaker 1: university's cracked down on them. They're docsed. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: so outrageous. Obviously, I don't need to tell.
Speaker 3: You their identification with Palestine is also about their own
Speaker 3: experiences with Gregrescient of course.
Speaker 2: So I think that's.
Speaker 3: The that really is the momentum, you know that we're witnessing.
Speaker 2: Is is that kind of identification?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely. I think it's important for listeners to know
Speaker 1: some of the contours of what has happened after October seventh,
Speaker 1: And like you said, it's not a Trump thing. It
Speaker 1: started under Biden. About how Palestine has been used in
Speaker 1: the academy. I mean, as I said earlier, I have
Speaker 1: done an episode on this, so I will link that.
Speaker 1: But also you know, there is now evidence and data
Speaker 1: around how this issue has been weaponized. So the AAUP,
Speaker 1: the American Association of University Professors, alongside the MIDDLEA Studies Association,
Speaker 1: just put out a report on this exact question about
Speaker 1: how titles six investigations, so investigations of alleged discrimination specifically
Speaker 1: about anti Semitism and nothing else. First of all, there's
Speaker 1: been a huge uptick in them and have been used
Speaker 1: to target these universities. The vast majority of these cases
Speaker 1: has to do with faculty extra mural speech. So like
Speaker 1: these faculty members having an opinion about genocide outside the classroom.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, I always remember I think Edward Side said,
Speaker 1: like being a Palestinian academy is like being an outlaw.
Speaker 1: That's like how it feels. That's how it feels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fugitive labor for sure. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3: And I think one of the findings has been also
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's ninety five percent of the
Speaker 3: cases have been shown to be be fraudulent. Yeah, it'd
Speaker 3: be totally fraudulent. So yeah, it's a real policing of speech.
Speaker 3: It's a real kind of weaponization of the charge of
Speaker 3: anti Semitism, And honestly, sort of one of the things
Speaker 3: I think that really happens too, is that students don't
Speaker 3: get the tools to actually recognize and understand actually existing
Speaker 3: anti semitism right as it is being rehearsed in like
Speaker 3: these show trials that we saw in Congress, and these
Speaker 3: in the rhetoric of many of the you know, people
Speaker 3: affiliated with the administration, in the kinds of alliances that
Speaker 3: even the Israeli state right has made with various right
Speaker 3: wing anti Semitic states. So it's like, I think one
Speaker 3: of the things that it's kind of like watching a
Speaker 3: train wreck, just hitting one train after another and just
Speaker 3: being like, what is this absurdity? You know, I myself
Speaker 3: was accused of being anti Semitic, for having a history
Speaker 3: of anti Semitism. So what surprises me is the way
Speaker 3: that people are allowing and facilitating this to happen, you know,
Speaker 3: and the way that they're not able to recognize how
Speaker 3: high the stakes are what it means to be a
Speaker 3: Palestinian in this moment. You know, when you've been sitting
Speaker 3: watching for two years your people being shredded, and you're
Speaker 3: facing the reality of what the stakes are in this moment,
Speaker 3: which is the annihilation of Palestine and the annihilation of Palestinians,
Speaker 3: your threshold for a shock becomes very high.
Speaker 2: And so I mean, I'm sure it's the same for you.
Speaker 3: I don't know if like what it's like a constant
Speaker 3: trauma response. You know, absolutely, my emotional reactions are shut down,
Speaker 3: and I'm in a state of being in the present. Okay,
Speaker 3: we got through today, Hopefully we'll get through tomorrow. I
Speaker 3: don't I kind of am prepared for the worst at
Speaker 3: all times, and you know, it's a condition of vigilance
Speaker 3: that I think people when they continue to feed this
Speaker 3: kind of right wing agenda of making people stupid and
Speaker 3: eroding even the possibility of higher education, it's the kind
Speaker 3: of condition that will be much more general.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and all these ice rays at the same time.
Speaker 2: You know, it's I just saw. I haven't been able
Speaker 2: to listen to it.
Speaker 3: But a scholar who powerfully is talking about the Mexico.
Speaker 2: Palestine border.
Speaker 3: And the and the links between ice and the idea
Speaker 3: and the and the ways to think about these two
Speaker 3: things together, and.
Speaker 1: Please share that with me. I haven't seen it. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: as you said, when we take away Palestine from the academy,
Speaker 1: when we use Palestine to attack the academy, as imperfect
Speaker 1: as the Academy is, it is this larger attempt to
Speaker 1: take away people's analogical tools and frameworks to understanding their reality,
Speaker 1: to understanding how the reality and sex with these other things,
Speaker 1: because they don't want you to be able to solve it.
Speaker 1: They don't want you to be able to mobilize. And then,
Speaker 1: of course there's this, as I said, this class dimension
Speaker 1: of wanting to keep people in their place. There are
Speaker 1: too many black and brown people in the academy. Now
Speaker 1: we can't have that kind of social mobility. I just
Speaker 1: want to emphasize for the listeners why it's so important
Speaker 1: for Palestine to be researched and studied and things like
Speaker 1: that is self evident. I don't need to explain it.
Speaker 1: But why is it so important that Palestinians are the
Speaker 1: ones who do that? I mean, again, it feels self evident,
Speaker 1: but I'll say it like, Palestinians have agency, and they
Speaker 1: are full human beings, and they know best what questions
Speaker 1: are relevant, and they have a unique perspective on the
Speaker 1: issue of Palestine as well as other issues. And so
Speaker 1: not only are you engaging in the rature of Palestinians
Speaker 1: when you don't amplify that kind of knowledge production, but
Speaker 1: you are making scholarship poorer. You are limit saying what
Speaker 1: you know about this issue? Yeah, so what do you
Speaker 1: think you know? Kind of broadly speaking, students, scholars, sympathizers,
Speaker 1: what do you think they should do in this moment.
Speaker 3: I want to just go back to the point about
Speaker 3: why is it important to have to sure Palestinian voices?
Speaker 3: Because when we say that, we're not doing it in
Speaker 3: an identitarian way, right of course, Yeah, anybody who wants
Speaker 3: to study Palestine should study Palestine.
Speaker 2: In doing so, you should be.
Speaker 3: Centering the lessons that Palestinians have offered us first and
Speaker 3: foremost in this moment, the Palestinians of the Gaza strip
Speaker 3: and in my own practice at the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Speaker 2: What I've tried to do in.
Speaker 3: Each of the editor's notes is really lift up all
Speaker 3: of the testimonies that we've received from Palestinians in Gaza,
Speaker 3: written and social media and all of these, but also
Speaker 3: lift up the international voices of Palestinians like yourself and
Speaker 3: many many people who are writing and giving us tools
Speaker 3: to understand and analyze. And the reason that's important is
Speaker 3: because the main problem that we face, I believe, is
Speaker 3: the way that certain people are more susceptible to being
Speaker 3: excluded from the category of the human. Once you exclude
Speaker 3: people from the category of the human, it's much easier
Speaker 3: to kill them and make them expendable. And I think
Speaker 3: our work really in centering Palestinian voices rejects that logic,
Speaker 3: right rejects the logic of are we human or not?
Speaker 3: Are we going to evidence our humanity or not? No,
Speaker 3: we tell our stories, and I think that telling of
Speaker 3: the story changes the angle of vision. If you're looking
Speaker 3: at what's happening in the Gaza strip from the perspective
Speaker 3: of people who are living it, you will see different
Speaker 3: things than if you're looking at it from you know,
Speaker 3: a drone or you know, a geopolitical lens.
Speaker 2: So that's one thing. I think.
Speaker 3: Another thing that's really important is you know, I mean
Speaker 3: Mahma Dwish said this actually in an interview in journal
Speaker 3: Palstine Studies said, you know, the Palestinians are talked about
Speaker 3: because they're facing Israeli Jews, because the Jewish question is.
Speaker 2: The question of Europe.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, yeah.
Speaker 3: And I find that one of the things that continues
Speaker 3: to be an issue until now is that what scholars
Speaker 3: and thinkers and analysts are a judicating is the question
Speaker 3: of Europe and the question of the sustainability of European
Speaker 3: values and European notions and all of these things. And
Speaker 3: I'm not interested in that. I want to center the
Speaker 3: question of Palestine and that what kind of other tools
Speaker 3: that might offer us. So I think, in a way
Speaker 3: link to what the earlier conversation about a political economy
Speaker 3: of value of scholars. Right, there's a kind of also here,
Speaker 3: a political economy of concepts, and I believe that we
Speaker 3: have to really provincialize Europe. We have to provincialize Europe
Speaker 3: as the means and the ends of all things. It
Speaker 3: is not generalizable. No, just ask different questions and look
Speaker 3: at you from a different perspective in terms of what
Speaker 3: do I think students and scholars and all of us
Speaker 3: should do. Is it's going to sound strange, but first
Speaker 3: and foremost, study.
Speaker 2: Study, read, learn. Those are the critical.
Speaker 3: Tools that you gain that will allow you to defend
Speaker 3: yourself in a world that is intent.
Speaker 1: On making you stupid.
Speaker 3: We all have to reject that. I think there it's
Speaker 3: a moment where there's a temptation to slide into sensationalism
Speaker 3: or to slide into circulating, especially on social media and
Speaker 3: that whole economy. Right, So I think we have to
Speaker 3: be vigilant. I think we have to be rigorous, and
Speaker 3: I think we have to study. And I think more
Speaker 3: than anything else, the lesson I keep coming back to
Speaker 3: is we have to take care of each other in
Speaker 3: the communities that we build.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's exactly right. I think you begin arming
Speaker 1: yourself with the tools to understand this moment and think
Speaker 1: of ways to defend yourself in your community. And you
Speaker 1: can't do that without being grounded in this knowledge that
Speaker 1: came before you. So listeners, please crack up on a
Speaker 1: journal of Palestine Studies, and of course I'll link to
Speaker 1: all of this in the show notes sitday and I
Speaker 1: could talk to you for hours. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for your time. This has been really interesting.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me and for all
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: No, thank you so much, listeners. I'm going to also
Speaker 1: put in the show notes a fundraising campaign for the
Speaker 1: journal File Sense Studies. So if you can, you have
Speaker 1: the capacity, it's a sure fire away to help resist
Speaker 1: these dynamics. All right, thanks so much, Take care.
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