“Let’s Talk About Palestine,” a teach-in series hosted by the UC Berkeley Middle Eastern languages and cultures department, concluded its fourth and final event April 16.
The series, which began in February and aimed to break the silence and promote education about Palestine, featured an array of scholars from both campus and other universities. Lectures were livestreamed and uploaded to YouTube.
“We started organizing it in October and November. To be honest, we all thought that by the time the speaker series happened, it would be sort of a retrospective on the war on Gaza, but that has not been the case,” said Nora Jacobsen Ben Hammed, assistant professor in campus’s Middle Eastern languages and cultures, or MELC, department.
The series was coordinated by the MELC department and co-sponsored by the ethnic studies and rhetoric departments, as well as the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the International Consortium for Critical Theory and the campus Critical Theory Program.
The latest teach-in, “Palestinian Literature and the Writing of Trauma,” featured MELC assistant professor Ahmad Diab and anthropology professor Stefania Pandolfo.
Diab opened the lecture, titled “Language and Genocide in Gaza,” by reciting the Arabic account of a 16-year-old refugee from Gaza named Amina. Amina’s account was from a group writing therapy workshop Diab recently facilitated with Palestinian teenagers in Qatar.
“What can language do at a time of an active, ongoing genocide?” Diab asked in conversation with Amina’s account. “What does bearing witness achieve if it does not put a stop to the violence being committed? Can the act of describing the horror account to anything more?”
He also questioned the role of art and literature “during a time of industrial-scale violence” and explored the writing of trauma and the impact of current Palestinian authors in Gaza. Diab ended with a note from Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani’s novella, “Men in the Sun.”
Following Diab’s lecture, Pandolfo explored cultural and spiritual analyses of trauma in Gaza in her lecture titled “Open Our Eyes.” The talk addressed the “desire to live” in Gazans who are deprived of food, water and medicine, concluding with consideration to the spiritual capacity of poetry.
Jacobsen Ben Hammed noted how part of the goal of the series — as exemplified in the final planned teach-in — is not just education on occupation or apartheid, but also the cultural study of Palestine.
“Even the title of the series speaks to that — ‘Let’s Talk About Palestine,’ to break the silence about Palestine, and the history of conflict in Palestine,” Jacobsen Ben Hammed said.
While the last teach-in was held last week, the series began Feb. 6 with campus history professor Ussama Makdisi.
The talk, “Despite Obfuscation and Orientalism: Palestine in Modern History,” covered late 19th and 20th century Palestinian history and touched on the conflation of Palestinian existence with antisemitism, documentation of injustices committed by the state of Israel and historical aims of Zionism.
“Palestine has been often missing or obfuscated in national and media discourse. So part of (the series) is a response to that: in wanting to center discourse on Palestine and the history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine in light of the current onslaught on Gaza,” Jacobsen Ben Hammed said.
The second teach-in two weeks later — “Islamophobia, Race, and the Racialization of Palestine” — featured MELC and ethnic studies lecturer Hatem Bazian and ethnic studies department chair Keith Feldman.
Bazian’s lecture addressed orientalism, Islamophobia, and dehumanization of Palestinians. The lecture also explored the war on terror and a “new category of Muslim Zionists.”
Feldman’s portion explored historical solidarity with the Palestinian cause, including work by Arab feminists and “Black-Palestinian transnational solidarity.”
A number of faculty in the MELC department worked together to put on the speaker series and invite speakers of diverse expertise relevant to Palestine, Jacobsen Ben Hammed said.
Before UC Berkeley’s spring break in March, University of Colorado Boulder professor of law Wadie Said and campus associate professor of rhetoric Samera Esmeir led the third teach-in.
Said, who opened with his lecture “On Apartheid, Occupation and the Law,” focused on analyzing Palestinian resistance through the lens of U.S. law, including notes on international and Israeli law as well.
Meanwhile, Esmeir’s lecture included an analysis of Israel and Palestine as colonizing and colonized and the significance of Palestinian ruins and land-based resistance.
Jacobsen Ben Hammed described sensing relief and appreciation among some community members following the speaker series.
“If we only talk about the sort of Palestinians as subject to death and destruction, we’re losing a lot of the vitality of the people,” Jacobsen Ben Hammed said. “Focusing also on culture and literature is meant to remind us of Palestinians as living.”
