Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, a Ph.D. candidate in Modern Middle Eastern and Ottoman history at Stanford University, is teaching a course this semester, “HISTORY 83S: Refugees of Palestine and Syria: History, Identity, and Politics of Exile in the Middle East,” that lumps in the “Mass displacements of Palestinians (1948, 1967)” with the current refugee crisis in Syria. The two are entirely different, which, combined with the course description’s uncritical reference to the mythical Palestinian “right of return” and the promise to “study the construction of refugee identities through the prism of race, ethnicity, statelessness, gender, and sexual orientation,” speaks to the likelihood of it being taught in a politicized, ahistorical manner. So, too, does the omission of another significant group of Middle Eastern refugees: the Jews who were forced to flee Arab nations and Iran both before and after Israel’s founding in 1948 due to anti-Semitic persecution.
