77 years of the ongoing Nakba Webinar | May 15, 2025
Date & Time: May 15, 2025 11:00 AM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join special guest Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for her reintroduction of her historic resolution to commemorate the Nakba and end US complicity in it.
Historians of the Nakba - Prof. Maha Nassar and Prof. Ilan Pappe - will join us as well to discuss the ongoing nature of Israel's Nakba against the Palestinian people.
Speakers
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Rashida Tlaib is a mother fighting for justice for all. She is a Detroit native of Palestinian heritage, a progressive leader, mother, daughter, friend, and community advocate. Born to immigrant parents, she built a career as a public interest attorney, challenging corporate abuses and protecting our civil rights. Rashida made history in 2008 by becoming the first Muslim woman to ever serve in the Michigan Legislature, and then again in 2019, becoming one of the two first Muslim women in Congress.
As a Congresswoman, Rashida has fought relentlessly for the 12th District and vulnerable communities around the country, fighting against corporate greed, advocating for clean air and water, social justice, ending poverty, strengthening public education, and more. In 2022, she founded the Get the Lead Out Caucus to fight to ensure that every lead pipe in America is replaced, so that everyone has safe, clean drinking water. She also founded the Mamas’ Caucus to advocate for mothers of color and working families, and make sure that all mothers have a seat at the table where policy decisions are made. Rashida will not give up the fight until every person has an equitable opportunity to thrive.
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Associate Professor, Modern Middle East History, Islamic Studies | University of Arizona
I am a cultural and intellectual historian of the twentieth-century Arab world, with a focus on Palestinian history. My research traces global circulations of social, political and cultural identities. I hold a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago.
My first monograph, Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World (Stanford University Press, 2017) examines how Palestinian cultural producers in Israel during the 1950s and ‘60s positioned themselves within an Arab and third world social, cultural and intellectual milieu that extended far beyond the confines of the Israeli nation-state. By mapping the strategies they deployed, my book demonstrates the importance of Arabic newspapers and literary journals in traversing national boundaries and in creating transnational and transregional communities of solidarity. In 2018 Brothers Apart received a Palestine Book Award for academic titles.
My scholarship has been published in IJMES, Journal of Palestine Studies, Arab Studies Journal, and elsewhere. I’m also an active public historian, with analysis pieces in The Washington Post and The Conversation, as well as media appearances on NPR, PBS, and Vox. In 2024, I received a Woman of Impact Award from the University of Arizona’s Office of Research, Innovation, and Impact. My current book project examines Palestinians’ historical conceptions and practices of steadfastness
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Director, European Centre for Palestine Studies | University of Exeter
Professor Pappé obtained his BA degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1979 and the D. Phil from the University of Oxford in 1984.
He founded and directed the Academic Institute for Peace in Givat Haviva, Israel between 1992 to 2000 and was the Chair of the Emil Tuma Institute for Palestine Studies in Haifa between 2000 and 2006.
Professor Pappé was a senior lecturer in the department of Middle Eastern History and the Department of Political Science in Haifa University, Israel between 1984 and 2006.
He was appointed as chair in the department of History in the Cornwall Campus, 2007-2009 and became a fellow of the IAIS in 2010.
His research focuses on the modern Middle East and in particular the history of Israel and Palestine. He has also written on multiculturalism, Critical Discourse Analysis and on Power and Knowledge in general.
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Josh Ruebner is Policy Director at the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project (IMEU Policy Project). He is also adjunct lecturer in Justice and Peace Studies at Georgetown University and is pursuing his PhD at the University of Exeter’s European Centre for Palestine Studies.
Prior to joining IMEU Policy Project, Ruebner worked at Americans for Justice in Palestine Action and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights after a stint as an Analyst in Middle East Policy for Congressional Research Service. He is the author of Shattered Hopes: Obama’s Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace and Israel: Democracy or Apartheid State?
His forthcoming book is entitled A Tragedy of Catastrophic Proportions: The US and the Palestinian Nakba, 1947-1950.