The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies hold the fourth round of the Arab Graduate Students Conference on 2-4 March 2024 in Doha.
The three day meeting included 12 sessions, in which 67 researchers from Western universities presented their research papers in parallel. The papers explored topics across politics and international relations; security and migration/refugee studies; literature and cultural studies; gender and citizenship studies; health, development, and urban studies; history, philosophy, and law; education; media; linguistics; and translation studies. More than 50 specialized professors provided tailored feedback on these papers.
The conference began with opening remarks by Dr. Ayat Hamdan, ACRPS Researcher, Editorial Manager of the Ostour Journal for Historical Studies, and the Coordinator of the AGSC. This was followed by the opening lecture titled “The Palestine Question, Anti-Semitism and the New McCarthyism” delivered by Azmi Bishara, General Director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.
Azmi Bishara, General Director of the Arab Center, delivered the opening lecture, “The Question of Palestine, Anti-Semitism, and the New McCarthyism”.
Bishara began by drawing attention to the ongoing war against the Palestinians in Gaza. He noted that describing the suffering of the people in Palestine without any expansion in the discussion would amount to repetitive linguistic rhetoric. He focused the topic of his lecture instead on the conflict currently taking place in Western public opinion regarding what might be considered a narrative shift in the centre of the discussion. Instead of focusing on the suffering of the people in Gaza and justice for the Palestinian people, a matter that the resistance in the Gaza Strip has brought back to the forefront, the discussion has been taken over by a debate over anti-Semitism and the language used to describe Israeli actions. As a result, those in solidarity with the Palestinian people and cause are forced into a discourse of self-defence and self-justification and to police the terminology they use.
This shift did not happen spontaneously. Rather, multiple parties have coordinated to organize campaigns that change the topic and the trajectory of any discussion about it, in a fashion that can be described as the new McCarthyism. Many of the ongoing procedures in the US Congress are reminiscent of McCarthyism, a phenomenon that spread under “the threat of communism” in the early 1950s. These procedures have so far included investigations into three university presidents in the House of Representatives, and the formation of a committee to investigate the conditions of US universities and the extent to which they combat anti-Semitism on campus.
In the same context, Bishara moved on to address the relationship between the Palestine question and anti-Semitism, pointing out that the Holocaust was used in Israeli propaganda in the run up to and the aftermath the 1967. At that time, Israeli accusations that Gamal Abdel Nasser was another Hitler spread and were then rehashed against Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein. Weaponizing anti-Semitism in this way transcends different contexts, allowing Israel to monopolize the role of the victim, despite being the perpetrator, branding every opponent the Nazis of the era – the contemporary anti-Semites.
In this regard, Bishara emphasized that anti-Semitism is a European phenomenon, which grew from the religious hostility that persisted since the Middle Ages. This developed into the redirection of class tensions towards the Jews and eventually to theories based on racist eugenics labelling Jews as Semites, creating a Jewish “race”. Some elements of anti-Semitism, in the form of the global Jewish conspiracy, were imported into the Arab region, at times on the margins of the Arab nationalist movement, and at others within Islamist movements, in periods of crisis, when it seemed to the Arabs that the Jews were controlling the world. However, instances in which religious minorities were persecuted in the Arab region cannot be characterized as anti-Semitism, never specifically targeting Jews, and are incomparable to the historical hostility toward Jews in Europe and its religious, ethnic, and social roots.
Bishara emphasized that hostility to Zionism is neither Arab nor Islamic in essence, but arose within Jewish currents, just like Zionism. Before the conflict with Israeli settler colonialism arose, anti-Zionist thought centred on the definition of Jewish identity. A religious conflict emerged over the definition of the Jews as a nationality, and many Jews rejected the establishment of a state. Judaism describes the earthly state as a secular entity. Other Jewish sources of hostility to Zionism emerged that included secular arguments expressed by socialist and communist Jews, who believed that the salvation of Jews, like other peoples, would be achieved through the establishment of a socialist system. Moreover, many Jewish liberals believed that the European secular state did not contradict religion, and that converting Judaism into nationalism would prevent the integration of Jews into their respective communities, while the establishment of a Jewish state would create a problem of dual loyalty. This is a liberal Jewish opinion, not anti-Semitic incitement. Arab and Palestinian hostility to Zionism emerged as a direct response to a colonial movement unrelated to the Jewish religion and does not represent inherent hostility to Jews.
Bishara concluded by refuting the second part of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism adopted by the US State Department, while indicating that the first part can be accepted. The definition provides eleven examples, seven of which deal with Israel and three of which directly prevent criticism of Israel in practice. Bishara stressed the importance of organizing responses to the “new McCarthyism,” through an alliance of those in solidarity with Palestine and supporters of the Palestinian cause with Western liberal forces affected by these attempts to restrict freedom of expression in universities. He called for a shift from defence to attack on two levels. First, it is not enough to merely defend the victims of these measures and attacks in the courts. Rather, this slander must be translated into defamation lawsuits for which their perpetrators can be prosecuted. Second, there is a need to engage in a discussion on the very concepts that are being subjected to distortion and the content of the accusations, not just defending the right to free expression, but also defending the content of positions critical of settler colonialism, occupation, the apartheid system, and genocide. All of these are defensible positions, not in any way close to the language, thought, and discourse of anti-Semitism. Those who claim otherwise and make such inflammatory allegations should be held accountable.
The first day of the conference included 26 interventions, with participants presenting papers based on their doctoral theses, and receiving comments from academics specialized in various fields of their research, in addition to the comments of and attendees. The interventions, which were held in parallel, were divided into seven topics: politics and international relations; security and migration/refugee studies; literature and cultural studies; gender and citizenship studies; health, development, and urban studies; history, philosophy, and law; education, media, linguistics, and translation studies.
On the subject of politics and international relations, Ali Alsayegh presented "The Content of Ayatollah Sistani's Charisma: An Alternative Approach,” which conceptualized the process and content of Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani’s charisma production, to the emulators, and how that authority translates to an emotional urge to answer the Ayatollah's calls to action. In a paper titled “Bottom-Up Transformative Justice: An Alternative to the Liberal Peace Paradigm in the Question of Palestine”, Tamara Tamimi presented an original proposal for bottom-up transformative justice as a decolonial alternative to the liberal peace paradigm that characterizes Western engagement with the question of Palestine. Rafaa Chehoudi, in his paper "The United Nations and Democratization in the Middle East and North Africa” evaluated the impact of the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) on the democratization processes within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) between 2000 and 2020. Finaly, Hood Ahmed’s paper, “Origins of Political Trust in the Arab World” explored the origins of political trust in the Arab world and why it varies significantly across political institutions in the region.
Under the security and migration/refugee studies topic, Laila Omar presented “Syrian Refugee Teenagers' Experiences with Time and Future Projections in Canada,” interrogating the importance of age and life stage at the moment of migration for imaginations of the future after resettlement in the host country by examining Syrian refugee teenagers' experiences. Elsayed Abdelhamid presented “Pursuing Stability through Perpetual Im/mobility: Spatial and Temporal Entrapments in Counter-Revolutionary Egypt and Exile,” demonstrating how experiences of political confinement and their enduring consequences shape former prisoners' post-release trajectories and their socialities in exile. Nerouz Satik followed with, “The Revolutionary Practices of Syrians during the Refugees' Voyages to Europe: The Dead and Alive Bodies,” which examined the death and life stories of Syrian refugees in their voyages to exile to draw out their embodied revolutionary practices.
Within the literature and cultural studies workshop, Amira Farhani presented “The Return of Kahina in Arabic Novels of National Resistance and Popular Protest,” which retrieved the archetype of the Amazigh queen and warrior Kahina as a postcolonial uncanny trope of women's resistance. Sara Aljuaid followed with “Reimagining the Orient: Revisiting the Ontological Representations of the Middle East in Post 9/11 American Literature,’” seeking to examine the narrative pertaining to the Middle East's cultural, social, and political representations in American literature. Shadi Rohana presented “The Morisco Question in Cervantes’ Don Quixote,” introducing the Morisco characters in Don Quixote and demonstrating how they contribute to the fiction. Finally, in his paper “Settler Nations and the Decolonial Impasse in JM Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians,” Abdelbaqi Ghorab explored how the construction of collective identities performed under extreme forms of coloniality continues to inform contemporary politics of settler nations.
On the subject of gender and citizenship studies, Amal Miri presented “Rethinking Gender Empowerment in a Non-Western Context: Participatory Research with Muslim Women in Civil Society Organizations in Flanders,” in which she studied the different understandings and lived experiences related to the gender empowerment of Muslim women with a migration background in Belgium using a “situated intersectional” perspective. Next, Muznah Madeeha, in her paper “Generational Changes and Qatari Women's Economic Participation: A Postcolonial Feminist Approach”, used postcolonial feminism to examine the relationship between Qatari women's economic participation and generational changes taking place in Qatar. Imad Rasan followed with “Exploring the Distinction between Exclusion and Marginalization, and Mediated Visibility in the Public Sphere: A Study of Women Activists in Egypt,” which explored the distinction between the exclusion and marginalization of women activists in the public sphere in Egypt from 2011 to 2014, as well as how they strategically mediated their visibility to overcome these constraints.
Within the health, development, and urban studies track, Yazid Zahda presented “Neoliberalization in Palestine: The Emergence of Palestinian National Development Plans,” which examined the emergence of National Development Plans (NDPs) from 1994 to 2023 to understand neoliberalism in the unique context of Palestine. Wassim Naboulsi followed with his paper, “Rural-Urban Relations in Syria: The 2011 Uprising and Beyond,” in which he analysed various drama and cinema productions to present a new understanding of rurality and urbanity in Syrian society. Saleh Almogrbe presented “Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Lessons for Benghazi from Beirut,” scrutinizing the urban redevelopment process in Benghazi following Libya's civil conflict of 2014-2017. Finally, Meryem Belkadi presented, “Different Outcomes of Displacement: What Factors Shape the Trajectories of Displaced Households? The Case Study of Tangier, Morocco,” used a case study of Tangier, Morocco, to emphasize the post-displacement transition phase and analyse the trajectories and experiences of displaced individuals and households, as well as the key factors shaping these trajectories.
In the history, philosophy, and law workshop, Mohammad Lari presented “The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Contractual Obligations under the Kuwaiti Civil Law of 1980,” which scrutinized legal doctrines within Kuwaiti civil law and explored avenues for devising equitable and sustainable solutions conducive to enhancing social justice. Mahmoud Emam presented on “Meroitic Funerary Amulets: A Multi-Approach Study for Uncovering Technology, Production Workshops, and Distribution in Ancient Sudan,” presenting the first large-scale classification attempt that combined theoretical and applicable methodology for the Meroitic funerary amulets that were found in royal and non-royal tombs. Gokh Alshaif discussed her paper titled “Rumours in the Night: The Street Sweepers of Aden”, unpacking the “riot” of 1906 that followed to consider how this marginalized community of labourers has long been racialized as “black” and "outsiders.” Lastly, Salma Shash presented “Policing the Village: Violence, Bureaucracy and Political Economy in Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” exploring justice in the everyday life of rural Egypt between 1850-1914.
Within the education, media, linguistics, and translation studies workshop, Ahmad Alzoubi presented on “Moving the Brazilian Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – President Jair Bolsonaro's Retreat and its Repercussions in the Brazilian Press”, investigating how the Brazilian media covered the move of Brazilian Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, especially Bolsonaro's rhetoric, which was inconsistent with the Brazilian diplomatic line. Imad Al-Khshali discussed his paper titled “The Role of the Embedding Programme in Disseminating Misinformation and Disinformation about the Iraq War,” which examined the role of the embedding programme in disseminating misinformation and disinformation about the Iraq war. Mohammed Abuarqoub’s paper titled “Diffusion of Innovations in the Arab Newsrooms: Opportunities and Obstacles of Adopting Generative AI to Enhance Digital Storytelling” delved into opportunities and challenges associated with the decision-making processes employed by Arab media organizations, journalists, and newsroom leaders when considering the adoption or rejection of generative AI innovations. Lastly, Ghadeer Awwad presented “Digital Repression in Palestine”, which used semi-structured interviews and purposive sampling to engage 19 political activists to uncover experiences of confronting local authorities online in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Within politics and international relations, Nasir Almasri presented his paper “How Exclusion Shapes Moderation and Radicalization in the Middle East,” analysing the consequences of political inclusion and exclusion on opposition group moderation and radicalization. Taking the case of post-2003 Iraq’s intra-Shia political rivalry, Zeidon Alkinani investigated the consequences of consociational democracies on in-group relations and how minimal efforts to acknowledge them can lead to a failed democratic process and further damage domestic political relations. Lastly, Mubarak Al-Jeri discussed his paper titled “Exploring the Dynamics of Social Movements in Kuwait: Nature, Objectives, and Impact,” arguing that the political and social influence of social components (tribes and families) has increased due to the characteristics of the Kuwaiti welfare regime and the absence of political reform that would enable the establishment of political parties.
On security and migration/refugee studies, Bayan Arouri began by presenting her paper titled “(Un)Accessible Knowledge Production: Insights on Decolonizing Development and Refugee Studies,” seeking to problematize the regulation and ownership of access to camps as knowledge space. Next, Abdulla Majeed examined how ordinary Iraqi exiles awaiting resettlement in Jordan come to articulate the future by remapping a regionalized and historically specific logic of maseer, or destiny. Fadi Hasan’s paper “Between Loss and Building a New Home: Women Refugees in Germany” explored the concept, significance, and meaning(s) of “home” for MENA women with refugee backgrounds who are residing in Germany. Finally, Moez Hayat’s paper “Hybrid Pathways to Security and Autonomy: A Comparison of the GCC and ASEAN” argues that the GCC and ASEAN maintain regional security not through armaments or internal trade but an elite political consensus to maintain internal security by deescalating disputes from rising to the point of conflict.
The literature and cultural studies workshop started with Emna Bedhiafi’s paper “Images from the East: Circulation, Print Culture, and British Women Travellers' Explorations of Iraq and Persia,” exploring the potential of British women travellers’ narratives to renegotiate established forms of knowledge about the Middle East. Ahmad Abu Ahmad discussed his paper titled “The Politics of Linguistic and (Inter) Cultural Contact Zones in Palestinian Literature and Film”, which investigated questions of narration, (mis)translation, and linguistic infiltration and displacement vis-à-vis the politics of language and the realities of settler-colonialism in Palestine.
Under the topic of gender and citizenship, Leena Adel explored socio-cultural barriers facing Middle Eastern and North African women as they engage in political processes, particularly in the backdrop of the counterrevolution response to the Arab revolts. Maro Youssef focused on the behaviour of women elites during the Arab Spring and the political transition that followed in Tunisia. Dalia Elsayed’s paper “Canadian Education Institutions and the Construction of Blackness; Black Women Navigating Educational Spaces” examined the racial climate on university campuses in the period following the Black Lives Matter global movement in 2020. Lastly, Abdulla Al-Kalisy’s paper titled “Studying Iraq: Tishreen's New Lenses to Conceptualizing Citizenship” highlighted the need to understand Iraqi citizenship as a concept no longer operating in a dualistic relationship with the state through the pathway paved by Tishreen.
The health, development, and urban studies workshop began with Soheila El Ghazir’s paper “Care Beyond Borders: Medical Trajectories and Therapeutic Itineraries in the Interwar Levant,” which explored medical care pathways in the interwar Levant, with a focus on how British and French mandatory authorities harnessed the mobility of medical practitioners and patients to serve their own interests. Maureen Abi-Ghanem presented her paper titled “Shelter: On the Socio-Spatial Protection and Exclusion of Displaced Syrians in Beirut,” questioning how displaced Syrians have been navigating informal city systems to find shelter, secure tenure and achieve livelihoods. Cynthia Gharios addressed how and why structural forces led by the British authorities drove changes in the agrarian landscape of the Trucial State.
On the history, philosophy, and law topics, Mahmoud Masud discussed his paper “The Blurred Line between Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Religion: A Case Study of the Desecration of the Holy Qur’an” r seeks to determine whether the domestic regulation in Sweden and Denmark offers sufficient protection to religions and their sensibilities to demonstrate that desecrating the Qur'an is contrary to international, mainly European, human rights law and ideals. Tariq Alsabahi’s paper “Legitimacy of Gulf Monarchies in a Human Rights Context” assessed the performance of Oman’s and Qatar’s National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) to understand the origins and changes in institutional development to the practice of these organizations to claim legitimacy. Lastly, Doaa Baumi explored Qurʾanic terminology for “the religious other,” focusing on a pivotal term, ahl al-Kitāb (the People of the scripture).
The last workshop on education, media, linguistics, and translation studies featured a presentation by Zakaria Fahmi on “Cultural Representation in Arabic through Foreign Language Textbook: An Exploratory Mixed Study of Content and Languaculture,” which analyzed the cultural representations in textbooks series, such as Al-Kitaab and Arabiyyat, and sought to explore the (sometimes) competing interests underlying curricular contents.
The third day of the conference began with three parallel sessions. The first session in the politics and international relations workshop saw Daoud Ghoul present his research paper, “Silwan, Literature of Palestinian Existence”, which examines the existing literature on the history of Silwan, focusing on the uninterrupted and continued existence of Palestinians there to challenge the dominant narrative of the “City of David”. The next speaker, Motasem Abuzaid, presented “Between the Square and the Quarter: The Urban Logic of Violence in the Syrian Revolution”, seeking to understand how people mobilize and sustain mobilization in highly inauspicious contexts, like authoritarian polities that regularly exercise violence against non-violent challengers. Muhammad Amasha, in the third session, presented “Moral Dilemmas and Conflict of Interests: How do Intellectuals Take Political Stances in Politically Volatile Times?” In the paper, he studies the political stances of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, toward the Arab uprisings, in order to uncover which values and interests are impactful and under what conditions by examining intellectuals' politics in politically volatile times. Badr Karkbi was the final speaker in the Politics and International Relations track, presenting “Political Islam, Christian Democracy, and Secularism: Comparing Tunisia and Italy”, which reconsiders the interaction of religion and politics through political parties.
In the literature and cultural studies workshop, Sara Bolghiran presented “Muslim Futures in Europe: Imagining the Unimaginable? An Exercise in Contemporary Muslim Utopian Thinking”, which demonstrates how Muslim imaginaries flourish and thrive in between dichotomous conceptions of being. Nael Chami’s paper “Unpacking the Symbolism and Cultural Significance of Figure Representation in Early Islamic Art”, traces the origins of Aniconism, analysing structures like Anjar and Qusayr Amra and scrutinizes the portrayal of Umayyad caliphs in art, investigating the link between the decline of the Umayyad dynasty and their self-aggrandizement. Tamara Maatouk followed with her paper “Preaching Socialism: The Revolutionary Intellectual in Nasser’s Egypt”, which juxtaposes films with official documents concerning cultural and film affairs, popular and specialized periodicals, conference proceedings, memoirs, interviews, contemporaneous essays, the press, and other cultural products to explore the cinematic image of the revolutionary intellectual under Nasser.
In the History, Philosophy, and Law workshop, Asmaa Elgamal presented “Landing Security: Risk, Endogeneity, and the Archives of Colonialized Planning in Morocco”, investigating the historical and contemporary relationships between security, development, and planning through the lens of collective land tenure in Morocco. Samir Belkfif followed with his paper “Philosophy and Universal Hospitality”, shedding light on the essential relationship between philosophy, as a field to search for truth, and man, as a universal value. Sara Hussein followed with her paper, “Revolutionary Cairo and its Contours: Between Pan-Africanism and Afro-Asian Solidarity 1954-1970”, seeking to recover histories of pan-Africanist, anti-colonial, and Afro-Asian activity from Cairo during the Nasser period. The final speaker, Amal Awad, presented “Al-Rāzī's Critique of Avicenna's Indivisibility Argument”, which argues that al-Rāzī's critique of the indivisibility argument not only shows al-Rāzī's departure from Avicenna with respect to the nature and the agency of the soul, but also reveals deeper metaphysical and epistemological differences between them.
In the security and migration/refugee studies workshop, the first speaker, Iman Ali presented “Armed in the Name of Peace: An Ethnographic Capture of Everyday Militant Peacekeeping in South Lebanon”. Her research seeks to understand what UNIFIL’s presence in Lebanon can tell us about the extension of Israeli occupation and how locals engage, contest, and negotiate UNIFIL's presence through infrastructure and development. The next speaker, Nour Al Wattar, presented “Unveiling the Suffering: Human Rights Violations Against Women in Refugee Camps”, addressing the issue of gender-based violence against women in refugee camps, examining the implementation of human rights within these settings and the susceptibility of women to rights violations. Finally, Doaa Hammoudeh presented “Citizenship, Surveillance, and Control: Young Palestinians Navigating Transitions on the Margins of Jerusalem”, investigating the intersections between citizenship, surveillance, and control, focusing on the experiences of young Jerusalemite Palestinians displaced by the Separation wall.
The only paper in the health, development, and Urban Studies track, “Mental Health Experiences among Canadian Oral Healthcare Providers and Students: An Exploratory Study” was presented by Tala Maragha. Her findings seek to inform policies and support strategies to empower women and People of Colour in dentistry. There was also only one session in the Gender and Citizenship Studies track on the last day of the conference. Zeinab Farokhi presented “Gendered and Sexual Abjectification of Muslim Masculinities by Hindu Nationalists on Social Media”, scrutinizing the weaponization of X (formerly known as Twitter) by Right-Wing Extremist Groups and the abjectification of Muslim masculinities within Hindu and White supremacist political ideologies.
Within the education, media, linguistics, and translation studies workshop, Abderrahim Mamad presented “English as Foreign Language Students' Preferences and Reported Instructor Practices of the Teaching of Writing in Moroccan Public Universities”, exploring students' preferences and reported instructor practices in teaching writing. Orubba Almansouri’s paper “Moving Forward: Re-envisioning Education for Multilingual Multicultural Immigrant Youth”, examines the schooling experience of English language learners who graduated from Global High, a New York City public high school that has one of the highest graduation rates for immigrant language learners in the country, in a context of low nationwide graduation rates.
Arab Graduate Students Conference
