The next Bisan Lecture webinar will take place on Wednesday, October 11th at 7pm Palestine time (6pm Central European Time, 12 noon US Eastern time). We will have the pleasure to welcome Prof. Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University) who will speak (in English with simultaneous Arabic translation for those who wish) on The Latest Phase of the Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.
Dear Colleagues,
Professor Timothy Brennan (University of Minnesota) delivered a spellbinding lecture on the 20-th anniversary of Edward Said’s death, which was the opening lecture of the 2023-2024 season of the Bisan Lecture Series (BLS). Widely acclaimed for his sympathetic critical appraisal of Said’s scholarship and political activism, most recently in his book Places of Mind, professor Brennan chose to more narrowly focus his fifty-minute BLS lecture on Said’s interaction against and within the Western media, which he termed as “the most skillful and least recognized of his accomplishments.” Professor Brennan covered a wide panorama of cultural currents on both sides of the Atlantic that influenced Said as a public figure and fierce critic of what he called “corporate mind-management, media indoctrination, and the information industries.” He cited Said’s rejection of intellectuals who opt to become “soft news entertainers” or “scribes for the establishment” or “specialists” speaking from narrow material interests. He concluded his lecture by pointing out that, for Said, the true intellectual is “about curiosity, the acquiring of a deliberately non-instrumental knowledge devoted to knowing the case, for the sake of truth rather than individual interest. And with these immaterial weapons – precisely because they are spiritual rather than financial or military – the intellectual for [Said] could effectively counter the corporate myths of the imperial state.” You can watch the video recording here. The lecture slides are available here.
We are pleased to announce that the next Bisan Lecture webinar will take place on Wednesday, October 11th at 7pm Palestine time (6pm Central European Time, 12 noon US Eastern time). We will have the pleasure to welcome Prof. Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University) who will speak (in English with simultaneous Arabic translation for those who wish) on
Title: The Latest Phase of the Hundred Years’ War on Palestine
You can register for the webinar by clicking here!
Abstract: For over a century, Palestine has been the scene of a war meant to wrest the country from its indigenous population. This war was waged by a settler-colonial movement with the unstinting backing, and sometimes the participation, of outside powers. Enormous discursive efforts have been exerted to obfuscate the basic nature of this struggle, and to present it solely in its religious, national and other dimensions. Faced with an ongoing and relentless process of dispossession, and with their very existence as a people threatened, the Palestinians have resisted against tremendous odds. This war may be entering a new phase, with an aggressive Israeli regime still fully supported by the US openly committed to completing the settler colonial project, but meeting mounting Palestinian defiance and growing global condemnation of its openly supremacist and racist nature.
Biographical Sketch
Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. He received a B.A. from Yale University and a D. Phil. from Oxford University, and has previously taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, and the University of Chicago. He is co-editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and has served as President of the Middle East Studies Association. He is the author of eight books, most recently The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, and of over 100 scholarly articles and book chapters, and has co-edited three books.
You can register for the webinar by clicking here!
This lecture is sponsored by the Bisan Center for Research and Development and Scientists for Palestine.
Hoping to see many of you at this webinar, we send you our best regards.
The Bisan Lecture Series Steering Committee
Next BLS webinar
Wednesday November 8, 2023, 7 pm Palestine time
Prof. David Mumford (Brown and Harvard Universities)
Wednesday December 13, 2023, 7 pm Palestine time
Dr. Areej Sabbagh-Khoury (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Title: Rethinking the Nakba: Structure, Agency, and Resistance in the Colonization of Palestine
Wednesday January 10, 2024, 7 pm Palestine time
Prof. John Hardy (University College London)
Title: From Genetics to treatment in Alzheimer’s disease
Wednesday February 14, 2024, 7 pm Palestine time
Annemarie Jacir (Filmmaker)
Wednesday March 13, 2024, 7 pm Palestine time
Achille Mbembe (University of the Witwatersrand)
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BLS Statement of purpose
In concert with Scientists for Palestine and the Bisan Center for Research and Development, and in keeping with their joint commitment to full integration of Palestine in the global community of learning, the Bisan Lecture Series sponsors discourses on subjects of cultural, scientific, and societal importance by leading research experts and public intellectuals of varied heritage and viewpoint. The interactive webinars are free and open to the public, and recordings of each will be posted soon afterward.