The inaugural Al-Hadenah: Intellectual Sanctuary Collective conference, December 11-12, 2024, will bring together Palestinian scholars and Palestine Studies scholars in order to promote intellectual exchanges that have been severely hindered by settler-colonial displacement, institutional siloing, intellectual and political repression, and academic precarity.

About the conference:

The conference will be held in collaboration with an emerging international Palestinian formation, Al-hadenah, the Intellectual Sanctuary Collective (ISC), a resistant intellectual movement that proposes to offer an alternative to repressive institutionalized academic regimes supported by hegemonic power holders. Inspired by the failure of the global community to stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza, ISC hopes to become a powerful academic ‘grassroots’ movement and intellectual network of Palestinian and Palestine Studies scholars against the governance of the mind and the control over Palestinian knowledge production. ISC is intended to furnish a counterspace for the nurturing of Palestinian scholars and “Palestinian intellectual sovereignty” , an Indigenous and decolonial intellectual and political “home space” that enlivens alternative modes of knowledge production challenging the global political economy of racial injustice against Palestine and the Palestinians. ISC will offer an intellectual sanctuary for Palestinian and non-Palestinian faculty members from various campuses, countries, and disciplines and seek to bring those forcibly scattered or exilic scholars into easier and more regular contact with one another.

The conference will address two primary concerns: First, the destruction of Palestinian intellectual and cultural institutions, and the censorship and silencing (if not outright targeted killing) of Palestinian scholars, which provides the basis for the urgent need to provide a safe sanctuary; and second, nurturing Palestinian knowledge production, networks of care and intellectual production in the face of hegemonic power structures, and stimulating dialogue across the international scholarly community and throughout global civil society.

Conference sponsored by the Center for Ideas and Society, Al Hadenah Intellectual Sanctuary Collective, and the California Center for Native Nations. Co-sponsored by the Departments of Black Study, Comparative Literature, Dance, English, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Media and Cultural Studies.

Parking:

University of California Riverside Parking Lot 1

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Conference Schedule:

Wednesday December 11, 2024 | INTS 1109

1:00pm: Welcome by Dylan Rodriguez (CIS-UCR), Mark Minch (California Center for Native Nations, UCR), Riverside for Palestine, David Lloyd (UCR), and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian (Princeton University; Professor Extraordinarius, University of South Africa, and Chair in Global Law, Queen Mary University of London).

1:30 – 3:00pm: Roundtable I: Palestinian Paradigms: Nakba, Exile, Apartheid, Genocide

Omar Abdelqader (Princeton University), Nour Joudah (UCLA), Ussama Makdisi (UC Berkeley).

Moderator: Jeff Sacks.

3:00 – 3.30pm: Coffee/tea break

3:30pm: Presentation I: Ali Hisham Musleh (Center for Palestine Studies, Columbia University), “Living in Times of Genocide.” 

5:00pm: Respondent: Mark Minch (UCR) and Lara Sheehi (Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar).

5:15 – 6:00pm : Fady Joudah, Poetry Reading

Introduced by Jeff Sacks

6:00 – 7:00pm: Reception in INTS 1111

Thursday, December 12, 2024 | INTS 1113

9:00am: Coffee/pastries

9:30 – 11:00am: Presentation II: Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian: “In Defiance of Ashla’a: Against Producing the Genocidally Uninhabitable.”

Respondents: Robin D.G. Kelley (UCLA) and Rana Barakat (Birzeit University), via Zoom.

11:00 – 11:30am: Coffee/tea Break

11:30am – 1:00pm: Roundtable II: Decolonizing the Human

Samiha Khalil (UCR), Sherene Razack (UCLA), Stephen Sheehi (William and Mary).

Moderator: David Lloyd.

1:00 – 2:30pm: Lunch in INTS 1111

2:30 – 4.00pm: Presentation III: Lila Sharif (Arizona State), “‘Our Watan Rises”.

Respondent: Sarah Ihmoud (College of the Holy Cross) and Jennifer Mogannam (UC Santa Cruz).

4:00 – 4:30pm - Coffee/tea Break

4.30 – 6:00pm: Roundtable III: Thinking Palestinian Futures

Jess Ghannam (UCSF), Saree Makdisi (UCLA), Rana Sharif (UC Berkeley).

Moderator: Sarita See (UCR).

6:00 - 6:30pm - Closing remarks: Dylan Rodriguez and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian.
 

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