26.01.23
Editorial Note
In recent weeks Prof. Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian, the chair of the Law Faculty at the Hebrew University, hit the news when the George Washington University (GWU) Professional Psychology Program held an event in September 2022 which featured her, among others. In her presentation, Shalhoub-Kevorkian said that Israel uses its humanitarian aid to distract from its “oppressive power.” Shalhoub-Kevorkian also argued in support of Palestinians throwing stones at Jewish Israelis as a form of “violent resistance” against Israel. In her lecture, she “examines the framing, production and performance of security regimes that create and encourage systems of racialized oppression,” as quoted in the event’s flyer. Jewish students filed a complaint, and now GWU is investigating.
Not wasting any time, the GWU Institute for Middle East Studies, together with the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) Program, is hosting a webinar, “Gender, Violence, and the Geopolitics of Feminism,” also titled “Gender, Violence, and Governance Feminism,” on February 2, 2023. This webinar is the “kickoff event of Spring 2023 to celebrate 50 years at GW! We will feature Lila Abu-Lughod and Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian who will share their expertise.”
The two speakers are, “Lila Abu-Lughod is a Professor of Social Science within the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University in the city of New York. Her work, strongly ethnographic and mostly based in Egypt, has focused on three broad issues: the relationship between cultural forms and power; the politics of knowledge and representation; and the dynamics of women’s and human rights, global liberalism, and feminist governance of the Muslim world. Current research focuses on museum politics in Palestine and other settler colonies, security discourses and Islamophobia, and religion in the global governance of gender violence. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is the Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Faculty of Law-Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Global Chair in Law- Queen Mary University of London. Her research focuses on trauma, state crimes and criminology, surveillance, gender violence, law and society. She studies the crime of femicide and other forms of gendered based violence, violence against children in conflict ridden areas, crimes of abuse of power in settler colonial contexts, surveillance, securitization and social control. the author of numerous books among them “Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: The Palestinian Case Study” published in 2010; “Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear”, published by Cambridge University Press, 2015.”
Earlier work by Shalhoub Kevorkian includes the following abstract in a journal of Criminology: “Colonial and settler colonial dispossession is performed through various forms of violence, justified by cultural, historical, religious and national imperatives. In this paper, I define one of these forms of violence as the occupation of the senses, referring to the sensory technologies that manage bodies, language, sight, time and space in the colony. This paper analyses the parades, marches and festivals performed in the Palestinian city space of occupied East Jerusalem; shares the slogans, chants and graffiti used by Israeli civil, religious and nationalist entities; and explores what is lived, seen, heard, felt and smelled by the colonized to uncover the political violence implicated in the occupation of the senses.”
Last year, IAM reported that Shalhoub Kevorkian espoused fake news about Israel. IAM reported that in her co-authored article, “Colonial Necrocapitalism, State Secrecy and the Palestinian Freedom Tunnel,” she argued that “the very existence of the Palestinian endangers the colonial state” of Israel, “their death is necessary for the survival” of Israel. “Necrocapitalism” is “operationalized through violent policing of Palestinians.”
For Shalhoub-Kevorkian, necrocapitalism is the “means of accumulating capital and profit from the death” of Palestinians, where “profit flows from visible and invisible violence, as well as the killing of the colonized, as a state of fear generates continuous insecurity, which in turn generates a demand for security goods.” Because “Israel is one of the top arms exporters in the world.” As with other writings in the genre of neo-Marxist, critical theory, this egregiously convoluted article is full of made-up words like “necrocapitalism.“ To the extent that one can fathom Shalboub-Kevorkian’s reasoning, Israel became a leading economic power because it kills Palestinians. Nothing could be further from the truth. Israel achieved its position because of its outstanding capacity for innovation in Information Technology. Here is something to enlighten her, written in 2022 by Sheikh Riad, a Bangladeshi blogger, programmer, and web developer:
“Science and technology in Israel are one of the country’s most developed sectors. Israel spent 4.3% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on civil research and development in 2015, the highest ratio in the world. In 2019, Israel was ranked the world’s fifth most innovative country by the Bloomberg Innovation Index. It ranks thirteenth in the world for scientific output as measured by the number of scientific publications per million citizens. In 2014, Israel’s share of scientific articles published worldwide (0.9%) was much higher than its share of the global population (0.1%). Israel is home to major companies in the high-tech industry and has one of the world’s most technologically literate populations. As mentioned earlier, there are more than 4,000 tech companies in Israel, including some of the world’s largest companies. Israel has 60 of the world’s top 500 tech giants with research centres and new technology centres in Israel!”
He speaks of Tel Aviv, as “one of the largest technology centres in the world, right next to Silicon Valley in the United States in terms of tech startups. Israel is even number 3 on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, which is made up of shares of US-based tech companies, with only the United States and China topping the list. Israel is also behind the list of combined technology companies of Germany, Spain, Italy and France! The most surprising thing is that a large part of Israel’s income comes from this technology sector. The money earned from the research and development sector of big companies including IBM, PayPal, Cisco, Amazon, Facebook and the import of technology is 12.5% of Israel’s GDP!”
Clearly, Shalboub-Kevorkian and the Middle East Institute who invited her as the opening event for celebrating the 50th anniversary of GWU demonstrate the bankruptcy of the advocacy-driven Middle East scholarship. It has created a false narrative replete with obscure jargon totally disconnected from reality. Bashing Israel is its only achievement.
References:
Jewish students say anti-Zionist professor created hostile environment
A psychology professor at George Washington University allegedly dismissed concerns that her hostile anti-Zionism was antisemitic, and retaliated against Jewish students who complained
By Arno Rosenfeld January 13, 2023
An Israel advocacy group is alleging that an anti-Zionist George Washington University professor created a hostile environment for Jewish students who support the country. StandWithUs filed a federal complaint against the school Thursday, arguing that Zionism is an integral part of Jewish identity.
The filing claims that Lara Sheehi, who teaches a mandatory course on diversity, discriminated against several Jewish students because of their Israeli and Zionist identities in her class during the fall semester.
“It’s not your fault you were born in Israel,” Sheehi allegedly told one student after she introduced herself.
Much of the complaint focuses on Sheehi’s disagreements with students over whether hostility toward Israel and Zionism is antisemitic. Many pro-Israel organizations, including Hillel, have argued in recent years that institutions such as universities must treat Zionism — support for a Jewish state in Israel — as an integral part of Jewish identity, and one that is protected from discrimination in the same manner as race, religion, gender and other protected categories.
Opponents of this approach say that Zionism is a political ideology that must be open to debate, and that shielding it from criticism will have a chilling effect on Palestinian activism.
In its account of Sheehi’s course, which is mandatory for psychology students at George Washington, StandWithUs wrote that it had identified an extreme case of a faculty member’s hostile anti-Zionism leading to discrimination against students.
“A professor singling out and targeting Jewish and Israeli students for adverse treatment because of their identity is textbook antisemitic discriminatory conduct,” Roz Rothstein, the head of StandWithUs, said in a statement.
Julia Metjian, a spokesperson for George Washington, said the school was aware of the complaint.
“George Washington University strongly condemns antisemitism and hatred,” she said in an email. “The university also recognizes and supports academic freedom, and the right of all members of our community to speak out on issues of public concern.”
The organization’s civil rights complaint, which was filed with the Department of Education, highlights an optional guest lecture for the class delivered by Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem who has generated controversy over her research on the Israeli military.
Complaint stems from lecture
At the lecture, Shalhoub-Kevorkian “demonized Israel, and Israelis in general,” according to the complaint, and claimed that Israeli philanthropy and humanitarian aid was meant to cover up human rights abuses. It also said that she defended the act of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers.
During the first class following the talk, the complaint states that several Jewish students told Sheehi they believed Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s lecture was antisemitic, with one saying she “felt like it was an excuse to bash Jews.”
Sheehi reportedly responded that “in no uncertain terms, anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.”
“There are many people who say that Zionism in and of itself is an antisemitic movement,” she allegedly responded. “Why? Because it locates that Jewish folks are that much more different that they need to have a space unto themselves.”
The complaint states that Sheehi, the author of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine, had previously made a series of remarks on Twitter that included hostile anti-Zionism, including: “Israelis are so f****ing racist” and “F*** every person who is not yet an anti-Zionist.”
(The Twitter account referenced in the report has since been taken offline. It did not include Sheehi’s name, but it repeatedly referenced her authorship of the psychoanalysis book, which won a 2022 Palestine Book Award.)
Elsewhere, Sheehi has said that psychoanalysts must actively practice anti-Zionism.
She graduated from the American University of Beirut in 2006 and received her doctorate from GW in 2010, during which time she was also active in the “campus anti-war network,” according to her LinkedIn profile. She has been teaching at the school since 2016.
When an Israeli student described her fear of “terrorist attacks” in Tel Aviv, Sheehi allegedly said that the use of that term was Islamophobic.
StandWithUs, which mostly focuses on campus Israel advocacy, also claimed that Sheehi retaliated against two of students who raised concerns with university administrators about Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Sheehi’s overall attitude toward Israel and antisemitism.
The report states that Sheehi subsequently claimed that the students had called Shalhoub-Kevorkian a terrorist, wrote “combative” journal entries for the class, and that they were racist. The students were then informed that the university had initiated disciplinary proceedings against them, and asked them to detail what they did wrong.
The complaint claims that George Washington violated the civil rights of the Jewish students in Sheehi’s class by failing to address her behavior. StandWithUs is calling on the school to investigate the student complaints and use the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism to adjudicate them.
Anyone can file a complaint with the Department of Education, and it is not clear whether the agency will investigate further.
Arno Rosenfeld is an enterprise reporter for the Forward, where he covers antisemitism, philanthropy and American Jewish institutions. You can reach him at arno@forward.com and follow him on Twitter @arnorosenfeld.
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Complaint alleges George Washington U prof. discriminated against Jews, Israelis
StandWithUs has launched a complaint against George Washington University over its failure to deal with Professor Lara Sheehi’s alleged antisemitism.
Published: JANUARY 14, 2023 21:05
Updated: JANUARY 15, 2023 22:41
The George Washington University, in the United States capital of Washington, DC, was accused by pro-Israel nonprofit StandWithUs of providing a pervasive, hostile, and discriminatory environment for Jewish and Israeli students in a complaint filed with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Right on Thursday.
StandWithUs further claimed the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states that “no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
The program in question is the university’s Professional Psychology Program, whose facilitator of the program’s mandatory diversity course prof. Sheehi was accused by StandWithUs of denying Jewish and Israeli students “the right to an equal educational opportunity.”
The complaint alleges that Israeli and Jewish students who came forward about their experience were punished for speaking out, with the letter claiming Sheesi slandered students’ reputations to other faculty members and launched excessive and irregular disciplinary procedures against them.
The complaint further claims that Sheehi invited a guest lecturer who invoked antisemitic tropes about Jews being dishonest and using their influence for nefarious purposes. The guest speaker, who was identified as Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian by the Jewish Journal, “expressed support for violence against Israeli civilians,” as per the complaint.
As written in the complaint, “when the students raised concerns about the antisemitic harassment they were experiencing, Sheehi denied that what the students had experienced was antisemitism and distorted the Jewish students’ comments to accuse the Jewish students of attacking other identity groups.
Sheehi has been writing in support of the Palestinian cause for many years, according to her academia.org page, which serves as an open repository of free-to-read academic articles. These include: “The will to Live in Palestine (2021),” “Psychotherapeutic Commons in Liberated Palestine (2021),” “Enactments of otherness and searching for a third space in the Palestine-Israel matrix (2016)” and “The settlers’ town is strongly built: Fanon in Palestine (2020).”
Professor’s acts are ‘textbook antisemitic conduct’
Roz Rothstein, StandWithUs CEO and co-founder, noted that “a professor singling out and targeting Jewish and Israeli students for adverse treatment because of their identity is textbook antisemitic discriminatory conduct.”
“A professor singling out and targeting Jewish and Israeli students for adverse treatment because of their identity is textbook antisemitic discriminatory conduct,”Roz Rothstein, StandWithUs CEO and Co-Founder
“This is a dangerous and unacceptable trend on far too many campuses, especially as this discriminatory treatment increasingly originates from faculty and too often goes unchecked by administrators.
“It is imperative that university administrators take an unequivocal stand against antisemitism and in support of Jewish students, in both word and deed,” Rothstein added.
“In our 2022 Antisemitism on US College & University Campuses Report, GW was rated a ‘D’ with many Jewish students stating GW administrators do not take their safety seriously and often do not feel comfortable sharing their Jewish identity with others due to the climate on campus,” Executive Director of StopAntisemitism Liora Rez told the Jerusalem Post. “George Washington University is miserably failing its Jewish students and it is a relief to see legal action being taken. Jewish students deserve an environment free of anti-Jewish bias to learn and flourish; with Jew-hating professors like Lara Sheehi and clubs like SJP being allowed to spread their bigotry and cause havoc on campuses nationwide, this is nearly impossible to achieve.”
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George Washington University probing alleged antisemitic harassment by professor
JTA – George Washington University says it has launched an investigation into whether a psychology professor displayed antisemitic behavior in his interactions with Jewish and Israeli students in the latest row over the state of Jewish life at the university in Washington, D.C. Was it or not
The investigation was prompted by a federal complaint filed by the pro-Israel watchdog group StandWithYou, citing graduate psychology students who were targeted last fall by their professor because of “their Jewish and Israeli identity.”
The group’s complaint, filed with the US. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights quotes Professor Lara Sheehy as saying to an Israeli student on her first day, “It is not your fault that you were born in Israel.” It is alleged that Jewish students felt targeted by a guest speaker Shehi had brought to class, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for comments she advocated throwing stones at Israelis as a form of resistance. Was. The complaint alleges that when the students brought their concerns to Shehi, he accused them of Islamophobia.
It has been said in the complaint that after this the meetings held with the higher officials in the university did not yield satisfactory results.
In a statement last week, GWU President Mark Righton said the university would open “an investigation by a third party” into the complaint’s “claims of discrimination and retaliation against unnamed students in the GW curriculum.” A GWU spokesperson previously told The Forward that the university “strongly condemns antisemitism and hatred” and also “recognizes and supports academic freedom.”
The Department of Education has yet to weigh whether it will open its own investigation, as there have been similar complaints of campus antisemitism in recent years.
The university, whose Hillel opened a new kosher cafe this week, has been the flashpoint of several incidents over the past few years highlighting Jewish student life. Groups posted anti-Zionist fliers near Campus Hillel and Jewish students rallied in 2021 following vandalism at a Jewish fraternity in which a replica Torah was damaged.
But during the 2021-2022 academic year, Jewish students from across the political spectrum told Forward that they found claims of rampant antisemitism on campus exaggerated. Some said they felt the continued involvement of pro-Israel groups was counterproductive.
A graduate of the American University of Beirut, Shehi is professor of clinical psychology and co-author of “Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine”. The events described in the StandWithUs report allegedly occurred in Sheehy’s required diversity training course for GWU’s psychology graduate students.
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GW failed to act against alleged antisemitism from professor: civil rights complaint
NEWS
By Caitlin Kitson Jan 17, 2023 3:30 AM
A Jewish and pro-Israel advocacy organization filed a Title VI complaint Thursday with the Department of Education alleging that a professor was antisemitic toward Jewish and Israeli students in a graduate-level psychology course during the fall semester.
StandWithUs filed the complaint with the Office for Civil Rights, alleging Lara Sheehi, an assistant professor of clinical psychology, created a “hostile environment” for Jewish and Israeli students within her Diversity I course, part of GW’s Professional Psychology Program. The complaint alleges faculty and administrators “retaliated” with “disciplinary proceedings” against students who raised concerns about hostile conduct from Sheehi throughout the fall and a guest speaker and course materials that addressed the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The complaint alleges that the University violated Title VI, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in any “educational program or activity” that receives federal funds like GW.
“Jewish students informed the University about the harassment and discrimination they were experiencing,” the complaint alleges. “George Washington, however, failed to take prompt and effective steps to end the harassment and eliminate the hostile environment.”
The complaint calls on the University to null the “disciplinary proceedings” against the students who raised concerns and provide them with an alternative method of receiving course credit “out of Sherri’s orbit and influence.” The complaint also urges GW to investigate the discrimination allegations, institute mandatory bias and sensitivity training and use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism to identify discrimination claims.
Sheehi, who has worked at GW since 2016, also taught a section of the Third Year Psychotherapy course in the Professional Psychology Program during the fall semester, according to the University’s schedule of classes. Sheehi is not scheduled to teach any classes this spring, according to the schedule of classes.
Sheehi did not return a request for comment.
Interim University President Mark Wrighton issued a statement to the GW community Friday saying a “third party” will investigate the claims, but he did not comment on the details of the allegations.
“I want to be clear that we reaffirm that the George Washington University strongly condemns antisemitism and hatred, discrimination and bias in all forms,” Wrighton said in the statement. “We remain committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment where all feel safe and free of harassment, hostility or marginalization.”
University spokesperson Julia Metjian declined to comment on Sheehi’s employment status. She also declined to comment on StandWithUs’ allegation that students who complained about Sheehi were subjected to “disciplinary proceedings” or what the third-party investigation of the complaint’s claims will entail.
Metjian deferred to Wrighton’s public statement in response to The Hatchet’s questions.
Progressive organizations, like Jewish Voice for Peace, have criticized StandWithUs for its reported ties to the Israel government through its work with the government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the country’s marketing materials.
“They are allegations and reflect the advocacy group’s perspective,” officials said in a now-expired Instagram story posted Thursday on GW’s official account. “The University will respond to OCR regarding any complaint it may receive from OCR.”
The complaint states that after a student said she was from Israel on the first day of the fall semester when Sheehi asked students in the course to share where they were from, Sheehi responded by saying, “It’s not your fault you were born in Israel.”
The complaint alleges that students continued to experience discriminatory actions at the Professional Psychology Program’s speaker event in September featuring a presentation from Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, the chair of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During the presentation, Shalhoub-Kevorkian said Israel uses its humanitarian aid to distract from its “oppressive power,” a statement that students believed played into antisemitic stereotypes of Jewish people “using money for nefarious purposes,” according to the complaint.
Shalhoub-Kevorkian also allegedly argued in support of Palestinians throwing stones as a form of “violent resistance” against Israel during her presentation.
“It examines the framing, production and performance of security regimes that create and encourage systems of racialized oppression,” Shalhoub-Kevorkian said of the presentation in the flier for the September speaker event. She did not return a request for comment.
In the class following the speaker event, one Jewish student told Sheehi the presentation made her feel “vulnerable and unsafe” because she believed it “targeted” Israeli and Jewish people, according to the complaint. Sheehi allegedly replied by saying “in no uncertain terms, anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.”
The complaint states that students in the program received an email from a Columbian College of Arts and Sciences vice dean Oct. 22, which stated officials were aware of the criticism of Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s presentation and planned to host a discussion between students and faculty to address students’ concerns.
“As an institution of higher learning, we encourage robust debate on issues that impact our global society, but it is our expectation that all community members engage respectfully with one another, even when discussing issues that implicate deeply held beliefs,” the email states, according to the complaint.
The complaint states the Jewish students also raised concerns to Sheehi about three class readings, which included references to racist treatment against Arab and Muslim people and the Israel-Palestine conflict. The students said the readings portrayed Israel and Jewish people in a negative light “within the greater context of antisemitism in the class,” according to the complaint.
The complaint states students were frustrated that there were reportedly no required class materials covering antisemitism in their Diversity I course.
The complaint alleges that Jewish students from the course shared their criticisms of Sheehi with a staff member from the Professional Psychology Program in early October. They asked to fulfill the program’s diversity course requirement through other means, submit their classwork to another professor and invite a speaker to the program to give a presentation on antisemitism, according to the complaint.
The complaint states that the staff member allegedly told the students that he would sit in on Sheehi’s course, allow the students to submit their course work to him and invite a guest speaker to host a presentation on antisemitism. Later that month, he allegedly walked back those promises.
StandWithUs alleges that a student met a CCAS dean Oct. 26 and shared a joint letter signed by other Jewish students in the course explaining their “grievances” with officials from the school. The student reportedly told the dean that Jewish upperclassmen in the program reported they had also experienced antisemitism in Sheehi’s course years prior, according to the complaint.
The CCAS dean allegedly described the conflict as the result of “deeply held beliefs” and told the student who met with the dean that they could submit a bias report. In a separate Oct. 30 email to the student, the dean said they could either remain enrolled in the course or withdraw.
The complaint alleges the program’s faculty voted to subject the students who shared criticism of Sheehi with program staff members and the dean to “disciplinary proceedings.” The faculty allegedly threatened to place a “permanent negative mark” on the students’ academic records if they refused to explain “what harm they caused.”
A staff member from the psychology program refused a student’s request to appeal the disciplinary proceedings, the complaint states.
Carly Gammill, the director of StandWithUs’ Center for Combating Antisemitism, said the OCR will decide if it has the authority to examine the complaint before determining if the allegations constitute a Title VI violation. If a Title VI violation is found, the office will launch an investigation and consider terminating federal funding or referring the case to the Department of Justice, according to the DOJ.
“If and when a full investigation is open, then we would be notified of that, the University would be notified of that,” she said. “Then their investigation would proceed according to their protocols.”
This article appeared in the January 17, 2023 issue of the Hatchet.
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https://imes.elliott.gwu.edu/events/gender-violence-and-the-geopolitics-of-feminism/
EVENT
Gender, Violence, and the Geopolitics of Feminism
6:00 – 7:00 PM
2 FEB 2023
WEBINAR
Join the WGSS program for our kickoff event of Spring 2023 to celebrate 50 years at GW! We will feature Lila Abu-Lughod and Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian who will share their expertise on “Gender, Violence, and Governance Feminism.”
After submitting your RSVP, you will receive the Zoom connection details via email the week of the event.
Speakers
- Lila Abu-Lughod is a Professor of Social Science within the Department of Anthropololgy at Columbia University in the city of New York. Her work, strongly ethnographic and mostly based in Egypt, has focused on three broad issues: the relationship between cultural forms and power; the politics of knowledge and representation; and the dynamics of women’s and human rights, global liberalism, and feminist governance of the Muslim world. Current research focuses on museum politics in Palestine and other settler colonies, security discourses and Islamophobia, and religion in the global governance of gender violence.
- Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is the Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Faculty of Law-Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Global Chair in Law- Queen Mary University of London. Her research focuses on trauma, state crimes and criminology, surveillance, gender violence, law and society. She studies the crime of femicide and other forms of gendered based violence, violence against children in conflict ridden areas, crimes of abuse of power in settler colonial contexts, surveillance, securitization and social control. the author of numerous books among them “Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: The Palestinian Case Study” published in 2010; “Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear”, published by Cambridge University Press, 2015.
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The George Washington University Professional Psychology Program is pleased to announce our September 2022 Brown Bag presentation
Sponsored by The Psychoanalysis and the Arab World Lab Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
Global Mental Health “Expertise”, “Therapeutic” Military Occupation and its Deadly Exchange
How can we map, connect and trace the securitization of transnational mental health “interventions” and “collaborations”? How can the suffering of refugees, the wounding following natural disasters, or the smell of
decomposing bodies mobilize broader international possibilities not only to promote the emotional well-being of those affected, but also to serve a securitized apparatus maintaining and exporting colonial occupation?
My talk parcels out the broad range of questions on global mental health, sovereignty, security, and the resulting “deadly exchange” that arise when analyzing the cunning of global mental health programs. It examines the framing, production and performance of security regimes that create and encourage systems of racialized oppression.
Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian- a Palestinian feminist, is the Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Faculty of Law-Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Global Chair in Law- Queen Mary University of London. Her research focuses on liberation psychosocial intervention, critical trauma studies, state crimes and criminology, securitized surveillance, gender violence, law and society and genocide studies. She is the author of numerous academic articles and books among them “Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: The Palestinian Case Study” published in 2010; “Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear”, published in 2015; “Incarcerated Childhood and the Politics of Unchilding”, published in 2019; all by Cambridge University Press. She also co-edited two books, the latest entitled: “
In-person and on Zoom Friday, September 30, 2022 2:00 PM — 3:50 PM 1957 E Street, NW, Room 113
When Politics are Sacralized: Comparative Perspectives on Religious
Claims and Nationalism”, CUP 2021, and is completing an edited volume with Lila Abu-Lughod and Rema
Hammami entitled: The Cunning of Gender Based Violence”, to be published with Duke University Press in 2023.
israel-academia-monitor.com 