Israel, Palestine, and the Wars in the Middle East: An Open Campus Discussion

Description

The Oct. 7 attack and its aftermath threaten to spread to ever-wider regional wars. Slogans and accusations fly on social media and at demonstrations. This discussion offers an opportunity for Johns Hopkins community members of all viewpoints, opinions, and beliefs to hear from a variety of experts, express their own views, listen to others' views, and ask questions.

Four Johns Hopkins experts with differing viewpoints will offer short introductions, moderated by Niloofar Haeri, professor of anthropology and program chair for Islamic studies, and Andrew Perrin, SNF Agora professor of sociology, and then the microphones will be open for comments and questions from any and all Johns Hopkins community members.

This event is co-sponsored by the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute and the SNF Agora Institute. All are welcome.

Panelists:

• Adria Lawrence—associate professor of international studies and political science. Her research examines violent and nonviolent conflict in colonial and authoritarian regimes. She is the author of Imperial Rule and the Politics of Nationalism: Anti-Colonial Protest in the French Empire.
• Steven David—professor of political science. His work focuses on international relations with an emphasis on the Global South, security, and American foreign policy. He is the author of three books and numerous articles that have appeared in Foreign Affairs, International Security, World Politics, and Israel Affairs. David is currently working on a book examining existential threats to Israel in light of the lessons of the destructions of the ancient Israelite kingdoms.
• Robert O. Freedman—visiting professor of political science where he teaches courses on the Arab-Israeli conflict and on Russian foreign policy. He is the author of five books and the editor of 14 books, most recently Israel Under Netanyahu. He is a commentator on NPR, the Voice of America, and the BBC and serves as a consultant to the State Department and the CIA. He has held talks with Palestinian leaders Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, Tzipi Livni, and Ehud Olmert in pursuit of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• Aamir Mufti—professor of English. Mufti is a scholar of the history and legacies of the British Empire in South Asia and of the crises contained within the so-called Jewish Question in Europe since the 18th century. How the figure of the migrant impacts the project of European unification is one of his main preoccupations at the moment, in a book project called Strangers in Europa.