Announcing “Settler Colonialism and Genocide: From Palestine to Turtle Island”, with J. Kēhaulani Kauanui and Rashid Khalidi. Introduced and moderated by Sean Jacobs, Mellon Initiative Fellow 2024/25.
We are thrilled to announce the first Mellon Initiative guest speaker event of the academic year. The talk, “Settler Colonialism and Genocide: From Palestine to Turtle Island”, will feature dialogue between Professors J. Kēhaulani Kauanui (Princeton University) and Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University). Sean Jacobs, Mellon Initiative Fellow 2024/25, will moderate the discussion.
Both scholars are deeply engaged in research focusing on issues of settler colonialism and decolonization, indigeneity, race and ethnicity, nationalism and national identity, and other critical topics. This talk aims to bridge their work and explore connections between Palestine and Turtle Island.
SPEAKERS
J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Ph.D. (Kanaka Maoli/Native Hawaiian) is Eric and Wendy Schmidt Professor of Indigenous Studies, Professor of Anthropology in the Effron Center for the Study of America and the Department of Anthropology at Princeton University. Her research focuses on Native American and global indigeneities, settler colonialism and decolonization, race and ethnicity, gender & sexuality, and anarchist politics. She is the author of Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (Duke University Press 2008); and Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism (Duke University Press 2018). She also has an edited book titled, Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders (University of Minnesota Press 2018) which includes select interviews drawing from her vast archive of a public affairs radio program, “Indigenous Politics: from Native New England and Beyond,” which was produced in the studios of WESU (Middletown, CT) from 2007-2013, and aired on over a dozen stations through the Pacifica Radio Network. Her work is widely published in a range of academic journals and edited books, and she also co-edits a book series on “Critical Indigeneities” for the University of Carolina Press. Kauanui is one of the six co- founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, established in 2008. And she is the recipient of the Western History Association’s 2022 American Indian History Lifetime Achievement Award.
Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies Emeritus at Columbia University. He received a B.A. from Yale University in 1970, and a D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1974. He has taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, and the University of Chicago. He is a past President of the Middle East Studies Association, and was editor and then co-editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Khalidi is the author of: The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 [2020: MEMO Book Award]; Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. has Undermined Peace in the Middle East [2013: Lionel Trilling Book Award; MEMO Book Award]; Sowing Crisis: American Dominance and the Cold War in the Middle East [2009]; The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood [2006]; Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East [2004]; Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness [1997: Middle East Studies Association’s Albert Hourani Prize; reissued with a new introduction in 2010]; Under Siege: PLO Decision-making during the 1982 War [1986; reissued with a new preface in 2014]; and British Policy towards Syria and Palestine, 1906-1914 [1980]. His books have been translated into a dozen languages. He has written over 100 scholarly articles, and is the co-editor of Palestine and the Gulf [1982]; The Origins of Arab Nationalism [1991]; and The Other Jerusalem: Rethinking the History of the Sacred City [2020].
Sean Jacobs is a professor of international affairs at The New School and publisher of Africa Is a Country. He was born and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. His Mellon Initiative Fellowship project focuses on developing a handbook to provide foundational resources for research on decolonizing international affairs and reshape how the discipline is taught.
Presented by Mellon Initiative for Inclusive Faculty Excellence in the Office of the Provost, The New School.
