READ | New Article by Nathaniel George, IAL Fellow 2020-21

“‘Our 1789’: The Transitional Program of the Lebanese National Movement and the Abolition of Sectarianism, 1975–77”

ABSTRACT Were the events of 1975–77 in Lebanon, commonly thought of today as an internecine sectarian war between Christians and Muslims, more comparable to the furies of revolution and counterrevolution? This article reframes the Lebanese National Movement's (LNM) “Transitional Program” as a revolutionary, anti-colonial, and radical republican challenge that sought to implement a new constitutional order based on popular sovereignty. Internally, it severed the link between sectarian affiliation and political representation that was the hallmark of the Lebanese regime. Externally, the program announced a commitment to popular struggle against imperially sustained settler colonialism in Palestine while calling into question the authoritarian practices of most regional regimes. Drawing from periodicals, memoirs, diplomatic sources, and interviews, this article considers the efforts of the LNM-PLO alliance to push the Transitional Program in the political sphere and on the battlefield. In turn, it demonstrates how the United States, Syria, Israel, and Lebanese counterrevolutionaries worked in concert to ensure that the sectarian regime would be preserved at the moment of its greatest challenge. Against a historiography that either dismisses the venture as predestined to fail or considers the period only within the shackles of post-defeat melancholia, it reevaluates the history of one of the most explicit emancipatory challenges to the Arab order.

Nathaniel George is Lecturer in Politics of the Middle East in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He was previously an Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Fellow at the Center for Palestine Studies and holds a PhD in History from Rice University.

CITATION Nathaniel George; “Our 1789”: The Transitional Program of the Lebanese National Movement and the Abolition of Sectarianism, 1975–77. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 1 August 2022; 42 (2): 470–488. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-9987957

IMAGE CREDIT “Against Imperialism and Zionism.” Lebanese National Movement, 1977. Clockwise from top left: Kamal Junblat, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Che Guevara, nineteenth-century Mount Lebanese peasant rebel Tanyus Shahin, Ho Chi Minh, Patrice Lumumba. Source: SignsOfConflict.com and the PSP Archives.

ATTEND | Insaniyyat Fall 2022 Talks: Crossing a Line w Amahl Bishara + Rhoda Kanaaneh

Crossing a Line: Laws, Violence, and Roadblocks to Palestinian Political Expression

Anthropologist Amahl Bishara in Conversation with Anthropologist Rhoda Kanaaneh

Wednesday, October 19th, at 12pm New York / 7PM Jerusalem

Palestinians living on different sides of the Green Line make up approximately one-fifth of Israeli citizens and about four-fifths of the population of the West Bank. In both groups, activists assert that they share a single political struggle for national liberation. Yet, obstacles inhibit their ability to speak to each other and as a collective. Geopolitical boundaries fragment Palestinians into ever smaller groups. Through ethnography in her new book (Stanford, 2022), Bishara enters these distinct environments for political expression and action of Palestinians who carry Israeli citizenship and Palestinians subject to Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, and considers how Palestinians are differently impacted by dispossession, settler colonialism, and militarism.

For more info about this event and other talks this semester, visit Insaniyyat’s website.

Amahl Bishara is Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology at Tufts University.

Rhoda Kanaaneh, an anthropologist and author of several books and articles in Palestinian anthropology, has taught anthropology and gender and sexuality studies at a number of universities, including NYU, Columbia University and most recently Fordham University.

APPLY | PARC 2023-2024 Research Fellowship and Travel Seminar Competitions

PARC 2023-2024 Research Fellowship and Travel Seminar Competitions

PARC announces its 11th National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions (FPIRI) competition for research in the humanities or research that embraces a humanistic approach and methods. Applicants must be scholars who have earned their PhD or completed their professional training. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or foreign nationals who have lived in the United States for the last three years. Fellowship awards are $5,000 per month for a minimum of four up to a maximum of ten months of research. Applications are due January 16, 2023.

NEH Research Announcement

PARC announces its 24th annual U.S. research fellowship competition for research that will contribute to Palestinian studies. Applicants must be doctoral students or scholars who have earned their PhD and must be U.S. citizens living in the United States or abroad. Any field of research will be considered, including the arts, humanities, social sciences, economics, law, public health, and applied sciences. Fellowship awards are up to a maximum of $9,000. Research must take place in Palestine, Israel, Jordan, or Lebanon. Applications are due January 9, 2023.

U.S. Research Announcement

PARC announces its 24th annual Palestinian research fellowship competition for research in the humanities and social sciences that will contribute to Palestinian Studies. Applicants must be Palestinian doctoral students or Palestinian scholars who have earned their PhD. Applicants may apply regardless of their country of residence or ID. Research must take place in Palestine, Jordan, or Lebanon. Fellowship awards up to a maximum of $6,000. Applications are due November 29, 2022.

Palestine Research Announcement

PARC announces its 14th annual Faculty Development Seminar (FDS) on Palestine competition for U.S. faculty members with a demonstrated interest in, but little travel experience to, Palestine. Applicants may come from any field of study. The program will host 12 U.S. faculty members to participate in roundtable discussions; visits to Palestinian universities, research institutes, and cultural institutions; tours of historic cities; as well as meetings with Palestinian colleagues. Applicants may apply for two program dates, April 24 - May 7 or May 15 - June 28, 2023, in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Applications are due December 19, 2022.

Faculty Development Seminar Announcement

For complete information on these fellowships, visit PARC's website.


CAORC Multi-Country Research Fellowship
The Multi-Country Research Fellowship enables U.S. scholars to carry out trans-regional and comparative research in countries across the network of Overseas Research Centers (ORCs), as well as other countries. The fellowship supports advanced research in the humanities, social sciences, and allied natural sciences for US doctoral candidates and scholars who have earned their PhD. Scholars must carry out research in two or more countries outside the US, at least one of which must host a participating ORC. (PARC is one of the qualifying ORCs for this fellowship.) Applicants must be U.S. citizens. Approximately nine awards of $12,000 will be granted.

The deadline for applications is December 8, 2022. To apply for this opportunity, click here.

APPLY | Palestine Health and Human Rights Post-Doctoral Fellowship

The Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights (PPHHR) at the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and the Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University is thrilled to announce its inaugural post- doctoral fellowship for 2023-2024.

Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights Overview
The Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights is an academic hub engaging in a broadly collaborative justice- and rights-based approach to foster Palestinian health through health research, education, and multidisciplinary community and academic engagement. Addressing the structural drivers of health inequities for Palestinians requires a multidisciplinary approach across a myriad of fields including health, human rights, international law, economics, politics, and history. The Palestine Program’s cross-disciplinary engagement seeks to produce scholarship and programming aimed at elucidating and addressing the structural determinants of health for Palestinians in the occupied territory, Israel, refugees, and the diaspora. Further information about the PPHHR can be found on the program’s website.

Health and Human Rights Fellowship
The PPHHR seeks a fellow whose work centers Palestinian health within a larger socio-political context. The fellowship will support a scholar working in the fields of medicine, public health, social sciences, and/or human rights law as it pertains to the health of Palestinians to produce innovative scholarship in their respective fields. The fellow will be responsible for contributing to the advancement of the Program’s mission of knowledge production, education, and community engagement in Palestinian health and human rights.

The Fellowship will be a one calendar year appointment with a flexible start date between March and September 2023. Fellows are required to spend the majority of the fellowship based in Boston at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights but may choose to begin the fellowship internationally and may travel as required for scholarly endeavors. We encourage Palestinians and citizens of all nationalities to apply. Full application details here.

APPLY | MESA Travel Grants

MESA Expands and Increases Travel Grants

MESA is pleased to announce increased financial support for students and others for whom cost concerns are a major factor in attending the MESA Annual Meeting. MESA is therefore doubling the award amount for graduate students attending the MESA 2022 conference in Denver.

The MESA Board of Directors and Secretariat are also expanding the Travel Grant Program to include contingent faculty as well as un/underemployed members, plus undergraduate students attending the CUMES workshop.

MESA first began offering $250 travel grants to graduate students in 2005, and will continue to offer those grants, now at an increased amount of $500.

The travel grants for all categories (contingent/precariously employed as well as undergraduate and graduate students) will be $500 in 2022.

Applications are due October 7, 2022.

ATTEND | Prospects for Development in Palestine, Symposium on 12 Sept 2022

Palestine Studies International Symposium: Prospects for Development in Palestine 2022

The symposium is an initiative sponsored by the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS), with support from the most prominent Palestine and Arab Studies research centers in universities from around the globe, to create a virtual space to come together to reflect, discuss, and contemplate on the results of new research on major Palestinian economic, social and political developments.

The purpose is to encourage candid and constructive, scholarly dialogue during a difficult stage in the Palestinian development process and in the history of the Palestinian people’s liberation movement from injustice. While these international centres of excellence educate, train and nurture scholarship in a range of disciplines pertinent to Palestinian development, MAS deploys the skills and expertise of researchers and academics in its applied policy research on the ground in Palestine.

The Symposium allows our community to meet and compare notes between theory and praxis. MAS would be happy to see this develop as an annual exercise, to examine other work of special importance going forward.

The hybrid Symposium will take place on Monday, Sep 12, 2022, 14:00 -17:15 Jerusalem time (07:00 - 08:15 EST).

It is co-sponsored by the European Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter, UK, the Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS, University of London, UK, the Center for Palestine Studies, Columbia University, USA, the Center for Middle East Studies, Brown University, USA and the Arab Center for Policy Research, Qatar.