In four months we’ve witnessed several media narratives from a “War on Terror” discourse to one that abets genocide. This teach-in will address various aspects of the mainstream media coverage of the War on Gaza in the “West,” including traditional and new media. Our speakers will reflect on the performance of media as they navigate pressures from parent companies, editorial policies, political allegiances, and popular dissent. They will also analyze how the influential Sunday news TV shows in the United States discussed Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

Gaza in Context Collaborative Teach-In Series

We are together experiencing a catastrophic unfolding of history as Gaza endures a massive invasion of genocidal proportions. This accompanies an incessant bombardment of a population increasingly bereft of the necessities of living in response to the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7. The context within which this takes place includes a well-coordinated campaign of misinformation and the unearthing of a multitude of essentialist and reductionist discursive tropes that dehumanize Palestinians as the culprits, despite a context of structural subjugation and Apartheid, now a matter of consensus in the human rights movement.

The co-organizers below are convening weekly teach-ins and conversations on a host of issues that introduce our common university communities, educators, researchers, and students to the history and present of Gaza, in context.

Co-organizers: Arab Studies Institute, Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, George Mason University’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Program, Rutgers Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Birzeit University Museum, Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Brown University’s Center for Middle East Studies, University of Chicago’s Center for Contemporary Theory, Brown University’s New Directions in Palestinian Studies, Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies, Georgetown University-Qatar, American University in Cairo’s Alternative Policy Studies, Middle East Studies’ Global Academy, University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, CUNY’s Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center, George Mason University’s Center for Global Islamic Studies, University of Illinois Ghicago’s Arab American Cultural Center, George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies

Laila Al-Arian is a Washington DC-based journalist and the executive producer of Fault Lines, an award-winning current affairs program on Al Jazeera English. She has produced documentaries on subjects ranging from the Trump administration’s Muslim ban to the impact of the heroin epidemic on children and an investigation into factory conditions producing garments for Walmart and Gap in Bangladesh. For her work, she has been honored with two News and Documentary Emmys, a George Polk Award, Peabody Award, a Robert F Kennedy Award in journalism, Overseas Press Club award and has been nominated for 19 News and Documentary Emmys. She is co-author of the book Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians.

Adel Iskandar is an Associate Professor of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver/Burnaby, Canada. He is the author, co-author, and editor of several works including “Egypt In Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution” (AUCP/OUP); “Al-Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism” (Basic Books); “Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation” (University of California Press); “Mediating the Arab Uprisings” (Tadween Publishing); and “Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring” (Palgrave Macmillan). Iskandar’s work deals with media, identity and politics; and he has lectured extensively on these topics at universities worldwide. His forthcoming publications are two monographs, one addressing the political role of memes and digital satire and the other about contemporary forms of imperial transculturalism. Iskandar’s engaged participatory research includes supporting knowledge production through scholarly digital publishing such as “Jadaliyya” and academic podcasting such as “Status.” Prior to his arrival at SFU, Iskandar taught at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the Communication, Culture, and Technology Program at Georgetown University, in Washington, DC.

William Lafi Youmans is an Associate Professor at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs. He is also the director of the Institute of Public Diplomacy and Global Communication at GWU. Broadly interested in questions of transnationalism, power and communication, his primary research interests include global news, media industries, technology, law and politics.

Bassam Haddad (Moderator) is Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the acclaimed series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam serves on the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and is Executive Producer of Status Audio Magazine and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA’s Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book titled Understanding the Syrian Calamity: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).