"You can't hide the smoking gun of this genocide" w/ Sherene Seikaly and Tony Alessandrini
Makdisi Street
Bayt al Makdisi
4.9 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2025
⏱️ 81 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Note: we recorded this before the appalling AHA leadership veto on Jan. 17 of the democratic vote of its membership to condemn Israeli scholasticide
The brothers welcome Professor Sherene Seikaly, historian at University of California at Santa Barbara and editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and Anthony Alessandrini, Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College and of Middle Eastern Studies at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, to discuss the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA) engagement with the question of Palestine. We discuss the historic vote by the AHA membership on January 5, 2025 to condemn Israel's scholasticide in Gaza despite the deeply anti-Palestinian stance of the leadership of the AHA.
We discuss how this leadership mobilized fear, "anticipatory obedience" to avoid taking an ethical position against the obliteration of every Palestinian university in Gaza, despite explicitly condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. We also discuss how the MLA leadership has systematically undermined discussions and resolutions about Palestinian liberation. They also discussed how ethical scholars have confronted the extraordinary silence and complicity of the two major scholarly associations about the Gaza genocide.
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Date of recording: January 13, 2025.
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Music by Hadiiiiii
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Now, of course, when you looked out into the room, when we walked into that business meeting, |
| 0:05.6 | and I looked out into the room and I thought, we've got this room. |
| 0:10.0 | There was just a palpable enthusiasm in the room, you know? |
| 0:15.8 | And then when it passed, I looked around and people, I didn't know, people who weren't |
| 0:20.2 | scholars of our part of the |
| 0:21.5 | world who were crying, you know. And I think it is that multi-generational investment is because |
| 0:28.5 | people, you can't continue to hide the smoking gun of this genocide. All of us are watching it. |
| 0:35.0 | And when people watch it, they understand that if we're going to let this happen and stay silent, there is so much more yet to come for us if we remain and continue with this preparatory obedience. |
| 0:52.9 | Hello, everyone. |
| 1:08.5 | This is just a quick addendum to the pod that we recorded with Shredin Se Ali and Tony Alessandrini about the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association's dealing or lack of dealing with the question of Palestine. |
| 1:12.6 | Unfortunately, the American Historical Association's Council, let us say the leadership, the despotic leadership of the AHA, decided to veto |
| 1:19.6 | the resolution that was passed overwhelmingly by the membership present at the annual meeting |
| 1:26.6 | in early January. And the extraordinary thing at the annual meeting in early January. |
| 1:28.3 | And the extraordinary thing is the AHA Council deplores claimed in the veto to quote, |
| 1:34.3 | deplore any intentional destruction of Palestinian educational institutions, |
| 1:39.3 | libraries, universities, and archives in Gaza, but went on to veto this resolution in the sense that, |
| 1:46.0 | first of all, saying that not mentioning Israel, of course, and second of all, using this phrase, |
| 1:52.0 | the intentional destruction, so the assumption of course is that the American Historical Association's |
| 1:57.0 | leadership veto this resolution and allows and accepts and is okay with the |
| 2:02.4 | quote unintentional destruction of universities, libraries, archives, people, and so on and so forth. |
| 2:08.4 | It's extraordinarily disingenuous. |
| 2:10.9 | And so I just want to update you all. |
... |
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