Segregation in Palestine and Jim Crow America — “New Haven itself is a crime scene, the site of historic and continuing racism, segregation, and social inequality.” So wrote a scholar of the city at the turn of the twenty-first century. This observation links America’s segregated past to its nominally desegregated present: anyone who travels from the New Haven…

How Langston Hughes saw the Soviet Union and how it changed my life — We are all colonized.— marginalia in a library copy of Dominance Without Hegemony by Ranajit Guha, Indian historian The reader of Langston Hughes’s writings on the Soviet experiment is bound to be confused. In the 1930s, during the peak of Stalinist repression, Hughes produced volumes praising the Soviet Union, particularly…

Last summer, US Congresswoman Rep. Pramila Jayapal said in public what everyone who cares about what is happening in Israel and Palestine has known for years. Addressing the Netroots Nation conference in Chicago on 15 July 2022, she said “we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is…

What you can learn from the injustices done to other writers — Having a literary agent is the dream of many writers. Countless blog posts, forums, and writers’ handbooks begin with the question: How do you get a literary agent? …

Free speech and the struggle for collective liberation — Since the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, Palestinian students in Israel have come under brutal attack. On 28 October, thirty Palestinian students were locked in their rooms in Israel’s Netanya College, while their dormitories were stormed by Israeli students chanting “Death to Arabs.” Since then, over 74 students at…

Concerning the persecution of a Palestinian-Israeli professor Note from author: This letter was sent to the President and Rector of Hebrew University of Jerusalem on 3 November 2023. I provide it here to raise awareness of the issue, both of Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s persecution, and of the broader plight of Palestinian…

A historical enquiry — There was a time — and it was not that long ago — when “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was simply the most common and memorable chant in the repertoire of pro-Palestine protestors. In 2022, the website of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) described the chant…

A conversation about the book Erasing Palestine with Marc Steiner and Rebecca Ruth Gould — Note from author: the following is the transcript of an interview I did with the amazing Marc Steiner for the Real News Network in August 2023. The situation has obviously got much worse since then. …

How a new definition of antisemitism is silencing criticism of Israel — In 2016, the UK government became the first country in the world to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. As universities began to feel the pressure to adopt the definition themselves, academics were told that it would not infringe in any way on their academic freedom…