Lecture | LUCIS Keynote
The Palestinian Condition, Academic Freedom, and the Production of History
- Beshara Doumani
- Date
- Thursday 13 November 2025
- Time
- Location
-
Kamerlingh Onnes Building
Steenschuur 25
2311 ES Leiden - Room
- Lorrentzzaal (A1.44)
Registration
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Register for this eventThe ongoing genocide in Gaza has globalized the Palestine question and made it into a litmus test for contestations about the potential futures of a world order seemingly on the brink of collapse. Ironically, the modern history of the Palestinians is largely absent from discussions of the Palestine question. This talk reflects on the intellectual and political stakes of writing Palestinians into history, and on the growing field of Palestinian studies at a time when academic freedom and the very project of the modern university system are under severe threat.
The keynote is followed by drinks.
About the speaker
Beshara Doumani is Professor of History and the Mahmoud Darwish Chair for Palestinian Studies at Brown University. His research focuses on communities, places, and time periods marginalized by mainstream scholarship on the early modern and modern Middle East. He also writes on academic freedom, the politics and ethics of knowledge production, and the Palestinian condition. His books include Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, and Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean: A Social History. He is working on a modern history of the Palestinians through the social life of stone.
Doumani served as President of Birzeit University in Palestine from 2021 to 2023. He is the founding director of Brown’s Center for Middle East Studies (CMES), and founder of New Directions for Palestinian Studies, a CMES initiative.
