Navigating Scholarship on Palestine: Resisting Suppression of Marginalized Narratives in the Academy

• In Event: Exploring Peacemaking, Discomfort, and Critical Pedagogies to Achieve Peace and Racial Justice

Abstract

As support for Palestinian rights continues to grow in the United States, so too have efforts to silence this discourse. In this paper, we employ critical autoethnography to examine the obstacles we have faced as faculty engaged in research as well as advocacy around Palestinian issues - specifically disability in Palestine. We describe how we have navigated the politics of higher education to access and learn from Palestinian stories, and to present our work on this politically charged topic. We leverage our personal and scholarly identities to engage with a controversial subject and to push back against resistance to the inclusion of marginalized voices in the academy.

Authors

• Lilly Padia, Erikson Institute

• Nancy Stern, City College of New York - CUNY

• Jan W. Valle, City College of New York - CUNY