ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

History of Science After Gaza: From Complicity to Accountability?

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

English Abstract

This roundtable investigates the politics of our discipline in light of the Gaza genocide and ongoing Nakba; our intention is to spark a difficult but necessary and long overdue conversation among peers. It examines the ways in which the history of science has become entangled with the Zionist project of colonisation, dispossession, and military occupation in Palestine. Aspiring to a more just future, we collectively reconsider our positionality and responsibility as scholars. Responding to the theme of the conference, we reflect on how a simple shift in perspective, from imperial to indigenous, can centre historically marginalised agents and their epistemic resistance to settler-colonial regimes of knowledge and power. By taking us back to 1917, when Balfour, chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, famously declared Britain’s support for “Zionist aspirations” in Palestine, even the location of the conference seems to invite such a reflection. More than a century later we ask: What does our discipline owe to Israel-based journals, collections, and prizes that are embedded in institutions that systematically discriminate against Palestinians, yet speak on their behalf and produce knowledge about their areas? If decolonization is not a metaphor and the history of science is serious about decolonizing itself, then we must reckon with the ongoing colonization of Palestine and our own complicity with it, including through silence. In this spirit, we wish to explore ethical alternatives to the status quo, from supporting Palestinian colleagues in meaningful and sustainable ways to reconsidering collaboration with institutions that do not respect the dignity and rights of Palestinians.

Sub Unit

• Roundtable

Chair

• Minakshi Menon, McGill University

Participants

• Dana Nabulsi, Harvard University

• Joelle Abi-Rached, American University of Beirut

• Layth Hanbali, Université Libre de Bruxelles

• Chris Sandal-Wilson, University of Exeter

• Sal Suri, Harvard University

• Lydia Wilson, University of Cambridge

Session Organizers

• Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, MPIWG

• Abigail Alling Taylor-Roth, University of Chicago

• Petter Hellström, Uppsala University