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Maura Finkelstein, "Academic Freedom in a Time of Genocide"

Tuesday, October 29, 2024
12:30-2:00 PM
2239 Lane Hall Map
Tuesday, 29 October 2024, 12:30-2pm. 2239 Lane Hall, 204 S. State St.

Trained as an anthropologist (M.A., Columbia; PhD., Stanford), Finkelstein has recently come into public attention as, in the words of an Intercept article title, “the first tenured professor to be fired for Pro-Palestine speech” (26 September 2024). Finkelstein, who is Jewish, has long supported Palestine—in publication, on social media, in the classroom—even as she was coming up for tenure at Muhlenberg College. The story of her unprecedented firing, based on a repost of a Palestinian poet, was subsequently picked up by The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed.

Dr. Finkelstein’s talk will be based on both her publications (especially her article “What is a Classroom For? Teaching the Anthropology of Palestine,” which appeared in Society for Cultural Anthropology [2019]) and her recent experience. After her talk, she will be joined by respondents Professor Rebekah Modrak and Professor Emeritus Alan Wald.

Maura Finkelstein, author of The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai (Duke University Press, 2019), ethnographer and newly independent scholar. Her writing has appeared in Anthological Quarterly, City and Society, Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology Now, Post45, Electric Literature, Allegra Lab, Red Pepper Magazine, the Scottish Left Review, The Markaz Review, Mondoweiss, and Al Jazeera and is forthcoming in The Anthropology of Work Review (AWR), American Anthropologist, and Cultural Anthropology.

Respondents: Professor Rebekah Modrak (University of Michigan Stamps School of Art), who just published a book on censorship in education, Trouble in Censorville: The Far Right's Assault on Public Education and the Teachers Who are Fighting Back (2024); and Professor Emeritus Alan Wald (University of Michigan, English and American Culture), who is an expert on Anti-Zionism in the US—and why it's not hate speech—and the historical experience of free speech/academic freedom and political protest.

Registration Requested
Building: Lane Hall
Website:
Event Type: Lecture / Discussion
Tags: Activism, American Culture, arab american studies, Arab And Muslim American Studies, Diversity Equity and Inclusion, Social Justice, Women's Studies
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives (OAMI), Arab Student Association, Department of Middle East Studies, Department of American Culture, Department of Anthropology, Arab and Muslim American Studies (AMAS), Latina/o Studies, Native American Studies, UM AAUP (University of Michigan chapter of the American Association of University Professors), The Muslim Coalition