Palestine, Palestinians, Denialism, and the Question of Genocide

ACMCU, in partnership with the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the African Studies Program, hosted a conversation with University of California Berkeley Professor of Middle East History and Chancellor’s Chair Dr. Ussama Makdisi on April 30, 2024. Dr. Makdisi was previously Professor of History and the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University in Houston. He is the author of Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World (University of California Press, 2019) and Faith Misplaced: the Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001 (Public Affairs, 2010).
Dr. Makdisi’s talk draws attention to a long history of the denial of Palestinian history and humanity. It charts not only how Palestinians were removed from serious ethical and political consideration, but the implications of this erasure. It examines how the consolidation of philozionism across the liberal West depended on and contributed to this fundamental and ongoing dehistoricization of the Palestinians.