The Neck and the Sword: Palestine’s Unfinished Struggle: Rashid Khalidi and Tariq Ali in Conversation with Nadia Abu El Haj and Marc Lamont Hill
Since 2023, the world has witnessed the decimation of Gaza, the slaughter of its residents, and the terrorization of Palestinians in the West Bank. As a consequence, support for the Palestinian struggle, which for decades has been shunned and maligned, has swelled to an unprecedented level across the US, Europe, and beyond. What future now awaits Palestine?
The Neck and the Sword provides an essential overview of Palestinian intellectual and political history. There is biting criticism of US foreign policy, as well as insightful geopolitical analysis. Refusing to shy away from controversy, Khalidi and Ali discuss issues as wide-ranging as Palestinian resistance strategy, the failures of neighboring Arab states to support Palestine, and Western complicity in the ongoing genocide. This is crucial reading for anyone committed to Palestinian liberation.
Rashid Khalidi is the author of the bestselling Hundred Years War on Palestine, as well as Palestinian Identity, Brokers of Deceit, and The Iron Cage. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and many other journals. He is the Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University in New York and former editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Tariq Ali is a writer and historian. He is a longstanding member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and the author of over 50 books on world history and politics, including Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity, Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq, and The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad.
Nadia Abu El-Haj is the Barbara Chamberlain and Helen Chamberlain Josefsberg ’30 Professor of Anthropology in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies, and Chair of the Governing Board of the Society of Fellows/Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. She also serves as Vice President and Vice Chair of the Board at The Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington DC. The recipient of numerous awards, including from the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner Gren Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Harvard Academy for Area and International Studies, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, she is the author of numerous journal articles published on topics ranging from the history of archaeology in Palestine to the question of race and genomics today. Abu El-Haj has published two books: Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (2001), which won the Albert Hourani Annual Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association in 2002, and The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology (2012).
Marc Lamont Hill is a Presidential Professor of Urban Education and Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is a cultural anthropologist, critical policy scholar, and radical educator whose work explores issues of race, education, citizenship, and state violence in the United States and Middle East. Hill is the author of seven books, including Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics. He is also the host of UpFront on Al Jazeera English.
This event is organized by the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics and Verso Books. It is free and open to the public.