What have we learned from Edward Said on the Question of Palestine?

On the twentieth anniversary of his passing, Francesca Albanese explores Said’s profound legacy by delving into Israel’s settler colonial rule in the occupied Palestinian territory. Through a rigorous examination of international law within the context of global empire, Albanese confronts Israel’s colonial injustice and charts a course of action for legal and humanist resistance. Embracing Said’s work within the legal discipline entails upholding the principles of human rights and dignity, challenging oppressive systems and advocating for justice.

Francesca Albanese delivers the lecture alongside respondent Nadia Abu El-Haj.

Francesca Albanese is an Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, and a Senior Advisor on Migration and Forced Displacement for the think tank Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD), where she co-founded the Global Network on the Question of Palestine (GNQP), a coalition of renowned professional and scholars engaged in/on Israel/Palestine. She has published widely on the legal situation in Israel/Palestine; her latest book, Palestinian Refugees in International Law (Oxford University Press, 2020), offers a comprehensive legal analysis of the situation of Palestinian refugees from its origins to modern-day reality. She regularly teaches and lectures on International Law and Forced Displacement in European and Arab universities, and speaks frequently at conferences and public events on the legal situation of Palestine. She worked for a decade as a human rights expert for the United Nations, including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees. In these capacities, she advised the UN, governments, and civil society across the Middle East, North Africa, and the Asia Pacific, on the enforcement of human rights norms, especially for vulnerable groups including refugees and migrants. She holds a Law Degree (with honors) from the University of Pisa and an LLM in Human Rights from the University of London, SOAS. She is currently completing her PhD in International Refugee Law at Amsterdam University Law Faculty.

Nadia Abu El-Haj is Ann Whitney Olin Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia. Among other publications, she is the author of Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (University of Chicago Press, 2001), which won the Albert Hourani Annual Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association in 2002; The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology (University of Chicago Press, 2012); and, most recently, Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America (Verso, 2022).

The annual Edward W Said London Lecture series is supported by The Mosaic Rooms/AM Qattan Foundation and the London Review of Books. Find out more about the series and previous speakers here: mosaicrooms.org/edward-w-said-london-lecture/

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