CHALLENGES AND INFLUENCES OF THE "AMERICANIZATION" OF PALESTINIAN EDUCATION: A CASE STUDY OF AL-QUDS UNIVERSITY'S AMERICAN STUDIES DEPARTMENT

Abstract

Palestinian education has often been in the spotlight for the role it plays in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. At the college and university level student politics have often played an integral role in shaping Palestinian society. In 2001, a unique attempt was made to establish an American Studies Institute on the main campus of Al-Quds University. It attracted a microcosm of Palestinian professionals to its graduate program, many of whom were active in various government branches of the Palestinian Authority. However, numerous obstacles resulted in a decline in the program's effectiveness. As part of the larger "Americanization" milieu, the university's experience can serve as a bellwether and instructive example of issues facing Palestinian society, particularly education, government institutions, the security sector, and NGOs in the last decade since the end of the Second Intifada. The experiences of the students have implications for Palestinian-American relations in the future. The research is based on first-hand experience, interviews, and coursework conducted by the author.

Headnote

Palestinian education has often been in the spotlight for the role it plays in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. At the college and university level student politics have often played an integral role in shaping Palestinian society. In 2001, a unique attempt was made to establish an American Studies Institute on the main campus of Al-Quds University. It attracted a microcosm of Palestinian professionals to its graduate program, many of whom were active in various government branches of the Palestinian Authority. However, numerous obstacles resulted in a decline in the program's effectiveness. As part of the larger "Americanization" milieu, the university's experience can serve as a bellwether and instructive example of issues facing Palestinian society, particularly education, government institutions, the security sector, and NGOs in the last decade since the end of the Second Intifada. The experiences of the students have implications for Palestinian-American relations in the future. The research is based on first-hand experience, interviews, and coursework conducted by the author.

INTRODUCTION

Palestinian education has often been in the spotlight for the role it plays in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. At the college and university level student politics have often played an integral role in shaping Palestinian society. In 2001, a unique attempt was made to establish an American Studies Institute on the main campus of Al-Quds University. It attracted a microcosm of Palestinian professionals to its graduate program, many of whom were active in various government branches of the Palestinian Authority. However, numerous obstacles resulted in a decline in the program's effectiveness. As part of the larger "Americanization" milieu, the university's experience can serve as a bellwether and instructive example of issues facing Palestinian society, particularly education, government institutions, the security sector, and NGOs in the last decade since the end of the Second Intifada. The experiences of the students have implications for Palestinian-American relations in the future. The research is based on first hand experience, interviews, and coursework conducted by the author.

PALESTINIAN EDUCATION: HISTORY AND CORE ISSUES

The education system in the West Bank today owes much of its culture and status to its roots in previous eras. In the Ottoman period, the Muslim population of the Levant was woefully underserved by a state school system. In urban centers like Jerusalem, it has been estimated only one in seven children had access to education.1 In the area that became British Mandate Palestine, where there were more than 1,000 villages, there were only 95 government-run elementary and secondary schools by 1914 and only 15 percent (12,000 students) of the population was receiving an education.2

Into this deficiency stepped Christian missionary schools. Building on models from Africa, Asia and the Americas, they sought to provide education to the Christian minorities and other populations, particularly Muslim elites. The Bishop Gobat School, which was founded in 1847, educated many of the members of the Husseini family in Jerusalem, for instance.3 Growing out of these Anglican, Lutheran, Greek-Orthodox, and Catholic efforts, these schools formed the origins of the higher education system.4 Bethlehem University, which was founded in 1973, traces its origins to the Catholic La Salle Brothers school of 1893. Birzeit University was founded first as a girls' school by a Palestinian Christian. It became a college in 1942 and later a university in 1975.

For our purposes, what is interesting is that the American influence in education in the region has been profound, especially at the American University of Beirut (originally the Syrian Protestant College in 1866) and the American University of Cairo (founded by the Presbyterian Church in 1919). From the beginning, these educational institutions played a major role in sculpting the political elites of the region, and engendering aspects of political activism, an issue widely covered by George Antonius.5 These campuses became hotbeds of new ideas in the 1960s, providing a platform to foment new nationalist, socialist, and communist ideas.6 Professor Muhammad Dajani Daoudi, who founded the American Studies Institute at Al-Quds University in 2001, studied at AUB and became involved with Fatah and the PLO during those years as a student activist.

In the West Bank, universities and the student politics in them have played a key role in the conflict with Israel. Ido Zelkovitz notes that Birzeit University "describes its foundation as an active aspect of the Palestinian struggle."7 The PLO initially feared an independent Palestinian education system, but in the 1970s, two major institutions were founded (An-Najah National University8 in Nablus in 1977 and Hebron University in 1971).

AL-QUDS UNIVERSITY AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE PALESTINIANS

Al-Quds University was founded with a clear connection to the top Palestinian leadership and had close support from many Palestinian Jerusalemite elite families.9 It also had a very American educational grounding in the backgrounds of its supporters. Its founding board of directors included Saeb Erakat, the Palestinian chief negotiator born in Jericho in 1955. His undergraduate and M.A. studies were completed at San Francisco State University. Hatem Husseini, the first president of the al-Quds University, was a professor at Shaw University, and lived in the United States for 25 years.10 Sari Nusseibeh, who served as the president of the al-Quds for many years, received his Ph.D. from Harvard.11

In his memoir, Nusseibeh discusses the themes of freedom that he sought to inculcate in students: blasphemy, sexual freedom, challenging Israel's military closure orders. For him there was an intertwining of the Western-especially American-model and the Palestinian struggle.12 His support for such freedoms often earned Nusseibeh the opprobrium of the more nationalist Palestinian society. A photograph of him after he was attacked by students still hangs in the American Studies department at Al-Quds. His memoirs are full of references to Woodrow Wilson and Thomas Jefferson as models for Al-Quds University: "Jefferson's academy flashed through my mind. I had to laugh at myself for making such a far flung connection."13 The University contained a "student body swarming with Hamas supporters."

During the 1990s and early 2000s, the Abu Dis campus of the university found itself once again at the forefront of the political situation. For a while, there was talk of Abu Dis becoming an administrative capital of the Palestinian state-the campus, which overlooks Jerusalem, would thus be intertwined with governing institutions. The Second Intifada changed that landscape; Israel's security fence was eventually built directly opposite the campus' main entrance.14 Israeli army and police raids, clashes with students, and running battles with rock throwing and tear gas are an almost monthly occurrence on the campus.15 The campus remained devoted to its nationalist credentials, becoming home in 2007 to the Abu Jihad Museum for Prisoner Movement Affairs, a multi-story museum funded by donations from Kuwait that highlights Palestinian prisoners who are depicted as victims of Israeli policy, rather than perpetrators of terrorism.

In the 1990s, a more rose colored picture of Palestinian-Israeli peace was imagined. "To bolster my case that our two peoples, and the Americans, were joined by common interests, I pointed to a flourishing cooperation between Al-Quds University and Bar-Ilan University.... Al-Quds had also opened an American Studies Center with the financial backing of the U.S. Embassy....at our new American Studies program I had the pleasure of watching our students struggle through The Federalist Papers," recalled Nusseibeh.16 The guiding force behind this new program was Professor Mohammed Dajani, who holds two Ph.D.s from American institutions.17

The concept of American studies that Dajani and his colleagues developed grew out of his support for "moderation"18 and the peace and conflict resolution activism he was involved in during the 1990s and 2000s. It is interesting that the "Americanization" of the Palestinians was taking place in this context at precisely the same time that the brutality of the Second Intifada destroyed relations between Palestinian academics and Israeli institutions. Almost all contacts that had once existed in the 1990s evaporated. Many Palestinian academics embraced the concept of BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions), arguing that Israel's unending military administration was a constant attack on their academic work as well. Student politics, which had always been a Palestinian bellwether, continued to dominate the national narrative. For instance, in the absence of Palestinian legislative elections since 2006, student unions have still held elections. Students play a major role in clashes with Israeli forces.19

The "Americanization" of Palestinian affairs has several facets that affect higher education. U.S. aid has supported thousands of scholarships for Palestinian students.20 U.S. aid built the road that runs via Azariya to Bethlehem and which also has a spur running to the Abu Dis campus. In addition, over the years, U.S. colleges and universities have sought to partner with Palestinian institutions. The Arab-American University in Jenin is a result of a 2000 partnership with California State University, Stanislaus campus. Al-Quds University has a small internal campus for Bard College of Arts and Sciences, which hosted its second graduation ceremony in 2015.21 The American Studies department had partnerships with Brandeis and Oberlin. Syracuse University also maintained a partnership with Al-Quds through 2013.22

One of the key aspects of the American Studies program was that it provided an educational padding to the work of the United States Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC). The unique American-led mission was begun in 2005 ostensibly as part of the "Roadmap for Peace" during the George W. Bush administration.23 Jim Zanotti's Congressional Research paper on the mission is clearer on its reasons. "Since Hamas gained control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Lt. General Keith Dayton, head of the USSC since November 2005... have helped with the 'gendarmerie-style' training of West Bank based PA security personnel."24 The concept was to train Palestinian forces to serve the Palestinian Authority institutions now in the hands of Mahmoud Abbas, and through "training, reform and equipping," help to stem the tide of Hamas' rise.

Like Nusseibeh's attempts to create an open American-style liberal campus atmosphere, with critique and an open society, the attempt to create an Americanized security force has been met with critique that a "police state" collaborating with the Israelis was being established.25 There is also an accusation that there has been a decline in quality of the forces.26 Ironically, some in Israel worried "Dayton's army" would turn its guns on Israelis eventually.

AMERICAN STUDIES: A CASE STUDY IN PALESTINIAN HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE SHADOW OF AMERICAN VALUES

The American Studies department at Al-Quds University provided an M.A. level education to students who could choose between a thesis or non-thesis track. They took required classes in American democracy, U.S. foreign policy, culture, and electives in themes ranging from American movies to constitutional law. The caliber of students, although not up to Western university standards, was unique because Palestinian civil society and government employees were over-represented. Students came from the finance ministry, office of the Palestinian president, negotiator, and particularly from the security services-including preventative security and the police. Women tended to be under-represented in the program, averaging less than 20 percent of those attending class. Almost all of the students were supporters of Fatah, even though they came from diverse areas of the West Bank-from Yatta in the south to Qalqilya. Al-Quds University student politics, which used to be dominated by Hamas, has been dominated by Fatah in the last rounds of student elections from 2009 to 2015.

To give an idea of the general trend in the background of the students, one woman was born in Ramallah and grew up during the Oslo years. Like women from many elite Muslim families, she attended the Catholic Rosary Sisters school and obtained a B.Sc. in computer engineering. In 2005, she attended undergraduate studies in Chicago, returning to do an M.A. She described herself as having a "passionate interest in taking a leadership role in crafting closer relations between the PA and the U.S. government, a noble and difficult goal."27 After completing her Al-Quds M.A., she volunteered with a foreign NGO to aid Palestinian youth looking for work, and then she leftfor the United States to continue her studies.

The program was thus a window as much into their worldview as their interest in America as an inspiration model. That may seem counter-intuitive in a Palestinian society that has a dim view of the United States, tends to equate the United States with Israel, and sees U.S. policy in the Middle East as generally anti-Palestinian and destructive. In one Pew survey, 79 percent of Palestinians had an unfavorable view of the United States (Jordan and Egypt were higher with 81 and 85 percent), compared to Israel which had an 83 percent favorable view of the United States.28 Camille Mansour argued in 2005 that although Palestinians had a dim view of U.S. policy, the Palestinian leadership supported closer ties with the United States-particularly since the 1990s-and Palestinians have positive views of concepts of freedom or technological success that the United States represents.29

This attitude was borne out by the students in American studies. Almost without exception, they expressed an admiration for the United States and a fascination with its history and guiding principles. Students frequently looked to their own society for comparisons with U.S. examples. For instance, when discussing the judiciary in the United States and the right to a jury trial, most students felt that the local judicial system had corruptions built into it and that tribal or clan politics among Palestinians frustrated justice.

Exploring issues relating to U.S. law enforcement and the right to search and seizure, students in the security services expressed frustration with the requirements the U.S. system imposed. "As a police officer I should get warrants and this warrant shall not be issued except with probable cause describing the place to be searched," one student parroted back, putting himself in the position of the officer, but also saying that although this was an ideal, it presented problems in his work.30 Nevertheless, the student-who is high ranking officer-concluded "a man's home is his castle."31

Palestinian students saw many similarities between American conservative cultural values and their own. For instance the "right to bear arms," which is unique in the United States compared to other Western states, resonated with Palestinians, who felt a person should be able to defend oneself, although they noted that gang violence and personal or family feuds could result in bloodshed. Palestinians identified strongly with the U.S. sense of individualism and private property. They were surprised to learn the United States had banned alcohol sales in the 1930s, and felt kinship with an America that tended to be more religious than European nations and that debated issues such as abortion and gay rights more vigorously than other Western countries. Birth control is a sensitive subject and abortion is primarily illegal in the PA. Although students are familiar with the concept of homosexuality, the notion that there could be gay marriage always provoked snickering and laughter. Female students seemed more amenable to the concept, and one male student intimated after class that he was a homosexual and wished he could move to the United States.

For these students one of the main issues they couldn't understand was why the United States, which for them seemed in some ways to have more in common with Palestinian society than Israeli society, would ally itself with Israel. The commonalities Palestinian students found with the United States ran the gamut from identification with U.S. style capitalism, to the U.S. concept of the frontier (in Islamic culture the area between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb), and U.S. architectural icons such as Frank Lloyd Wright. When they read from the 1989 monograph Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer, they marveled at the culture of the border country where settlers had mottos such as "put the stranger near the danger" or "better a living dog than a dead lion." The latter phrase, apparently common in parts of eighteenth-century America, rung true to a 2013 class. "Are you sure these are not Arabs," inquired a student.32 The phrase is of course ironic in a culture where "dog" is considered a filthy animal and an insult, whereas "lion" is considered a positive attribute, as it surely was in the U.S. south when the phrase was common. For Frank Lloyd Wright, Palestinians admired the individual style over the brutalist uniform construction of Israelis, which they identified with the settlements.

The U.S. declaration of independence, founding fathers, and bill of rights were of interest to Palestinian students. "He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures... quartering large bodies of troops among us," a sentence from the list of complaints at the end of the Declaration of Independence, brought about a chorus of support in one class. "How can the U.S. support Israel then," asked a student, claiming the Israeli army forced Palestinians to open their homes to Israeli soldiers.33 Reading Patrick Henry's famous quote "give me liberty or give me death," Palestinian students connected it to the adoration for martyrs in their own society. Reading the narrative of John Brown, the U.S. abolitionist who led a raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859, the students were interested to read the Union Army marching song, "John Brown's Body," for its religious imagery. "His body lies mouldering [sic] in the grave, his soul is marching on, he's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord." So why does America object to our Fatah banners and martyrs, the students wondered.

Palestinian students sometimes connected their own situation to either the Americans who fought the British or to the situation faced by African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. Many of them showed a willingness to question their own society's norms, such as the position of women, the presence of conspiracy theories, and to support continued peace talks with Israel, despite their view that Israel was an illegitimate state oppressing them.

THE CHALLENGES TO PALESTINIAN EDUCATION AND "AMERICANIZATION"

On November 18, 2013, Brandeis University suspended its partnership with the American studies department and Al-Quds University. The reason was a demonstration on November 5 by members of Islamic Jihad. Brandeis claimed the students had paraded and done the "traditional Nazi salute."34 The students had no connection to the American Studies department, and since most of the students in American studies at the time were Fatah supporters, they did not support the demonstration. Brandeis demanded a condemnation from Nusseibeh, but instead al-Quds released a statement condemning "Jewish extremists" and discussing "freedom."35

This incident flustered the students who could not understand why U.S. Universities that support freedom of speech on their own campuses, including sometimes offensive speech or political demonstrations, would punish an entire university for the acts of one political group. There was a general unwillingness to internalize and reflect upon the fact that Palestinian student culture is not merely militant sometimes, but is deluged by depictions of "martyrs" and Hamas student marches with images of rifles and giant posters celebrating conflict. Saddam Hussein was a favorite of many of these posters. Comparing that to the even raucous campus culture in the United States of the 1960s or the more recent clashes at the University of Missouri,36 one would be hard pressed to find a similarity.

The suspending of ties with U.S. educational institutions (it did not affect the Bard partnership) was compounded in 2014 by a more severe incident. In April of 2014, Professor Dajani led a trip of 27 Palestinian students, many of them connected to the program, to Poland where they visited the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. This set in motion a series of events which led to Dajani receiving threats from student and political groups, and he soon resigned from his position.37 Dajani was accused of "normalization," a frequent accusation against any Palestinian who continues peace or coexistence work with Israelis or even maintains contacts with Jewish Israelis.

From this point on the American studies department slipped into a crisis, despite attempts by administration officials and sympathetic Brandeis faculty to support it. After Dajani had departed, another senior faculty member leftas well, and the number of students enrolling decreased to a trickle. Most of the existing students did not have English skills and few had the professional background of the students from 2010-2014, who tended to be civil servants, security officials, or NGO workers.

The twelve-year experience of this unique institution is symbolic of a larger trouble in Palestinian higher education. Concepts of freedom of thought, challenging social norms, critique or other liberal arts models are lacking throughout the higher education system. Exposure to foreign faculty is almost non-existent. Student politics are so militant that accusations of "normalization" lead many faculty members to shun any ties or much nuanced discussion of Israel. Students who hold clearly antisemitic views or parrot back concepts they read on the internet such as "the Jews control America" are rarely challenged. The Palestinian elites who were raised on a cosmopolitan education in the 1960s are in decline. Foreign support by Western states for Palestinian educational institutions has weakened. Donations from other sources have not made up for the funding gap with the result that salaries are often late and students complain of tuition costs and lack of scholarships.

The implications of this program are two-fold. On the one hand, it provided an education for dozens of mid-level Palestinian Authority officials who will rise to positions of influence if the present PA structure remains in place. The students gained a lasting network at the university and were influenced by the concepts of "moderation" and American concepts of democracy and values. On the other hand, the students expressed frustration with the lack of progress toward two-states, became disillusioned with any type of coexistence or "normalization" projects they might have been involved in, and had less and less exposure to any non-Palestinian academics or voices.

The generation of these students are those who were in their teens or twenties during the Second Intifada and who grew up with an Oslo concept. These students were legacies of the first Palestinian national curriculum, which replaced the Jordanian one that had dominated through 2000.38 Although in theory these students should have showcased the legacy of incitement in Palestinian schools, they showed an interest and willingness to understand the world and Israel. The State of Israel's overwhelming military power and unlikelihood that it will withdraw from the West Bank is a fact of life for them. That means they have a very low interest in violence, which they see as futile, but they support rigorously a continued national struggle, not only against Israel, but also against Hamas, which many of them faced as an enemy in student elections or during the short Gaza strife.

Far from being the "lost generation of Oslo"39 as some have dubbed Palestinians, the generation born between 1980 and 1990, as evidenced in this university setting, was dedicated to building institutions, careers, and a mini-state, while maintaining the dreams of their predecessors about historic Palestine, the desire for refugee return, and viewing Israel as a fundamentally aggressive ruling power in league with an America whose policies were viewed as naively anti-Arab or anti-Islamic-often guided by what students see as undue Israeli or Jewish influence. The Americanization experiment in Palestinian education, and in wider society, seems to have stalled. The concept of democratization, which ground to a halt with the Hamas victory in the 2006 elections and the civil strife in Gaza, has been put on hold. Anti-normalization and fundamentally illiberal attitudes that make everything subservient to nationalism clash with any concepts of an open critical university based on the American model. Both the Palestinian side and the American educational or governing authorities have withdrawn from deepening cooperation. Unlike the generation of Palestinians educated abroad who played a significant role in the 1980s and 1990s, this narrowing and tendency towards educational parochialism in the humanities and social sciences will have long-term consequences for political views of the rising elites. There is no better case study to illustrate that affect than the experience of American studies at Al-Quds University.

Footnote

NOTES

1 Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 48.

2 A.L. Tibawi, Arab Education in Mandatory Palestine: A Study of Three Decades of British Administration (London: Luzac, 1956), pp. 20-21.

3 M. al-Shanti, Hadith al-Quds wa-ma'arifuha bayna mutassarif al-Quds [Discussion on Education Institutions with the Governor of Jerusalem], al-Iqlam, No. 15, (May 1914), pp. 1-2.

4 Seth J. Frantzman, "Education and Empowerment: Lessons and History of the Christian Education Network in Israel and Palestine," Digest of Middle East Studies, Vol. 20, No. 20, (2011), pp. 186-201.

5 George Antonius, The Arab Awakening (London: H. Hamilton, 1938).

6 See for instance the study by Makram Rabah, A Campus at War: Student Politics at the American University of Beirut 1967-75 (Beirut: Dar Nelson, 2009).

7 Ido Zelkovitz, Students and Resistance in Palestine: Books, Guns and Politics (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 30.

8 The current Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah (as of the writing of this article) was president of Najah.

9 Adnan Husseini was a key member of its first board of directors, and the Hind al-Husayni College was one of the four colleges that the university was built upon.

10 Ann Nicholass Madsen, Making Their Own Peace (Toronto: Self-published, 2003), p. 78.

11 Sari Nusseibeh, Once Upon a Country (London: Picador: 2008).

12 Ibid., p. 217.

13 Ibid, p. 382.

14 Bill Turpen, "Israel's Infamous Wall: Separating Palestinians from the Right to Education," Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA), November 2003, http://www.wrmea.org/2003-november/education-israel-s-infamous-wall-separating-palestinians-from-the-right-to-an-education.html.

15 Author's own recollections from four years teaching at Al-Quds University, Department of American Studies, 2011-2015.

16 Nusseibeh, Once Upon a Country, p. 431.

17 University of South Carolina and University of Texas.

18 He founded an organization called Wasatia in 2007 to promote the concepts.

19 See for instance Kamilah Moore, "Israeli Attacks on Al-Quds University Give New Meaning to Academic Freedom," Mondoweiss, November 17, 2014, http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/israeli-university-academic.

20 "U.S. Aid Provides Scholarships for 2,000 Students," WAFA-PLO News Agency, September 18, 2006, reprinted, http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1703856/posts.

21 "Al-Quds - Bard College Hosts Second Graduation Ceremony," January 28, 2015, http://www.alquds.edu/en/student-activities/139117-al-quds-%E2%80%93-bard-college-holds-its-second-graduation-ceremony.html.

22 Henry Rome, "Syracuse Follows Brandeis in Halting Ties with Al-Quds," The Jerusalem Post, November 22, 2013, http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Syracuse-follows-Brandeis-in-halting-ties-with-Al-Quds-332650.

23 See U.S. Department of State, USSC webpage, http://www.state.gov/s/ussc/.

24 Jim Zanotti, "U.S. Security Assistance to the Palestinian Authority," Congressional Research Service, January 8, 2010, https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/R40664.pdf.

25 Mark Perry, "Dayton's Lost Gamble: The USSC and America's Lost Innocence," Middle East Monitor, October 1, 2012, https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/guest-writers/4387-daytons-lost-gamble-the-ussc-and-americas-lost-innocence-in-the-west-bank.

26 David Blumenfeld, "On the Brink: Decline of U.S. Trained Palestinian-Security Forces," Middle East Forum, http://israelbehindthenews.com/on-the-brink-decline-of-us-trained-palestinian-security-forces/9263/.

27 M.F, student testimony, September 2011.

28 "America's Global Image," July 18, 2013, Pew Research Center Survey, http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/07/18/chapter-1-attitudes-toward-the-united-states/.

29 Camille Mansour, "The Palestinian Perception of America After 9/11," in Tony Judt and Denis Lacorne (eds.), With Us or Against Us: Studies in Global Anti-Americanism (New York: Palgrave, 2005), p. 162.

30 H.A, student testimony to author, October 2012.

31 H.A, student testimony to author, October 2012.

32 H.I, student testimony to author, September 2013.

33 M.S., student testimony to author, August, 2015.

34 "Brandeis University Suspends Its Partnership with Al-Quds University Effective Immediately," BrandeisNow, November 18, 2013, http://www.brandeis.edu/now/2013/November/al-quds-response.html.

35 "Letter to Our Dear Students from the President of the University," Brandeis University Website, http://www.brandeis.edu/now/2013/November/pdfs/al-quds-statement-11-18-13.pdf.

36 Brittany Cooper, "Stop Mocking 'Safe Spaces': What the Mizzou and Yale Backlash Is Really About," November 18, 2015, http://www.salon.com/2015/11/18/what_the_mizzou_yale_backlash_is_really_about_the_right_of_white_people_to_engage_in_racial_recklessness/.

37 Inna Lazareva, "Palestinian Professor Resigns over Students' Trip to Auschwitz," Telegraph, June 10, 2014. See also the report at Academic Freedom Monitor, http://monitoring.academicfreedom.info/reports/2014-04-10-al-quds-university.

38 Shukri Sanbar and Irene Hazou, "Cognitive Skills in Palestinian Curricula and Textbooks," in Maria Ascunio Flores et al (eds.), Back to the Future: Legacies, Continuities and Changes in Educational Policy, Practice and Research (Boston: Sense Publishers, 2013), pp. 147-64.

39 Amira Hass, "Abbas Can't Control the Lost Generation of Oslo," Haaretz, October 11, 2015, http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.679758.