thenation--2020-07-27--A Century of Struggle in Palestine

A Century of Struggle in Palestine

Here ’ s the script : Criminalize the boycotts , deport the human rights advocates , rebrand anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism , smear the leftist Jews , infiltrate the leftist organizations , defund the aid programs , torpedo the political campaigns , fire the high school teachers and speech pathologists and network commentators , and pinkwash the occupation .
The tactics vary today , but the intent remains the same .
For as long as I have been alive , the barriers in the West to advocating for Palestinian rights have deterred all but the most committed people .
The Hundred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance , 1917–2017 Often , as a result , the responsibility has fallen on the shoulders of Palestinians .
Rashid Khalidi , a professor at Columbia and a codirector of its Center for Palestine Studies , is one of the best known to have taken up this responsibility .
An acclaimed historian and former adviser to the Palestine delegation during the Madrid talks in 1991 , he has written about the origins of Arab nationalism , American Cold War policy in the Middle East , the construction of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Israeli-Palestinian peace process .
He has also played an important role in representing Palestinians in Western media and in mentoring a growing generation of Palestinian writers and academics , including Noura Erakat and Lana Tatour .
While Khalidi ’ s research interests are wide-ranging , he has often examined the history of Palestine in the context of the larger Western imperial project , which has spanned many Middle Eastern nations and whose tool kit of military occupation has laid waste to millions of Arab lives .
The cyclical nature of this history @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the topic of a single democratic state for all Palestinians and Israelis—an idea that has increasing purchase among young Palestinians and anti-Zionist Jews—he observes that it is not a radical departure but instead a return to a popular idea that has gestated since at least 1968 yet was marginalized by a now geriatric PLO leadership .
In Khalidi ’ s latest book , The Hundred Years ’ War on Palestine , history proves once again to be the key to understanding the present .
He builds on his previous work , interspersing personal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tracing the lineage of violence that has engulfed a land that has been known by many different names .
In doing so , Khalidi identifies many of the actors who have been instrumental to the Palestinian cause , the revolutionaries , women , and young people who helped build the fabric of Palestinian life within the shadow of endless war , displacement , and occupation .
The “ war ” in Khalidi ’ s title is conceived as both singular and plural .
It includes but also transcends the military conflicts most commonly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chooses to tell this story through six distinct periods , beginning with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and moving on to the UN General Assembly ’ s 1947 resolution on the partition of Palestine and the ensuing Arab–Israeli War and the Nakba .
Charting Palestinian life after the Six-Day War in 1967 , he considers Israel ’ s de facto control over all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean and then turns to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon , the first intifada of 1987 , and finally the ceaseless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the West Bank today .
All of this can read like a chronicle of never-ending struggle .
The question of Palestine has always been one of conditioning , of what we are willing to accept and willing to forget—and knowing this , the enemies of a Palestinian nation have pursued a relentless program of erasure .
But Khalidi ’ s book is also an act of historical recovery , an effort to pen , as he puts it , the “ first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Israeli historians Ilan Pappé and Avi Shlaim , The Hundred Years ’ War does not offer a unified theory of history but rather an account of the colonial structures on which the Israeli project depends and of the bridges that still connect the archipelago of Palestinian life .
Khalidi resists the urge to start his book with the founding of Israel in 1948 .
Instead he starts three decades earlier , in 1917 , the year of the Balfour Declaration .
That statement , issued at the height of World War @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , was delivered in a letter to Lord Rothschild , a prominent leader of the Jewish community in Britain , and outlined the government ’ s support for a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine , then a part of the Ottoman Empire .
While some historians have argued that this decision was motivated by Western anti-Semitism , it was also no doubt a strategic choice , aimed at securing the support of American and European Jews for the war effort and potentially for British control of the Suez Canal , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to India .
After the war , the British followed through on the declaration , facilitating Zionist claims to territory in Palestine through the League of Nations , which set up mandates for colonial governance in Palestine , Lebanon , Syria , and Transjordan in the wake of the Ottoman Empire ’ s collapse .
The Palestinian mandate was unique , of course , in that a core tenet of British governance there included a vision for the settlement of the area by European Jews .
Soon various Jewish organizations , including most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , education , and other social services exclusively to the Jewish residents of Palestine and to Jews who moved there .
For Khalidi , the British mandate established two parallel realities in Palestine : an embryonic nation-building project for the Jewish minority and the continuation of colonial policy for the Arab majority , whose question of self-determination was left unaddressed .
In describing this history , Khalidi lays out what would become the essential orientation of the Western powers toward the Middle East in the coming century , including an approach to Palestine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ combination of colonial paternalism and purposeful neglect .
This pattern continued into the next chapter of the Palestinian story : the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Nakba , which saw the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes .
Khalidi speeds through the head-spinning violence of those months ( the history of the Irgun and the Haganah and of Plan Dalet , the massacre at Deir Yassin , the bombardment of Jaffa and Haifa , the depopulation of West Jerusalem ) to arrive at the outcome .
As he explains @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it had been for well over a millennium—a majority Arab country—into a new state that had a substantial Jewish majority.
” The next two decades of Palestinian history were marked by a continuous struggle against this new reality , with the hostilities boiling over in 1967 and culminating in the Six-Day War between the Arab states and Israel .
Despite Israel ’ s insistence that it was the underdog in this war , the Arab states , Khalidi argues , didn ’ t stand a chance : Israel enjoyed military supremacy from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ internally , was a nuclear- armed Goliath .
The Israeli occupation that followed would change Palestine forever .
After the war , the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242 , on the “ territories occupied ” by Israel , in which the word “ Palestinian ” didn ’ t appear once .
( The people were referred to simply as “ the refugee problem.
” ) In Khalidi ’ s view , the resolution entrenched Israeli dominance in two ways .
First , by conditioning Israel ’ s withdrawal from the lands it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of secure frontiers , it provided Israel with an opportunity to run roughshod over the resolution ’ s intent , enlarging its borders in perpetuity by claiming security as an excuse .
Second , by outlining a negotiated settlement to come between Israel and “ Arab ” parties , the resolution allowed Israel to exploit its language and ignore the existence of the Palestinians , excluding them from the peace process even as its colonial project continued unabated , with only a wincing response from the international community .
The war had other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The idea of Palestine surged anew after 1967 , led in part by artists and writers like Ghassan Kanafani , Mahmoud Darwish , Emile Habibi , Fadwa Touqan , and Tawfiq Zayyad and by the emergence of competing resistance groups : the Movement of Arab Nationalists , led by George Habash and Wadi Haddad , which was a precursor of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine , and the Fatah movement , led by Yasir Arafat .
Together these standard-bearers marked a new era of Palestinian resistance and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paradox of 1967 , ” Rashid Khalidi notes , citing Ahmad Samih Khalidi , “ is that by defeating the Arabs , Israel resurrected the Palestinians.
” Of course , some of these names now read like a list of present absences .
This is partly because of Israel ’ s aggressive program of assassination—or “ liquidation , ” to use Ariel Sharon ’ s term—often employing the familiar pretext of preempting terrorism , an excuse that Khalidi finds hollow , especially given the large number of writers , poets , and intellectuals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , this use of violence has deep roots : Ze ’ ev Jabotinsky , one of the founding fathers of Israel , described Zionism as “ a colonizing venture , [ which ] stands or falls on the question of armed forces.
” The strategic use of violence caused many Palestinians to flee , and Khalidi ’ s remaining chapters map the expanding geography of violence as Israel pursued them to Jordan , Lebanon , Tunisia , and back to the modern-day West Bank and Gaza .
At the center of Khalidi ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have the Palestinians lost so much and so often ?
To provide an answer , he explores the various strategies the Palestinians used to fight back as well as their strengths and limitations .
On the reciprocal use of force , for example , he recalls the advice given by the Pakistani intellectual Eqbal Ahmad , a friend who had worked with the National Liberation Front in Algeria and believed that Palestinian armed struggle would necessarily falter in the face of an Israeli state that emphasized , above all else , the security @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might lead , Khalidi writes , to a strategy of nonviolent resistance—he favorably compares the demonstrations of the first intifada with the armed insurrection of the second—he also grimly delineates its susceptibility to co-optation ( with Palestinian leaders laying claim to the first intifada from their exile in Tunis ) and subversion ( with Israel initially supporting the rise of Hamas in order to weaken the PLO ) .
Nor is he sanguine about the history of support from the Arab states .
Quoting Egyptian officer Ahmed Aziz , Nasser wrote in his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Revolution , “ We were fighting in Palestine but our dreams were in Egypt , ” and there is much to be said about the largely aesthetic commitment to Palestinian liberation from the rest of the Arab world .
Nor were Palestinian leaders blameless in this , having squandered many opportunities to build enduring alliances with neighboring Arab countries .
But Western powers have also played a role in dividing Arabs , including the strategy of pushing Israel to negotiate treaties with individual states as a way of sidelining the Palestinian cause , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Jordan in 1994 .
Israel ’ s flourishing contemporary relationship with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates can be seen in this context as a continuation of a longstanding practice , not a departure from it .
This leads Khalidi to note the farce of diplomacy over the past three decades .
Having attended the Madrid conference in 1991 and the subsequent talks in Washington , initially led by Secretary of State James Baker , Khalidi sees the efforts by the United States and other Western powers to force a settlement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one-sided position .
Throughout these talks , Yitzhak Shamir ’ s government was able to dictate not only which Palestinians were permitted to negotiate ( members of the diaspora and residents of Jerusalem were excluded ) but also what topics were forbidden from the outset , including “ Palestinian self-determination , sovereignty , the return of refugees , an end to occupation and colonization , the disposition of Jerusalem , the future of the Jewish settlements , and control of land and water rights.
” The Americans went so far in those years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Israel ’ s lawyer.
” As Khalidi shows , the negotiations were often a series of carefully laid traps .
As a condition of the supposedly good-faith discussions to come , Palestinian negotiators were asked to acquiesce to various terms designed to preemptively nullify their claims , with the later breakdown of talks inevitably blamed on their intransigent leadership .
Khalidi ’ s pessimism extends to the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 , which he argues ought to have been rejected : “ Occupation would have continued , as it has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Palestinian self-government.
” For Khalidi , these failures of diplomacy have occurred in a context of Israeli legal overreach , with Israeli governments always preferring to reverse a decision unilaterally instead of asking for permission .
For evangelists of the diplomatic approach , the artifice of success requires that negotiations not appear to be relitigating the same injustices over and over—and so the needle shifts ever so slightly , with the proposed solution always an attempt to suture a secondary , larger tear .
The most surprising chapter of The Hundred Years ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Madrid , or Washington .
Khalidi was in Beirut during Israel ’ s 1982 invasion of Lebanon , a campaign led by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Prime Minister Menachem Begin , ostensibly to fight the PLO ’ s presence in the country .
The war was green-lit by Ronald Reagan ’ s secretary of state , Alexander Haig , with the administration giving assurances that the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon would remain protected should the PLO withdraw .
Of course , those promises were hollow , and Khalidi supplements his analysis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ watched with horror as the Israeli bombs rained down on Beirut : The Lebanon experience showed that Palestinian social and political death is borderless : Whether in the refugee camps of Beirut , the streets of Gaza , or the American diaspora , Israel will pursue Palestinians wherever they exist .
US complicity in this effort is also worth noting , with American munitions and American-made aircraft used in the shelling of Beirut , buttressed by the crucial support of Reagan ’ s special envoy , Philip Habib .
It is stunning to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ war that destroyed what was known as the Paris of the Middle East and especially what became of its architects : “ Shamir and Sharon , as well as [ Benjamin ] Netanyahu , went on to serve as Prime Ministers of Israel , ” and Reagan , Haig , and Habib , all now dead , have “ so far escaped judgment.
” It is not just the well-known ghosts that haunt The Hundred Years ’ War .
Like my own family , some members of Khalidi ’ s are from Jaffa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of ethnic cleansing in Israel .
A photo of his grandfather ’ s house in Tal al-Rish adorns the book ’ s cover ; the edifice has remained abandoned since 1948 .
With more than 400 citations , The Hundred Years ’ War is one of the best-researched general surveys of 20th and early 21st century Palestinian life , but it ’ s also a deeply personal work .
To an outsider , Khalidi ’ s many references to his family ’ s experience may feel excessive , especially given that it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But for a people whose history is all but criminalized , this act of retelling is itself a form of resistance , and to his credit , Khalidi takes pains to decry a patriarchal and centralized Palestinian leadership that persists to this day .
While capturing the social history , Khalidi is careful not to lose sight of the realpolitik of movement building , showing how the most successful moments of Palestinian resistance occurred at those junctures where Israel ’ s interests came into tension with core Western ones .
The examples @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support for Israel , prompted by fears that Palestine ’ s elevation to a pan-Islamic issue could pose “ serious trouble ” for Britain ’ s presence in India , and Israel ’ s increasingly strained relations with the United States as the war in Lebanon dragged on , with the US realizing—according to a passage in Reagan ’ s diaries describing a conversation with Begin—that the “ picture of a 7 month old baby with its arms blown off ” in Beirut had the potential to affect America ’ s standing on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taken issue with the range of Khalidi ’ s discussion here .
Scott Anderson , in his frankly embarrassing review for The New York Times , opines that the “ weakness of this book , to my mind , can be distilled to a simple question : Where does it get you ?
Even if one fully accepts Khalidi ’ s colonialist thesis , does that move us any closer to some kind of resolution ?
” It should not be surprising that Anderson , the author of the unironically Orientalist Lawrence in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Khalidi ’ s lines .
In describing the arguments made by Palestinians in favor of breaking with the empty rhetoric of the British and Americans ; in outlining the foundational importance of the 1936–39 revolt , which was led by “ young , urban middle-class ” Palestinians ; and in highlighting the indispensable work of Hanan Ashrawi and others to advance the Palestinian cause on the world stage , Khalidi illustrates , among other things , the failures of diplomacy , the power of youthful activists , and the importance of women in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do all this implicitly while guiding the reader into an understanding of the depth of Palestinian frustration , rather than offer easily digestible bromides about peace in response to more than 50 years of occupation and over a century of dispossession , makes for good—what ’ s the word ?
—history .
Even if The Hundred Years ’ War is primarily focused on the past , one can leave Khalidi ’ s book with some sense of what comes next .
After reviewing the various manifestations of Palestinian resistance over time , from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of diplomacy , from a reliance on various Arab states to going it alone , he concludes that boycotts—whether the general strike in 1936 or the modern boycott , divestment , and sanctions ( BDS ) movement—have advanced the Palestinian cause more than anything done by Fatah or Hamas .
The Palestinians have long understood this , but so has the Israeli government .
Its Ministry of Strategic Affairs , helmed by Gilad Erdan , now identifies two primary existential threats to Israel : Iran and the BDS movement .
And there are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ horizon .
In February the UN human rights office released its list of 112 companies—among them Airbnb and Motorola—that are engaged in illegal Israeli settlements .
Nearly 130 members of Parliament have called on the United Kingdom to impose economic sanctions on Israel in response to its program of de jure annexation .
And South Africa has permanently recalled its ambassador to Israel , describing the treatment of the Palestinians as “ apartheid.
” Even so , one should not make the mistake of overestimating these developments .
Ultimately , The Hundred Years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book , a catalog of a century of sad stories .
While this outcome is partly a result of the failures of the Western media and its abetting of Palestinian erasure , it is also the logical result of an ossified power imbalance that will finally crack only under the pressure exerted by a popular campaign of moral condemnation and economic nonparticipation .
There ’ s your script .

This article appears in the August 10/17, 2020 issue.
Here’s the script: Criminalize the boycotts, deport the human rights advocates, rebrand anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, smear the leftist Jews, infiltrate the leftist organizations, defund the aid programs, torpedo the political campaigns, fire the high school teachers and speech pathologists and network commentators, and pinkwash the occupation. The tactics vary today, but the intent remains the same. For as long as I have been alive, the barriers in the West to advocating for Palestinian rights have deterred all but the most committed people. Books in Review The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 By Rashid Khalidi Buy this book
Often, as a result, the responsibility has fallen on the shoulders of Palestinians. Rashid Khalidi, a professor at Columbia and a codirector of its Center for Palestine Studies, is one of the best known to have taken up this responsibility. An acclaimed historian and former adviser to the Palestine delegation during the Madrid talks in 1991, he has written about the origins of Arab nationalism, American Cold War policy in the Middle East, the construction of Palestinian identity, and the history of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. He has also played an important role in representing Palestinians in Western media and in mentoring a growing generation of Palestinian writers and academics, including Noura Erakat and Lana Tatour.
While Khalidi’s research interests are wide-ranging, he has often examined the history of Palestine in the context of the larger Western imperial project, which has spanned many Middle Eastern nations and whose tool kit of military occupation has laid waste to millions of Arab lives. The cyclical nature of this history is important. For example, on the topic of a single democratic state for all Palestinians and Israelis—an idea that has increasing purchase among young Palestinians and anti-Zionist Jews—he observes that it is not a radical departure but instead a return to a popular idea that has gestated since at least 1968 yet was marginalized by a now geriatric PLO leadership.
In Khalidi’s latest book, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, history proves once again to be the key to understanding the present. He builds on his previous work, interspersing personal and family stories with political ones and tracing the lineage of violence that has engulfed a land that has been known by many different names. In doing so, Khalidi identifies many of the actors who have been instrumental to the Palestinian cause, the revolutionaries, women, and young people who helped build the fabric of Palestinian life within the shadow of endless war, displacement, and occupation.
The “war” in Khalidi’s title is conceived as both singular and plural. It includes but also transcends the military conflicts most commonly used to narrate Palestinian history. He chooses to tell this story through six distinct periods, beginning with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and moving on to the UN General Assembly’s 1947 resolution on the partition of Palestine and the ensuing Arab–Israeli War and the Nakba. Charting Palestinian life after the Six-Day War in 1967, he considers Israel’s de facto control over all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean and then turns to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the first intifada of 1987, and finally the ceaseless bombings of Gaza and the expanding occupation of the West Bank today. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
All of this can read like a chronicle of never-ending struggle. The question of Palestine has always been one of conditioning, of what we are willing to accept and willing to forget—and knowing this, the enemies of a Palestinian nation have pursued a relentless program of erasure. But Khalidi’s book is also an act of historical recovery, an effort to pen, as he puts it, the “first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.” As with the pioneering work of the Israeli historians Ilan Pappé and Avi Shlaim, The Hundred Years’ War does not offer a unified theory of history but rather an account of the colonial structures on which the Israeli project depends and of the bridges that still connect the archipelago of Palestinian life.
Khalidi resists the urge to start his book with the founding of Israel in 1948. Instead he starts three decades earlier, in 1917, the year of the Balfour Declaration. That statement, issued at the height of World War I by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, was delivered in a letter to Lord Rothschild, a prominent leader of the Jewish community in Britain, and outlined the government’s support for a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, then a part of the Ottoman Empire. While some historians have argued that this decision was motivated by Western anti-Semitism, it was also no doubt a strategic choice, aimed at securing the support of American and European Jews for the war effort and potentially for British control of the Suez Canal, which would strengthen Britain’s imperial route to India. Current Issue View our current issue
After the war, the British followed through on the declaration, facilitating Zionist claims to territory in Palestine through the League of Nations, which set up mandates for colonial governance in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Transjordan in the wake of the Ottoman Empire’s collapse. The Palestinian mandate was unique, of course, in that a core tenet of British governance there included a vision for the settlement of the area by European Jews. Soon various Jewish organizations, including most prominently the Jewish Agency, offered housing, education, and other social services exclusively to the Jewish residents of Palestine and to Jews who moved there.
For Khalidi, the British mandate established two parallel realities in Palestine: an embryonic nation-building project for the Jewish minority and the continuation of colonial policy for the Arab majority, whose question of self-determination was left unaddressed. In describing this history, Khalidi lays out what would become the essential orientation of the Western powers toward the Middle East in the coming century, including an approach to Palestine’s Arabs defined by that peculiar combination of colonial paternalism and purposeful neglect.
This pattern continued into the next chapter of the Palestinian story: the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Nakba, which saw the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. Khalidi speeds through the head-spinning violence of those months (the history of the Irgun and the Haganah and of Plan Dalet, the massacre at Deir Yassin, the bombardment of Jaffa and Haifa, the depopulation of West Jerusalem) to arrive at the outcome. As he explains, 1948 transformed Palestine “from what it had been for well over a millennium—a majority Arab country—into a new state that had a substantial Jewish majority.”
The next two decades of Palestinian history were marked by a continuous struggle against this new reality, with the hostilities boiling over in 1967 and culminating in the Six-Day War between the Arab states and Israel. Despite Israel’s insistence that it was the underdog in this war, the Arab states, Khalidi argues, didn’t stand a chance: Israel enjoyed military supremacy from the outset and, as American intelligence noted internally, was a nuclear- armed Goliath.
The Israeli occupation that followed would change Palestine forever. After the war, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242, on the “territories occupied” by Israel, in which the word “Palestinian” didn’t appear once. (The people were referred to simply as “the refugee problem.”) In Khalidi’s view, the resolution entrenched Israeli dominance in two ways. First, by conditioning Israel’s withdrawal from the lands it had seized from Jordan on the establishment of secure frontiers, it provided Israel with an opportunity to run roughshod over the resolution’s intent, enlarging its borders in perpetuity by claiming security as an excuse. Second, by outlining a negotiated settlement to come between Israel and “Arab” parties, the resolution allowed Israel to exploit its language and ignore the existence of the Palestinians, excluding them from the peace process even as its colonial project continued unabated, with only a wincing response from the international community.
The war had other reverberations as well, cultural and political. The idea of Palestine surged anew after 1967, led in part by artists and writers like Ghassan Kanafani, Mahmoud Darwish, Emile Habibi, Fadwa Touqan, and Tawfiq Zayyad and by the emergence of competing resistance groups: the Movement of Arab Nationalists, led by George Habash and Wadi Haddad, which was a precursor of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Fatah movement, led by Yasir Arafat. Together these standard-bearers marked a new era of Palestinian resistance and a strengthened Palestinian resolve. “A central paradox of 1967,” Rashid Khalidi notes, citing Ahmad Samih Khalidi, “is that by defeating the Arabs, Israel resurrected the Palestinians.”
Of course, some of these names now read like a list of present absences. This is partly because of Israel’s aggressive program of assassination—or “liquidation,” to use Ariel Sharon’s term—often employing the familiar pretext of preempting terrorism, an excuse that Khalidi finds hollow, especially given the large number of writers, poets, and intellectuals whom Israel targeted. As Khalidi shows, this use of violence has deep roots: Ze’ev Jabotinsky, one of the founding fathers of Israel, described Zionism as “a colonizing venture, [which] stands or falls on the question of armed forces.” The strategic use of violence caused many Palestinians to flee, and Khalidi’s remaining chapters map the expanding geography of violence as Israel pursued them to Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, and back to the modern-day West Bank and Gaza.
At the center of Khalidi’s book is a question: How have the Palestinians lost so much and so often? To provide an answer, he explores the various strategies the Palestinians used to fight back as well as their strengths and limitations. On the reciprocal use of force, for example, he recalls the advice given by the Pakistani intellectual Eqbal Ahmad, a friend who had worked with the National Liberation Front in Algeria and believed that Palestinian armed struggle would necessarily falter in the face of an Israeli state that emphasized, above all else, the security of the Jewish people.
While this might lead, Khalidi writes, to a strategy of nonviolent resistance—he favorably compares the demonstrations of the first intifada with the armed insurrection of the second—he also grimly delineates its susceptibility to co-optation (with Palestinian leaders laying claim to the first intifada from their exile in Tunis) and subversion (with Israel initially supporting the rise of Hamas in order to weaken the PLO).
Nor is he sanguine about the history of support from the Arab states. Quoting Egyptian officer Ahmed Aziz, Nasser wrote in his 1954 memoir, The Philosophy of the Revolution, “We were fighting in Palestine but our dreams were in Egypt,” and there is much to be said about the largely aesthetic commitment to Palestinian liberation from the rest of the Arab world. Nor were Palestinian leaders blameless in this, having squandered many opportunities to build enduring alliances with neighboring Arab countries. But Western powers have also played a role in dividing Arabs, including the strategy of pushing Israel to negotiate treaties with individual states as a way of sidelining the Palestinian cause, first with Egypt in 1979, then with Jordan in 1994. Israel’s flourishing contemporary relationship with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates can be seen in this context as a continuation of a longstanding practice, not a departure from it.
This leads Khalidi to note the farce of diplomacy over the past three decades. Having attended the Madrid conference in 1991 and the subsequent talks in Washington, initially led by Secretary of State James Baker, Khalidi sees the efforts by the United States and other Western powers to force a settlement on the Palestinians as emblematic of their one-sided position. Throughout these talks, Yitzhak Shamir’s government was able to dictate not only which Palestinians were permitted to negotiate (members of the diaspora and residents of Jerusalem were excluded) but also what topics were forbidden from the outset, including “Palestinian self-determination, sovereignty, the return of refugees, an end to occupation and colonization, the disposition of Jerusalem, the future of the Jewish settlements, and control of land and water rights.” The Americans went so far in those years as to refer to their role as “Israel’s lawyer.”
As Khalidi shows, the negotiations were often a series of carefully laid traps. As a condition of the supposedly good-faith discussions to come, Palestinian negotiators were asked to acquiesce to various terms designed to preemptively nullify their claims, with the later breakdown of talks inevitably blamed on their intransigent leadership. Khalidi’s pessimism extends to the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995, which he argues ought to have been rejected: “Occupation would have continued, as it has anyway, but without the veil of Palestinian self-government.”
For Khalidi, these failures of diplomacy have occurred in a context of Israeli legal overreach, with Israeli governments always preferring to reverse a decision unilaterally instead of asking for permission. For evangelists of the diplomatic approach, the artifice of success requires that negotiations not appear to be relitigating the same injustices over and over—and so the needle shifts ever so slightly, with the proposed solution always an attempt to suture a secondary, larger tear.
The most surprising chapter of The Hundred Years’ War does not take place in Palestine, Madrid, or Washington. Khalidi was in Beirut during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, a campaign led by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Prime Minister Menachem Begin, ostensibly to fight the PLO’s presence in the country. The war was green-lit by Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, Alexander Haig, with the administration giving assurances that the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon would remain protected should the PLO withdraw. Of course, those promises were hollow, and Khalidi supplements his analysis with an unsettling first-person perspective, having watched with horror as the Israeli bombs rained down on Beirut:
Later I saw that the entire building was flattened, pancaked into a single mound of smoking rubble. The structure, which had been full of Palestinian refugees from Sabra and Shatila, had reportedly just been visited by Arafat. At least one hundred people, probably more, were killed—most of them women and children. Days later, my friend told me that immediately after the air attack, just as he got into his car, shaken but unhurt, a car bomb exploded nearby, presumably having been set to kill the rescuers who were helping families trying to find their loved ones in the rubble. Such car bombs—a weapon of choice for the Israeli forces besieging Beirut, and one of their most terrifying instruments of death and destruction—were described by one Mossad officer as “killing for killing’s sake.”
The Lebanon experience showed that Palestinian social and political death is borderless: Whether in the refugee camps of Beirut, the streets of Gaza, or the American diaspora, Israel will pursue Palestinians wherever they exist. US complicity in this effort is also worth noting, with American munitions and American-made aircraft used in the shelling of Beirut, buttressed by the crucial support of Reagan’s special envoy, Philip Habib. It is stunning to read Khalidi’s postmortem on the war that destroyed what was known as the Paris of the Middle East and especially what became of its architects: “Shamir and Sharon, as well as [Benjamin] Netanyahu, went on to serve as Prime Ministers of Israel,” and Reagan, Haig, and Habib, all now dead, have “so far escaped judgment.”
It is not just the well-known ghosts that haunt The Hundred Years’ War. Like my own family, some members of Khalidi’s are from Jaffa, one of the most visible sites of ethnic cleansing in Israel. A photo of his grandfather’s house in Tal al-Rish adorns the book’s cover; the edifice has remained abandoned since 1948.
With more than 400 citations, The Hundred Years’ War is one of the best-researched general surveys of 20th and early 21st century Palestinian life, but it’s also a deeply personal work. To an outsider, Khalidi’s many references to his family’s experience may feel excessive, especially given that it was among the most prominent families in Palestine. But for a people whose history is all but criminalized, this act of retelling is itself a form of resistance, and to his credit, Khalidi takes pains to decry a patriarchal and centralized Palestinian leadership that persists to this day.
While capturing the social history, Khalidi is careful not to lose sight of the realpolitik of movement building, showing how the most successful moments of Palestinian resistance occurred at those junctures where Israel’s interests came into tension with core Western ones. The examples he cites include the dial-back in British support for Israel, prompted by fears that Palestine’s elevation to a pan-Islamic issue could pose “serious trouble” for Britain’s presence in India, and Israel’s increasingly strained relations with the United States as the war in Lebanon dragged on, with the US realizing—according to a passage in Reagan’s diaries describing a conversation with Begin—that the “picture of a 7 month old baby with its arms blown off” in Beirut had the potential to affect America’s standing on the world stage.
Some critics have taken issue with the range of Khalidi’s discussion here. Scott Anderson, in his frankly embarrassing review for The New York Times, opines that the “weakness of this book, to my mind, can be distilled to a simple question: Where does it get you? Even if one fully accepts Khalidi’s colonialist thesis, does that move us any closer to some kind of resolution?” It should not be surprising that Anderson, the author of the unironically Orientalist Lawrence in Arabia, is unable to read between Khalidi’s lines. In describing the arguments made by Palestinians in favor of breaking with the empty rhetoric of the British and Americans; in outlining the foundational importance of the 1936–39 revolt, which was led by “young, urban middle-class” Palestinians; and in highlighting the indispensable work of Hanan Ashrawi and others to advance the Palestinian cause on the world stage, Khalidi illustrates, among other things, the failures of diplomacy, the power of youthful activists, and the importance of women in Palestinian liberation. That he chooses to do all this implicitly while guiding the reader into an understanding of the depth of Palestinian frustration, rather than offer easily digestible bromides about peace in response to more than 50 years of occupation and over a century of dispossession, makes for good—what’s the word?—history.
Even if The Hundred Years’ War is primarily focused on the past, one can leave Khalidi’s book with some sense of what comes next. After reviewing the various manifestations of Palestinian resistance over time, from the use of force to the use of diplomacy, from a reliance on various Arab states to going it alone, he concludes that boycotts—whether the general strike in 1936 or the modern boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement—have advanced the Palestinian cause more than anything done by Fatah or Hamas.
The Palestinians have long understood this, but so has the Israeli government. Its Ministry of Strategic Affairs, helmed by Gilad Erdan, now identifies two primary existential threats to Israel: Iran and the BDS movement. And there are other signs of possible change on the horizon. In February the UN human rights office released its list of 112 companies—among them Airbnb and Motorola—that are engaged in illegal Israeli settlements. Nearly 130 members of Parliament have called on the United Kingdom to impose economic sanctions on Israel in response to its program of de jure annexation. And South Africa has permanently recalled its ambassador to Israel, describing the treatment of the Palestinians as “apartheid.”
Even so, one should not make the mistake of overestimating these developments. Ultimately, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is a pessimistic book, a catalog of a century of sad stories. While this outcome is partly a result of the failures of the Western media and its abetting of Palestinian erasure, it is also the logical result of an ossified power imbalance that will finally crack only under the pressure exerted by a popular campaign of moral condemnation and economic nonparticipation. There’s your script.


thenation--2020-07-27--How to Move Biden Left

How to Move Biden Left

Can Joe Biden be moved to the left on the issues that matter most and are critical to the sort of mass mobilization of voters that might transform our politics and our governance ?
Yes .
That ’ s the best takeaway from the presumptive Democratic nominee ’ s July 14 announcement of a climate and jobs plan that would have him move immediately as president to invest $ 2 trillion in developing clean energy infrastructure and a host of other responses to the climate crisis .
“ We ’ re not just going to tinker around the edges , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re going to make historic investments that will seize the opportunity and meet this moment in history.
” That ’ s a far cry from what Biden was saying during his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this year .
Then , he pushed back against climate activists and dismissed an ambitious plan by his chief rival , Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders , to “ launch the decade of the Green New Deal , a 10-year mobilization to avert climate catastrophe during which climate change , justice , and equity will be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , from immigration to trade to foreign policy and beyond.
” Asked about the Sanders plan in January , Biden claimed , falsely , that “ not a single solitary scientist thinks it will work.
” Now , Biden is talking about making a good deal of it work—borrowing ideas from Sanders and from Washington Governor Jay Inslee , who as a 2020 contender ripped the former vice president for failing to respond to the crisis with the urgency that it required .
Sunrise Movement cofounder Varshini Prakash , who served on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden on the issue , summed up the reaction from activists who once objected to his approach .
“ It ’ s no secret that we ’ ve been critical of [ his ] plans and commitments in the past , ” she said .
“ Today , he ’ s responded to many of those criticisms : dramatically increasing the scale and urgency of investments , filling in details on how he ’ d achieve environmental justice and create good union jobs , and promising immediate action—on day 1 , in his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ term , in the next decade—not just some far off goals.
” Julian Brave NoiseCat , the director of Green New Deal Strategy for the research group Data for Progress , suggested that “ Biden ’ s clean energy and environmental justice plans are , in my view , a Green New Deal in all but name.
” Green Party presidential nominee Howie Hawkins disagreed , arguing that “ Biden is nowhere close to the GND .
Besides having a timeline for emissions more than 20 years slower , he leaves out the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bill of rights—guaranteed jobs , single payer healthcare , housing , etc.
” There ’ s still a good debate to be had about whether Biden is prepared to meet the challenges he ’ ll face if elected .
But The Washington Post noted that the Democrat ’ s recent policy pronouncements on climate change and other issues represent “ a significant move to the left from where Biden and his party were only recently.
” As Trump Threatens Cities , Philadelphia ’ s DA Prepares to Uphold the Rule of Law We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That movement is what matters .
Give Biden credit for breaking loose from some of the centrist dogmas that bogged Democrats down in 2016 and that are scorchingly out of touch with a pandemic moment that is witnessing mass unemployment .
But give activists more credit for making him do so .
Prakash was right when she said , “ Our movement , alongside environmental justice communities and frontline workers , has taught Joe Biden to talk the talk.
” That ’ s important in an election year when an action agenda is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right when she said progressives must keep pushing Biden to be bolder—and better—in addressing the climate crisis , systemic racism , and the rot that extends from decades of deference to Wall Street and the military-industrial complex .
The hopeful news is that Biden , in stark contrast to Trump , responds to pushing .
“ What we ’ ve shown , ” Prakash said , “ is that when we organize , we can change the terrain of possible , and the common sense of society .
”

This article appears in the August 10/17, 2020 issue.
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
Repro Nation A monthly newsletter on the global fight for reproductive freedom. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
Can Joe Biden be moved to the left on the issues that matter most and are critical to the sort of mass mobilization of voters that might transform our politics and our governance? Yes. That’s the best takeaway from the presumptive Democratic nominee’s July 14 announcement of a climate and jobs plan that would have him move immediately as president to invest $2 trillion in developing clean energy infrastructure and a host of other responses to the climate crisis. “We’re not just going to tinker around the edges,” Biden declared. “We’re going to make historic investments that will seize the opportunity and meet this moment in history.”
That’s a far cry from what Biden was saying during his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this year. Then, he pushed back against climate activists and dismissed an ambitious plan by his chief rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, to “launch the decade of the Green New Deal, a 10-year mobilization to avert climate catastrophe during which climate change, justice, and equity will be factored into virtually every area of policy, from immigration to trade to foreign policy and beyond.” Asked about the Sanders plan in January, Biden claimed, falsely, that “not a single solitary scientist thinks it will work.”
Now, Biden is talking about making a good deal of it work—borrowing ideas from Sanders and from Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who as a 2020 contender ripped the former vice president for failing to respond to the crisis with the urgency that it required. Sunrise Movement cofounder Varshini Prakash, who served on the Biden-Sanders climate unity task force that prodded Biden on the issue, summed up the reaction from activists who once objected to his approach. “It’s no secret that we’ve been critical of [his] plans and commitments in the past,” she said. “Today, he’s responded to many of those criticisms: dramatically increasing the scale and urgency of investments, filling in details on how he’d achieve environmental justice and create good union jobs, and promising immediate action—on day 1, in his first 100 days, in his first term, in the next decade—not just some far off goals.”
Julian Brave NoiseCat, the director of Green New Deal Strategy for the research group Data for Progress, suggested that “Biden’s clean energy and environmental justice plans are, in my view, a Green New Deal in all but name.” Green Party presidential nominee Howie Hawkins disagreed, arguing that “Biden is nowhere close to the GND. Besides having a timeline for emissions more than 20 years slower, he leaves out the other half, which is an economic bill of rights—guaranteed jobs, single payer healthcare, housing, etc.” There’s still a good debate to be had about whether Biden is prepared to meet the challenges he’ll face if elected. But The Washington Post noted that the Democrat’s recent policy pronouncements on climate change and other issues represent “a significant move to the left from where Biden and his party were only recently.” More From John Nichols A GOP Debate Without Trump Is the Definition of Pointlessness August 11, 2023 A Win for Abortion Rights, a Win for Democracy: Ohio Voters Reject Issue 1 August 9, 2023 The Biggest Threat to Donald Trump Could Be the Constitution Itself August 4, 2023
That movement is what matters. Give Biden credit for breaking loose from some of the centrist dogmas that bogged Democrats down in 2016 and that are scorchingly out of touch with a pandemic moment that is witnessing mass unemployment. But give activists more credit for making him do so. Prakash was right when she said, “Our movement, alongside environmental justice communities and frontline workers, has taught Joe Biden to talk the talk.” That’s important in an election year when an action agenda is necessary and popular. She was also right when she said progressives must keep pushing Biden to be bolder—and better—in addressing the climate crisis, systemic racism, and the rot that extends from decades of deference to Wall Street and the military-industrial complex. The hopeful news is that Biden, in stark contrast to Trump, responds to pushing. “What we’ve shown,” Prakash said, “is that when we organize, we can change the terrain of possible, and the common sense of society.”


thenation--2020-07-27--The Pandemic Is Killing Research—So Where Is University Support?

In the throes of the Covid-19 emergency , almost all of New Jersey ’ s state universities , like many university research centers across the country , have halted in-person functions—except for work on the pandemic .
And rightly so .
This is a dangerous public health emergency that requires large-scale shifts in how we live and work until we get it under control .
But it also requires an institutional response that matches the scale of the problem .
As a Covid researcher , I ’ ve had the responsibility of taking on new , fast-paced research of urgent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ involved in a number of projects related to Covid , including investigating a molecule made by deep-ocean bacteria that could be developed to treat the virus ’ s symptoms .
But I ’ ve had to do it without sufficient support from one of the country ’ s largest research institutions .
And my situation pales in comparison to that of the vast majority of my graduate student colleagues at Rutgers .
I ’ m one of the lucky ones .
According to surveys by the student government of graduate students at Rutgers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overwhelming majority of doctoral students study , two-thirds of PhD students at Rutgers report research delays that will necessitate their taking at least one more year to complete their dissertations and produce innovative work .
In my department , nearly every lab has been closed .
Many of us are on tight deadlines .
And with only a short window in which to receive university funding , graduate students worry that we ’ ll be unable to complete our research in time .
Even the lucky few who have work that can be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ access vital campus resources .
Personal computers present unique challenges of security , connectivity , and strength .
Because much of our data is inaccessible on private computers in order to maintain the safety and quality of our research , we have to be on-site .
Many of us use molecular or culture-based techniques—for that , people need to be in the lab to , for example , give nutrients to bacteria to keep them alive .
And even if we use computers for our research , that data is based on physical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extract what we need from , clean , verify their purity , then sequence .
None of this is possible at home .
As things are now , we are unable to continue our work and have no clear sense of when we will be able to resume .
This story was produced for Student Nation , a section devoted to highlighting campus activism and student movements from students in their own words .
For more Student Nation , check out our archive .
Are you a student with a campus activism story @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Schuyler at samantha @ thenation.com .
The Student Nation program is made possible through generous funding from The Puffin Foundation .
Without new research , we can not seek the sources of funding that enable our work , including competitive outside grants from major funders , such as NASA or the NSF .
It is a common practice for such agencies to fully fund a project only after researchers complete a high-risk , high-reward initial effort to demonstrate proof of concept .
As we can not generate new data , we are unable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to get funding .
Such resources are key not only to our research projects ’ completion but also to our ability to progress in our fields and make Rutgers a center of innovation .
Across the country , this situation is even worse for graduate students in earlier phases of their research or in other disciplines .
“ It took me months and months to get the lab set up , and I ’ m now looking at the possibility of redoing that , ” Melissa Kane , an assistant professor of pediatrics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ school of medicine , told Inside Higher Ed .
“ It ’ s going to be a lot harder for junior people to get back up and running.
” Sunny Shin , an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania , told the same publication that with experiments suspended , her lab had to euthanize three-quarters of her lab ’ s mouse colony .
“ I estimate that this will set my lab ’ s research back at least six months , if not more , as we don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to go back into our labs again.
” Cullen Taniguchi , an assistant professor at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center , told STAT news that early-career researchers will be the most vulnerable in the shutdown ’ s aftermath .
“ We may lose a whole generation of researchers because of this , ” he told the science and medical news website .
Those whose research is dependent on new samples from distant or difficult-to-access locations or clinical trials have it even worse .
With travel , in-person interviews , and clinical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simply can not happen .
Many social scientists and humanities scholars require long stays in the field or extended archival work .
Any research involving humans has been nearly impossible for a whole semester .
These conditions are unlikely to change over the summer and into the fall .
Any long-term projects planned for this semester or over the summer can not move forward , resulting in month-to-year-long delays in the beginning of new work or completing existing projects .
The last time one colleague was able to grow the bacteria they need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ My aim of defining this new species has been on hold for four months , ” he said .
“ Since I can ’ t produce any data , I have nothing to analyze , so I ’ ve been , with regards to finishing my PhD , sitting on my hands since then.
” He and many others have lost precious time that must be made up .
And administrators know that .
For many of us , the only solution is to extend our time at Rutgers , meaning spending @ @ @ @ @ @ @ complete the PhD .
The alternative is to lose grant funding or drop out .
Thankfully , on each of the three campuses , deans have already loosened timeline limits for PhD students .
But simply allowing us to spend more time at Rutgers to complete our projects isn ’ t enough .
Without financial support , more time is essentially meaningless .
It is imperative that the university , with the aid of the state , extend graduate student funding across the board for at least one year .
If we do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then we will all but ensure that an entire generation will be left behind .

Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
Repro Nation A monthly newsletter on the global fight for reproductive freedom. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
In the throes of the Covid-19 emergency, almost all of New Jersey’s state universities, like many university research centers across the country, have halted in-person functions—except for work on the pandemic. And rightly so. This is a dangerous public health emergency that requires large-scale shifts in how we live and work until we get it under control. But it also requires an institutional response that matches the scale of the problem.
As a Covid researcher, I’ve had the responsibility of taking on new, fast-paced research of urgent public concern. My department has been involved in a number of projects related to Covid, including investigating a molecule made by deep-ocean bacteria that could be developed to treat the virus’s symptoms. But I’ve had to do it without sufficient support from one of the country’s largest research institutions. And my situation pales in comparison to that of the vast majority of my graduate student colleagues at Rutgers. I’m one of the lucky ones.
According to surveys by the student government of graduate students at Rutgers New Brunswick and Newark, where the overwhelming majority of doctoral students study, two-thirds of PhD students at Rutgers report research delays that will necessitate their taking at least one more year to complete their dissertations and produce innovative work. In my department, nearly every lab has been closed. Many of us are on tight deadlines. And with only a short window in which to receive university funding, graduate students worry that we’ll be unable to complete our research in time.
Even the lucky few who have work that can be performed remotely are no longer able to access vital campus resources. Personal computers present unique challenges of security, connectivity, and strength. Because much of our data is inaccessible on private computers in order to maintain the safety and quality of our research, we have to be on-site. Many of us use molecular or culture-based techniques—for that, people need to be in the lab to, for example, give nutrients to bacteria to keep them alive. And even if we use computers for our research, that data is based on physical samples that we need to grow, extract what we need from, clean, verify their purity, then sequence. None of this is possible at home. As things are now, we are unable to continue our work and have no clear sense of when we will be able to resume. This story was produced for Student Nation, a section devoted to highlighting campus activism and student movements from students in their own words. For more Student Nation, check out our archive. Are you a student with a campus activism story? Send questions and pitches to Samantha Schuyler at [email protected]. The Student Nation program is made possible through generous funding from The Puffin Foundation.
Without new research, we cannot seek the sources of funding that enable our work, including competitive outside grants from major funders, such as NASA or the NSF. It is a common practice for such agencies to fully fund a project only after researchers complete a high-risk, high-reward initial effort to demonstrate proof of concept. As we cannot generate new data, we are unable to accomplish the early-stage research we need to get funding. Such resources are key not only to our research projects’ completion but also to our ability to progress in our fields and make Rutgers a center of innovation. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
Across the country, this situation is even worse for graduate students in earlier phases of their research or in other disciplines. “It took me months and months to get the lab set up, and I’m now looking at the possibility of redoing that,” Melissa Kane, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh’s school of medicine, told Inside Higher Ed. “It’s going to be a lot harder for junior people to get back up and running.” Sunny Shin, an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, told the same publication that with experiments suspended, her lab had to euthanize three-quarters of her lab’s mouse colony. “I estimate that this will set my lab’s research back at least six months, if not more, as we don’t know when we’ll be able to go back into our labs again.” Cullen Taniguchi, an assistant professor at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, told STAT news that early-career researchers will be the most vulnerable in the shutdown’s aftermath. “We may lose a whole generation of researchers because of this,” he told the science and medical news website.
Those whose research is dependent on new samples from distant or difficult-to-access locations or clinical trials have it even worse. With travel, in-person interviews, and clinical trials all on hold, much research simply cannot happen. Many social scientists and humanities scholars require long stays in the field or extended archival work. Any research involving humans has been nearly impossible for a whole semester. These conditions are unlikely to change over the summer and into the fall.
Any long-term projects planned for this semester or over the summer cannot move forward, resulting in month-to-year-long delays in the beginning of new work or completing existing projects. The last time one colleague was able to grow the bacteria they need for their work was early March. “My aim of defining this new species has been on hold for four months,” he said. “Since I can’t produce any data, I have nothing to analyze, so I’ve been, with regards to finishing my PhD, sitting on my hands since then.” He and many others have lost precious time that must be made up. And administrators know that. For many of us, the only solution is to extend our time at Rutgers, meaning spending a full seven or eight years to complete the PhD. The alternative is to lose grant funding or drop out.
Thankfully, on each of the three campuses, deans have already loosened timeline limits for PhD students. But simply allowing us to spend more time at Rutgers to complete our projects isn’t enough. Without financial support, more time is essentially meaningless. It is imperative that the university, with the aid of the state, extend graduate student funding across the board for at least one year. If we do not support our graduate students now, then we will all but ensure that an entire generation will be left behind.