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***Please note that this Expression of Interest is limited to faculty working at the University of Toronto Tri-Campus***

About the Position

The Hearing Palestine initiative invites Faculty at the University of Toronto to express their interest in serving on a newly formed Programmatic Advisory Board. Selected Faculty will serve for a two-year term, beginning on January 24, 2022.

The Programmatic Advisory Board is a working board that both advises the Steering Committee and contributes to the academic mission of Hearing Palestine. During the two-year period, members of the Programmatic Advisory Board commit to integrating a programmatic vision into a range of content and activities of Hearing Palestine. 

About Hearing Palestine

Hearing Palestine provides an intellectual hub at the University of Toronto that facilitates advanced and interdisciplinary research on Palestine, past, present, and future.

This open-call for expression of interest is designed to bring together the impressive faculty resources across all three UofT campuses to strengthen and diversify the scholarly community who engage with and study Palestine from a variety of fields and disciplines.

Selection Process

The Hearing Palestine Steering Committee will evaluate all applications in light of the core aims of the initiative, the ongoing programmatic planning for the coming year(s), and the capacity of Hearing Palestine existing resources to support the proposed programmatic content.

All applicants are encouraged to visit the Hearing Palestine website for information on the initiative’s academic vision, missions, and programmatic objectives.

Preference will be given to proposals that supportHearing Palestine’s aim to redress the Palestine exception to academic freedom, and Hearing Palestine’s programmatic needs, strategic planning goals, and the required resources to support the proposals.

To Apply

To apply, please submit an application that contains the following information:

• First Name, Last Name
• Title and Position
• Current Department(s)
• UofT Campuses appointment(s)
• Courses taught with a nexus to the study of Palestine
• Brief description of potential programmatic contribution(s) to Hearing Palestine (max 300 words)

Please email submissions to palestinestudies@utoronto.ca with the Subject line “Expression of Interest Submission” by Thursday, January 6, 2022.

All inquiries may be directed to palestinestudies@utoronto.ca

***

A PDF version of this Expression of Interest can be found here.

U of T hasn’t been welcoming to Palestinian community members — a new initiative hopes to change that

***Please note that the call for applications below is limited to scholars working at the University of Toronto***

The Hearing Palestine initiative at the University of Toronto (UofT) calls for applications for a manuscript review workshop series that centers the study of Palestine. Hearing Palestine is an initiative supported by the Department of History, Centre for the Study of the United States, and Institute of Islamic Studies.  In academic contexts, there remains an abiding concern with the “Palestine exception” to Academic Freedom. The University of Toronto is no exception to this phenomenon, and one that works to the detriment of key University policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion as a constituent feature of academic excellence.   

Hearing Palestine will host two Manuscript Workshops per academic year in order to support ongoing academic excellence and production in the study of Palestine across all relevant disciplines of study. 

Application Requirements 

Applications should include the following: 

1. Academic CV 
2. Cover letter introducing the manuscript 
3. Two draft chapters 
4. Equity, Diversity and Inclusion statement (optional) 

Please submit applications by email to palestinestudies@utoronto.ca by Friday, September 17, 2021. 

Eligibility Requirements 

Applications are limited to scholars working at the University of Toronto (St. George, Mississauga, Scarborough) with a manuscript that will be completed by the time of the Manuscript Workshop. Workshops will be held in the Fall and Winter Terms.  

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Policy 

Hearing Palestine embraces the UofT’s 2006 Statement of Equity, Diversity and Excellence. In light of that statement and in the interests of challenging the Palestine Exception to Academic Freedom, preference will be given to those scholars who are precariously employed (pre-tenure, limited term contracts) and center Palestine and Palestinian voices in their manuscript. 

A PDF of this Call for Application can be found here.

“Hearing Palestine” stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people in this time of escalating Israeli bombardment of Gaza, of relentless assaults on Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, in Haifa, Lydd and other towns.     

“Hearing Palestine” is an initiative housed at UofT’s Institute of Islamic Studies to provide an intellectual space for Palestinians and those interested in the history and future of Palestine to share their experience and research free from interference and disruption. Many of us—UofT faculty and students of Arab and Muslim heritage, or dissidents of other backgrounds—face ostracization for talking about the Palestinian right to self-determination or for criticizing the Israeli state. “Hearing Palestine” offers a vision of better scholarship and campus experience, one committed to the principle that justice is indivisible.  

In September 2020, it was brought to the attention of the academic community that a right-wing donor and supporter of the Israeli state was allowed to interfere in the hiring process for the Director of UofT’s International Human Rights Programme at the Faculty of Law—ostensibly on the grounds that the new Director was too critical of Israeli human rights violations. The shocking revelations of this scuttled process have led to a rare and unanimous censure by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, a body protecting academic freedom and university autonomy and representing no less than 72,000 university teachers across the country. The scandal at the University and the CAUT censure coincided with Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) report “A Threshold Crossed” which explicitly found Israeli state practices amount to Apartheid. The HRW report confirmed what many have said for long time, including what UofT’s “Israeli Apartheid Week” has argued since 2005; what President Jimmy Carter’s book “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid” raised in 2006; and what the Israeli NGO B’Tselem stated in its own report “A regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean” earlier this year. 

We recognize that the donor interference, the HRW report, and the current violence against Palestinian populations in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza are distinct, and take shape across different geographies. But they center on a fundamental issue that is “Hearing Palestine’s” foundational principle: that the Palestinian people are a people in exile and deserve to be heard on their own terms. To that end, and in the current context, we  therefore affirm that: 

• Palestine is a country which has been denied the state that UN resolution 181 promised, in principle, in 1947;  
• Palestinians are a people who for 73 years have faced expulsion, expropriation, incarceration and execution;  
• All people have a right to support the non-violent, anti-racist criticism of Israel, such as the BDS movement, without the threat of criminalization or government repudiation; 
• Criticism of Israel is not tantamount to anti-Semitism, and that any attempt to conflate opposition to Zionism with anti-Semitism runs contrary to the freedoms of expression and democratic debate that we hold dear. 

The current violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank prompts us to call upon the Canadian government, judiciary, media, business community and universities to recognize whether and how its practices and policies cover up the voices of Palestinians and/or benefit from the dispossession of Palestinians. As violence escalates in the region, we demand that Canadian institutions hold Israel accountable for its actions and demand it comply with international law. 

While UofT has begun to offer spaces for engaged students and scholars to tackle racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia, speaking about Palestine remains all too often subject to (self) censorship individually, and at the institutional level, it is treated as risky.  At a University committed to “radical, critical teaching and research,” we recognize that Palestine offers an important analytic site where racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia all-too-often intersect.  

Anver Emon, Director, Institute of Islamic Studies 
Jens Hanssen, Associate Professor, History 
Alejandro Paz, Associate Professor, Anthropology 

Resources: 

• Global scholars petition in solidarity with Palestine 
• Palestine is a feminist issue pledge 
• Scholars Strike panel discussion on Thursday on “Censuring the Neoliberal University: Academic Freedom, Donors & Equity” 
• The Legal Centre for Palestime in Canada 
• Visualizing Palestine: great poster project visualizing enormous data on contemporary Palestinian conditions 
• Learning Palestine: a teaching tool and oral history project on the Palestinian revolution from 1948-1983 

Syllabi & films: 

• HIS370H1F: “Modern Palestine,” Fall, Thursdays 10-1pm 
• NMC473/2173H1F: “Intellectuals of the modern Arab World,” Fall, Mondays 9-12pm 
• Decolonizing Palestine 
• Toronto Palestinian Film Festival, film screening and resources 
• 10 Great Palestinian films, free streaming