As a Palestinian-American scholar, he sees academic freedom crumbling or even disappearing on two fronts. In Gaza, where there is no university left standing and in America, where the Trump administration has opened the attack on the ‘left-wing’ university world. “What we are experiencing now is an unprecedented attack on academic freedom,” said Beshara Doumani, professor of Palestinian Studies at Brown University.
Doumani (1957), in the Netherlands last week for a lecture at Leiden University, has been professor of Palestinian Studies at Brown University in Rhode Island since 2020 – the first permanent chair in that field in the US. He has extensive academic experience from coast to coast. He was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and at Berkeley in California.
Throughout his career, Doumani has been committed to revaluing Palestinian history in research into the Middle East, from which it has largely disappeared or been ignored. Born in Saudi Arabia in a Palestinian refugee family, raised in Lebanon and the US, he also knows the Palestinian areas well. He was chairman of the board of Bir Zeit University on the West Bank (2021-2023). More than six months before the fatal date of October 7, 2023, he visited several universities in Gaza with a delegation of Palestinian administrators.
He was surprised. “I was amazed at how much they had managed to build those universities despite the series of wars they had faced in twenty years. Some of those universities had started in tent camps, then came the barracks and then the buildings, with international support. They had great ambitions, especially medical and dental studies. They were places of hope. Now there is nothing left. Everything has been destroyed.”
According to Israel, Hamas controlled those universities.
Beshara Doumani.
photo ANNABEL OOSTEWEEGHEL
“The Palestinian academia is not immune to politics, nor is that in Israel. Of course not. But I did not notice anything during that short visit about what Israel claims, that those universities were training centers for terrorists. What I saw was mainly how normal things were and how proud they were of new equipment or dental chairs, still in the plastic. They saw a future for themselves and it has now been completely destroyed.”
Do you now see any signs of reconstruction?
“No. People think that the genocide is now over with the ceasefire, but that is a misunderstanding. Genocide is not just the killing of people. Israel is systematically destroying everything that makes Palestinian life possible, from the water supply to schools, places of worship, homes. This also means that all kinds of documents and property papers have been lost, which is part of creating lawlessness. So the ethnic cleansing that we saw in the wars of 1948 and 1967 will continue. It’s a long-term process, a tectonic shift alternating with sometimes a violent earthquake, such as after October 7. Fortunately, it is still intact.
Do you think Dutch universities should boycott Israel?
“That is up to the Dutch to decide. Boycotts are a peaceful way to mobilize people and fight injustice. If that was a good strategy for South Africa, why should it suddenly not be useful for the Palestinians? If you have to choose between violence and nonviolent protest, the choice seems clear to me.”
Do you believe that Hamas can still play a role in Gaza after October 7?
“As a historian, I find it difficult to say anything about that. The fact is that Hamas had power in Gaza and there are few alternatives. Israel now supports militias, often from criminal gangs, I do not see them taking the place of Hamas. But there will certainly also be a lot of criticism from Palestinians who, after all the destruction, wonder how we got into this and what ways out there are. At the same time, the existence of Hamas has always been a godsend for Israel because it can accept criticism, even that of Netanyahu. dismissing it as support for Hamas. That is also a way to deny Palestinians their rights.”
In the US, the government is now attacking universities, including yours.
“My chair is paid for by a permanent donation, the endowment from the university. That is crucial. Fortunately, because in America Palestinian studies is now being attacked and demonized. That is not new either, but the scale and intensity with which it happens is.”
Project 2025, a blueprint for Trump’s second term, includes the ‘Esther plan’, a settlement with pro-Palestinian activism.
“The government wants to bring the universities to their knees, just like law firms and the media, and is trying to achieve this in three ways. First, with an opportunistic appeal to anti-discrimination legislation. This is used to accuse universities of anti-Semitism and to impose sanctions such as freezing funds. Two: by officially embracing the anti-Semitism definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which also calls certain criticism of Israel anti-Semitic. Harvard has also adopted it. While even one of its drafters has said that it was never the intention to use it in such a way.
“And thirdly, there is the Esther plan, a large-scale campaign to suspect or criminalize Palestinian criticism of Israel as support for terrorism. Its effects extend far beyond Palestinian studies, it involves a reckoning with the idea of universities as sanctuaries for critical thinking.”
Your own university, Brown, mercifully got away with a $50 million ‘fine’ while retaining academic freedom.
“That is a misconception. You might think that Brown stood out favorably compared to, for example, Columbia University in New York, which had to pay 200 million. But that is not the crux of the matter. What all these agreements with universities have in common is that they give the state access to masses of data on students and staff members, who is admitted and hired. That is a tremendous power grab in higher education.”
The university has rejected Trump’s offer to give ‘good’ universities preferential treatment with subsidies.
“Everyone rejected that. That was a downright clumsy attempt by the government to get universities in line. Even institutions that were prepared to bend their knees rejected that offer. That does not mean that they are out of the danger zone.”
You are now on sabbatical. Are you confident about your return to the US?
“You can’t be confident about anything. I am convinced that Brown will continue to support my chair. But we are seeing things happening that we would not have thought possible a few years ago.”
NEW: Give this item as a gift
As an NRC subscriber you can subscribe every month 10 items give as a gift to someone without an NRC subscription. The recipient can read the article directly, without a paywall.