Towards Justice in Palestine: Connecting with Global Struggles - 5/21/2021

 Conversation Overview

Please join moderater Dr. Zari Hedayat with panelists Imad Abid, Samer Badawi, Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb for a Messy Conversation entitled Toward Justice in Palestine: Connecting with Global Struggles against Colonization, Racism & State Violence.

Dr. ZARI HEDAYAT currently serves as the Clinical Director of Open Paths Counseling Center, is an affiliate faculty for the Child Specialization Program in the Masters of Psychology program of Antioch University, serves on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and was primary supervisor for the Colors LGBTQ Program from 2015-2021. She has worked in private practice for 35 years. She is fluent in Persian and French, enjoys hiking and sculpting in her spare time, and is married and the proud mother of a 25 year old daughter. Dr. Hedayat has researched Islamic perspectives on psychopathology and psychotherapy. Her published works include topics such as, psychotherapy with American Muslims, and the challenge of psychoanalysis and Islam. After earning her Ph.D. at the Chicago School in 1992, an excerpt of her dissertation on the ‘self object functions of the Koran,’ was published in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion.

IMAN ABID is a Palestinian who is currently the Regional Director with the American Civil Liberties Union of New York (ACLU of NY). As a Community Organizer and strategist, Iman has worked on a number of issues ranging from police brutality to immigration justice to privacy and digital rights. Iman is also the Co-Founder of Free the People Roc, a Rochester, NY based Black liberation collective working with directly impacted families of police brutality and state sanctioned violence.

SAMER BADAWI joined +972 Magazine in 2014 and covered Operation Protective Edge for the magazine from Gaza and the West Bank in the summer and fall of that year. Prior to that, he served as executive director of United Palestinian Appeal and editor with the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine (now Palestine Center). During the 2008-2009 assault on Gaza, he joined Congressmen Dennis Kucinich and Brian Baird for a Capitol Hill briefing on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Formerly the DC correspondent for Middle East International magazine, his reporting and analysis have been cited by The Washington Post and featured on Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Democracy Now!, and MSNBC.

Dr. AHLAM MUHTASEB is a professor of media studies and the director of the Center for Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies at California State University, San Bernardino. She is the recipient of the 2020 CSUSB Outstanding Scholarship, Research and Creative Activities Award and was one of the 2019-20 Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Faculty Mentor Awardees. She has an M.A. in Journalism and a Ph.D. in Digital Communication from the University of Memphis, Tennessee. Her research interests include digital communication, social media, social justice and diasporic communities. Her most recent project is her award-wining documentary 1948: Creation & Catastrophe. The film, co-produced and co-directed with Andy Trimlett, focuses on the year 1948 and its catastrophic consequences on the Palestinian nation which has originated from her field work in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.