What can we learn from our experiences of the past 15 months? What lessons can we draw from the history, culture, and politics of the Middle East to inform our much needed solidarity movement?

This series of teach-ins, featuring academics, activists, writers, and artists, attempts to ground our understanding of this moment in vital historical and cultural context, while inviting participants to explore connections between our struggles here in Philadelphia with the struggles of people in the region.

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Join us Sunday, February 23, 2-4pm for a talk with Professor Thea Abu El-Haj and Keziah Ridgeway on Between Scholasticide & Repression from Gaza to Philadelphia. They will explore the interconnected themes of scholasticide and repression, by examining their manifestations in both Gaza and Philadelphia. The historical and contemporary contexts of these issues, as well as their impact on individuals and communities, will be discussed. They will answer questions and break into groups to workshop strategies for how people can organize within their local communities to counter this repression.

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Professor Thea Abu El-Haj is an anthropologist and Professor of Education at Barnard College, Columbia University and a visual artist. Her research explores questions about belonging, rights, citizenship, and education raised by globalization, transnational migration, and conflict. Her second book, Unsettled Belonging: Educating Palestinian Youth after 9/11, is an ethnographic account of young Palestinian Americans grappling with questions of belonging and citizenship in the wake of September 11, 2001. Her most recent research, “Disrupting Dispossession:Teaching Palestine in Exile, 1970-1990” is an oral history project with Palestinian teachers in Lebanon.

Keziah Ridgeway is a 12 year award winning history teacher in the city of Philadelphia. She earned a bachelor’s degree in History, primarily with a focus on Southwest Asia, Africa & Central/South America (Temple University) and a master's in Secondary Education (Saint Joseph's University). For the last 9 years, she has taught World History, IB Social and Cultural Anthropology and African American History at a public high school in the city. As a curriculum developer and facilitator, she co-created an Antiracist training curriculum, helped develop Colored Conventions lessons for a partnership with the University of Delaware and partnered with the School District of Philadelphia to help revamp the history curriculum. She also created a mutual aid program called Groceries For Philly and was featured in the book, “How We Stay Free: Notes on a Black Uprising” in which students she helped mentor in the group Philly Black Students Alliance wrote about her contribution to their political development during the 2020 Uprisings. She has appeared on and in numerous news programs and publications and authored the children’s book, “Black Women Do: Leaders of the African Diaspora. In 2020, Keziah won the prestigious Lindback Teacher Award for distinguished teachers in 2020.”

Between Scholasticide & Repression from Gaza to Philadelphia

Between Scholasticide & Repression from Gaza to Philadelphia

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