Palestine: Classics and Archaeology’s Litmus Test

Picture: isisnaucratis

This week, the 2024 joint meeting of the Society for Classical Studies (SCS) and Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) is taking place in Chicago. In honour of this event, which I am not attending, but which droves of North American and other colleagues and students will be at, I thought it would be appropriate to share a few clarifications regarding the meaning of the SCS’s and AIA’s current stance on academic freedom and Palestine.

My experience with both organizations has me doubting whether any official statement or discussion centering ongoing threats to academic freedom, and the rooting of these threats in the “Palestine exception”, will take place at the conference.

Indeed, as I documented in a previous post, on November 3, 2023, I emailed all the members of the SCS and AIA execs to ask them whether they would consider issuing a statement on academic freedom and Palestine. My email followed the release of a letter of solidarity with the People of Palestine signed by 260 Antiquity scholars, many of whom are SCS and AIA members.

To this day, neither the SCS nor the AIA has responded to my email (same for ASOR and ARCE). This strikes me as uncollegial. But maybe I’m wrong and they’ll follow up after their conference?

If one puts aside potentially fervent supporters of the Zionist genocidal project, and those who still don’t (want to) understand that Zionism and Judaism are absolutely not the same thing, how can we explain the overwhelming silence of Classicists and archaeologists, especially those in position of privilege and power as well as organizations like the SCS and AIA?

I imagine that many of the SCS and AIA gatekeepers might think the genocide of the Palestinian People has nothing to do with them. I also suspect that others might think that a bunch of Brown, mostly Muslim folks carpet bombed in a Sinai ghetto thanks to Washington’s carte blanche to Bibi are not worth losing networking opportunities, fancy invites and grants over. Should my guesses be accurate, these people couldn’t be more wrong. Why? Here is a list of whys:

1. The genocide is funded by the USA, where the vast majority of the SCS and AIA members are (from).
2. Many (and in my case, most) of our students are, Muslim, MENA Christians, Indigenous and, more generally, anti-Zionists (incl. Jewish students).
3. More than half the geographical areas/sources Classicists deem of interest — incl. Palestine and the Sinai — are in/from the MENA, where both the wounds and memories and ongoing presences of European and USA colonial hegemony are vivid, and the support for the right of the Palestinian People to live sovereign on their Land is unanimous.
4. The imperial dynamics at play right now are rooted in the well-documented, White supremacist reception of ancient imperialisms, especially Rome’s.
5. Likewise, the Zionist genocidal project follows a dehumanizing and erasing settler colonial roadmap that mimics the one used by the USA and Canada to steal Indigenous Land and mass kill + displace First Nation Peoples. Once again, this project emulates a Classical template.
6. The weaponization of Biblical archaeology, tourism and the Antiquities trade is at the heart of the Zionist project.
7. The destruction of Palestinian heritage and histories, and the occlusionn of Palestinian scholarship, is also at the heart of the Zionist epistemicide of the Palestinian People.
8. More generally, identifying as a Classicist is increasingly an embarrassment in the Humanities. The field remains elitist & insular, esp. among gatekeepers who benefit from the status quo. Ongoing silences on Palestine and academic freedom only cement its image of oppressive coloniality.
9. Antiquity organizations cannot perform edi except when it comes to Palestine. To do so is symptomatic of a USA-centric, and two-tiered, conception of equity, and poses the question of these organizations’ anti-Palestinian, Orientalist, and Islamophobic biases.

In late November 2023, during the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Toronto, folks staged a reading of the names & age of all the civilians killed in Gaza. They also staged a die in.

More recently, on December 6, 2023, the Institut français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo) issued a statement on Palestine on their website:

Being a research institution in humanities and social sciences in the Near East, the Ifpo works and publishes on the Palestinian community and with it, through the establishment of numerous partnerships. Its members are deeply concerned about the welfare of their Palestinian colleagues and the destruction of places of knowledge. The ongoing war, which has caused more victims than previous ones, spares indeed no academic institution in Gaza, as well as in the West Bank. As the toll of destruction, deaths, physical injuries, arrest cases, and the inability to move freely has reached alarming levels, the price our colleagues pay while practicing their profession in Palestine has become exorbitant. In a General Assembly held on the 6th of December 2023, the Ifpo members expressed solidarity with their Palestinian colleagues and partners and stood alongside them. They call for a ceasefire and compliance with international law and human rights.

Will some of the SCS and AIA members gathered in Chicago this week emulate their AAA and Ifpo colleagues and speak up? Feel free to let me know if they do!

I leave you with this profile of Palestinian archaeologist Fadel al-Otul, who has been doing important work in Gaza, including the very recent discovery of a Roman-period cemetery.