The checkpoint is closed: “Detour, detour!” shouts a taxi driver, announcing the beginning of yet another uncertain search for a way around the barriers curtailing Palestinian movement in the West Bank.
Infiltrators is a visceral “road movie” that chronicles the daily travails of Palestinians of all backgrounds as they seek routes through, under, around, and over a bewildering matrix of barriers.
Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID)-Georgetown University
The Palestinian case is extreme, but it is only one among many in the Arab/Muslim world of democracy denied. The gains made by pro-democracy movements in the 2010-2011 “Arab Spring” have all been reversed, and anti-democratic forces have spread beyond the Arab/Muslim world. This conference will address the lessons learned from these and other cases, critique the policies that have allowed anti-democratic forces to proliferate, and recommend policies based on those lessons and critiques.
Global Studies Center, Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange
Abdelrahman ElGendy is a writer and former Egyptian political prisoner. Arrested from a protest in Cairo, he spent six years and three months behind bars between October 6, 2013, and January 13, 2020. Incarcerated at 17 and released at 24, he started and earned a mechanical engineering BSc from Ain Shams University in Egypt while in prison. His smuggled prison writings circulated online until picked up and published in 2018 by Mada Masr, an independent journalism platform in Egypt.
Sami Hermez is an anthropologist who teaches at Northwestern University in Qatar. He is the author of War Is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon (2017). His work in and out of the classroom reflects a strong commitment to freedom, justice, and equality. His family's history of migration spans the Levant, with roots in Al-Qosh, Aleppo, Beirut, and Jerusalem. Sami was a visiting professor of Contemporary and International Issues, at the University of Pittsburgh in 2012- 2013. He is a great speaker and intellect!