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Byline: Abdullah H. Erakat TML

Palestinian prof. resigns after Auschwitz trip

The Palestinian professor who touched off a maelstrom of controversy by taking a group of students to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in Poland is now at odds with his former employer after the school accepted his resignation.

Dr. Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi, who headed the American studies department and served as chief librarian at Al-Quds University, stirred up controversy among Palestinians who felt the March trip was inappropriate. Although the participants were all students at Al-Quds, Dajani said that the trip itself was under the aegis of Wasatia, the nongovernmental organization that he heads whose goal is to “promote a culture of moderation and reconciliation between the Israeli people and the Palestinian people.” But when the trip became a public issue, criticism was leveled at the school and the professor. Dajani said he received threats and the employee and student unions, to which he did not belong, formally banned him from membership. On May 18, Dajani submitted his resignation from Al-Quds University.

Incoming university president Imad Abukishek said he was surprised by the resignation, given the lengths he said the school went to on Dajani’s behalf. “We thought he noticed what we did for him and that he would respect what we did for him,” Abukishek said, citing two university-assigned security guards hired to protect Dajani and the school’s attempt to confront the unions to demand the rescinding of the ban issued against the professor.

Dajani, however, said he saw the university’s response in a different light. In his letter of resignation addressed to outgoing university president Sari Nusseibeh, Dajani charged that as a result of the fallout from the Auschwitz trip, “the educational environment on this campus for teaching and learning is not available at your university, which makes it difficult to practise my mission to educate and practise academic freedom.”

In a statement, the administration strongly disagreed, citing the school’s efforts to “act promptly and effectively to deal with the actions” of the two unions and the hiring of the bodyguards. The administration insisted that Al-Quds did all it could do “to deal with the repercussions of his visit,” and did so even though it “was being made to deal with ‘an external activity carried out by Prof. Dajani in his private capacity as the CEO of an independent NGO, which he runs [that] … had nothing to do with the university.’” The statement added that the school did all it could “to ensure that individuals, including Prof. Dajani, had the right to express their views freely, and to act freely within the confines of the law, without fear of intimidations or threats.”

Read more at themedialine.org.

Posted on June 27, 2014June 25, 2014Author Abdullah H. Erakat TMLCategories WorldTags Al-Quds University, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dajani, Imad Abukishek, Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi, Sari Nusseibeh

Palestinian students visit concentration camps

Despite the frequency with which students from high schools and colleges worldwide visit Holocaust death camps, it was no simple matter for Issa Jameel when he was asked whether he wanted to visit Auschwitz. For Jameel, a Palestinian master’s student from Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, the opportunity was laced with political and nationalistic issues his peers don’t often consider. According to Jameel, it was only when he realized it would be an important educational experience to learn about the Jews in the Holocaust during the Second World War that he was convinced and signed on as student coordinator for the trip.

“Until when will we keep hearing the Israeli narrative of what happened?” Jameel asked this reporter in the library of the American studies department on the Al-Quds campus in the Abu Dis neighborhood of Jerusalem. “Why don’t we find out for ourselves?” he asked.

The result was the first delegation of its kind: a March trip by 27 students to Auschwitz and Birkenau camps in Poland led by Prof. Mohammad Dajani Daoudi, dean of the American studies program.

“I was not shy to admit that I was going, and I was not afraid to say so because I was going to learn. As a Palestinian, I feel for others because we are suffering,” Jameel said.

“The idea is to study empathy in order to affect feelings of reconciliation,” Dajani explained. “We are exposing Palestinian students to what happened during World War II – in particular, the Holocaust concentration camps. At the same time, we are taking 30 Israeli students to visit Palestinians who suffered as a result of the 1948 Nakba.”

Read more at themedialine.org.

Posted on May 9, 2014June 10, 2016Author Abdullah H. Erakat TMLCategories World
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