Sunday Mezze: Phillips Exeter Academy: Palestinian-Black Solidarity Workshop Denied Permission to Narrate + Edward Said

Mezze - المزة - a wide selection of small dishes served as appetizers, including such delicacies as hummus, cheese, eggplant, brains, stuffed grape leaves, calamari, and much more

On and off for around 30 years I had some sort of relationship with Phillips Exeter Academy. I was parent to one student, uncle of another, and over the years unofficial guardian to some students from Bosnia, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Palestine.

I occasionally spoke in classes or met with teachers to discuss Islam and the Middle East. I was at many times a volunteer working with Middle East and Muslim students, and for a very short-time was actually officially employed as an advisor.

It wasn’t a very good fit on both sides. They expected me not to rock the boat and I didn’t know any other way to cross troubled waters.

Update: I have learned that the workshop wasn’t even going to consider any material more recent than 2014, which means that discussion of the current war would not even have been included in the workshop.

NB Directly below my column is a link to a wonderful and important piece on Edward Said by Moustafa Bayoumi. Please find the time to read it.

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Phillips Exeter Academy: Palestinian-Black Solidarity Workshop Denied Permission To Narrate

On February 16, 1984 - 40 years ago this week - Columbia University and Palestinian-American scholar and political activist Edward Said published an essay, Permission to Narrate, in the London Review of Books. He remarked that while Palestinians were often in the news they didn’t have any agency and they didn't often get the chance to talk about who they are. Palestinians, he said, were systematically denied the power to communicate their own history.

On November 2003, 20 years after Said's essay and five months after graduation, Palestinian student Tamer Shabaneh '03 wrote in The Exonian, Phillips Exeter Academy's (PEA) school newspaper:

"... In the Israeli press there is more debate than at places like Exeter," "Is it not ironic that yelling "Free Tibet" is commendable campus-wide, while those who choose to yell "Free Palestine" are slandered as Anti-Semites and racist advocates favouring Israel's destruction? When I gave my senior meditation [May 2003] and spoke about my experiences under apartheid, I was booed and vilified for daring to mention the devastating effect of Israel's 1948 War of Independence (which Palestinians call al-Nakbah, the Catastrophe), on my family, while some other students on campus were able to maintain anti-Palestinian hate websites and openly talk about eliminating the last Palestinian alive."  

It's 2024 now and not much has changed. 

It's been 20 years since Tamer's meditation. I was Tamer's unofficial guardian when he was at Exeter and I clearly remember the time when I was sitting in Phillips Church, proudly listening to Tamer wrap-up his meditation when a long-time member of the school's faculty stood up - and, in a action previously unseen or unheard in the Sanctuary - attempted to marginalize and delegitimize the meditation by minimizing Tamer's experiences under occupation in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. He said, I believe, "Thank you Tamer. I just want everyone to know that not all people there have similar experiences."

Not much has changed.

Recently, in an action mirroring dozens of other academic and institutional actions across the America where the voices of the Other have been cancelled and erased - particularly voices supporting Palestinian Liberation and Freedom - PEA canceled, on the eve of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday, a student workshop entitled “Reflections on Palestinian-Black Solidarity for Liberation."

Described as " ... how systems of oppression and exploitation operate concurrently and how anti-oppressive struggles are, too, connected. We will investigate meaningful acts of resistance, listen and learn from one another ... This workshop will focus on what Angela Y. Davis means by Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement."

"What is solidarity?" the workshop asked students to consider. "What is our responsibility to bear witness? ... We will invite participants to explore some of the roots of Black Palestinian solidarity and to imagine and to reflect on the various methods of resistance within and across our communities."

Canceled.

Invitation voided: Permission to Narrate denied.

Permission to consider Malcom X's witness from Mecca in 1964: "There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white."

Permission to consider that Malcom X's pilgrimmage to Mecca was so transformative that he told Maya Angelou in 1965 that "I have met white-skinned blue-eyed men who I’ve openly called brother. I was wrong [in my previous opinions]."

Denied.

Denied an opportunity to learn why Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal (PEA'43), Toni Morrison, Carolyn Forché and 15 other writers wrote in 2006 that "Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones ... Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term [Israeli] military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation."

Denied an opportunity to read and understand why so many Black American writers and artists stand in solidarity with Palestinian aspirations for freedom, to understand that in an international, intersectional world of people of color, of LGBTQIA+ peoples, of the marginalized, occupied and oppressed are expressing solidity across caste, cultural, and religious lines.

Denied. Denied. Denied.

Permission to interrogate Nelson Mandela's belief that “... we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."

Denied.

Permission to consider the 2014 words of PEA's Lamont poet of 2009, Palestinian-American Naomi Shihab Nye, who in a narration explained, “In Ferguson, an invisible line separated white and black communities. In Jerusalem, a no-man’s land separated people, designated by barbed wire.”

Denied.

Denied an opportunity to witness the connection between an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, shot in "quiet old Ferguson, denied how understanding citizens marching with signs, “I’M A MAN TOO” “DON’T SHOOT” is connected to the Palestinians in Gaza who actually sent messages of solidarity to Ferguson – Internet petitions signed by Gaza citizens."

Palestinians who actually sent messages from Gaza to Ferguson protestors on how to protect themselves from tear gas!

Denied to the students was an opportunity to understand that no one is just one thing,

The Exonian editorial board wrote that "the workshop was designed based on academic materials and historical evidence. “We designed the Workshop for MLK Day 2024’s ‘Black Pain and Black Joy in Resistance’ to address students’ needs for a space to reflect on the various expressions of solidarity between Black-Americans and Palestinians.”

What a gift for students; what ignorance on the part of those who would control those thoughts.

I don't know whether or how much direct influence donors or alum might have had on the Exeter administration's decision to cancel the MLK program but I do know that the conversation is not cancelled.

"In a Statement signed by Principal Bill Rawson published on February 15, 2024 he notes: "The workshop was cancelled to provide time to gather additional input and perspective around how to structure and offer opportunities for important conversations in our community on these and related subjects ... We know that many students and teachers were disappointed ...  To that end, we will work with faculty, student advisers, and student leaders to create appropriate opportunities for such engagement on campus, meeting students where they are, and understanding that the needs of students will vary. These conversations have begun." 

He doesn't really get it: The conversations have already begun - without him.

I learned of it by overhearing some angry students discussing it at Me n' Ollies while I was picking up my favorite "chewy granola" pastry. I followed up by reading about it online.

Conversations begun in earnest by Tamer Shabaneh '03, by Naomi Nye, June Jordan, Toni Morrison, Michelle Alexander, Marc Lamont Hill, Mehdi Hasan, Angela Davis and so many others continue today on Facebook, on @black.palestine.pea, on Instagram and Telegram. They are with students from around the Seacoast who sometime meet with me off campus or online for coffee to discuss Gaza and the Palestinians. 

"I was born a Black woman
and now

"I am become a Palestinian
against the relentless laughter of evil
there is less and less living room
and where are my loved ones?

"It is time to make our way home." - June Jordan

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Edward Said seems like a prophet: 20 years on, ‘there’s hunger for his narrative’

As war rages in Gaza, the scholar and activist’s words feel prescient. That’s because so little has changed

Twenty years after his death in 2003, Edward Said – a man variously known for his groundbreaking scholarship, dogged political advocacy, fine-tuned musical abilities, and serious sense of fashion – continues to inspire. This time around, Said’s words and presence appear to answer a specific need prompted by Israel’s assault on Gaza, a campaign so calculated and unrelenting that it has been ruled plausibly genocidal by the international court of justice. It’s not easy to know how one should respond to such evil, and many appear to be turning to Said as their guide.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/edward-said-palestine-israel-gaza

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Salamaat,
Robert