"Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept": Meet the Palestinian Lawyer Censored by Columbia and Harvard

this news is funded by viewers like you please support our work at democracynow.org this is democracy Now democracynow.org the Warren peace report I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez the website of the Columbia Law review one of the oldest and most pre prestigious legal journals in the country has been down since Monday at the time of this broadcast Colombia law review.org shows a static homepage informing visitors that the site is under maintenance well that's not exactly true in a stunning move the board of directors of the Columbia Law review decided to take down the website after the publication student editors refused the board's request to Halt the publication of an academic article written by Palestinian human rights lawyer Rabia akaria titled toward nakba as a legal concept student editors at the Columbia Law reviews say they were pressured by the journal's board of director to whole publication of the piece they refuse a request and publish the piece online Monday morning in response the board which is made up of faculty and alumni from Columbia University's law school shut down the law reviews website after the website was taken down student editors uploaded the article to a publicly accept uh accessible website where it's gone viral the article begins quote the law does not possess the language that we desperately need to accurately capture the totality of the Palestinian condition from occupation to apartate and genocide the most commonly applied legal Concepts rely on abstraction and analogy to reveal particular facets of subordination this article introduces nakba as a legal concept to resolve this tension unquote the article is written by Rabia akaria a human rights lawyer completing his doctoral studies at Harvard Law School last November the Harvard Law review refused to publish a similar shorter article it had solicited from AA even after it was initially accepted fully edited and fact checked in both cases the article would have been the first time that either the Harvard Law review or the Colombia law review had ever published a Palestinian legal scholar for more we are joined by RAB akaria uh he's joining us here in our New York Studio welcome to democracy Arabia it's for very important to have you with us talk about this experience and lay out what the Colombia law Review Board of Directors did not want the public to see well thank you again for having me um quite honestly I still don't fully know the details of what happened because the Colombia law reviews Board of directors as of today have not reached out to me um personally and officially to inform me of their decision um which is quite telling of the sloppy and unprofessional manner with which they're handling this situation um and quite offensive to be frank about the the the matter I learned on Monday morning that the Columbia LW Review Board of Directors decided to shut down the entire colia lview website after my piece has been uh published as scheduled after months of work and editing uh with the Colombia low review staff editors I you know I've been working about this piece for about five six months now and it is really unfortunate to see how this is playing out and how to the extent to which the board of directors is willing to go to shut down UNS silenced Palestinian scholarship I I'm only left you know with a question what are they afraid of what are they afraid of a Palestinians narrating their own reality speaking their own truth um whose interests is the board of directors serving going against their students editors going against its own staff throwing them under the bus manufacturing a controversy about some internal processes for what sake I think this is a question that everybody should have on their mind today and RAB I wanted to ask you how does it feel to have not one but two of the most prestigious uh uh universi private university law schools in the United States schools that teach constantly about Enlightenment thinking and The Clash of ideas and the necessity for free speech to have your your articles censored by two of these universities ironically I think by attempting to silence and censor my scholarship these two law reviews have actually Amplified it and by attempting to erase um the nakba they have in fact made it clearer and still despite this irony it feels quite offensive um and unprofessional and discriminatory to be faced with such repression and I think this repression is really a testament to the Palestine exception to free speech and to academic freedom and it's it's a microcosm of you know the broader authoritarian repression we've been witnessing on American uh campuses in this country you know um I've been trying to actually talk about the neba to articulate sensible legal claims about how to think about the reality of violence and domination in Palestine but instead I find myself now talking about my right to say these things um which is again an irony I am not trying to talk about my right to say them I'm trying to actually talk about theba so talk about it lay out your argument so my article is trying to Grapple with the tension with which we certainly are today talking about the genocide in Gaza which I think is certainly the case but you know for the last 76 years Palestinians have been facing an ongoing reality of violence dispossession domination and in fact an akba regime a regime a sophisticated regime of um sub subordination that fragments the Palestinian Collective that subordinates the Palestinian people and subjects them to a system of Oppression a brutal system of Oppression the article is trying to con encapsulate that um Palestinian reality in its own framework the framework of the pales that Palestinians articulate naturally and organically which is the neba the neba refers to the catastrophe in 1948 the Palestinian catastrophe in 1948 the process of ethnic cleansing um that you know dispossessed and expelled over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands destroyed over 530 Villages um in order to establish the state of Israel and I think we cannot talk about these processes or these Concepts separately they are mutually constitutive and the reality of the NBA the reality of Palestinian oppression has been ongoing ever since for the last 76 years Palestinians have been subjected to different types kinds and forms of violence and oppression that denied them to exercise their political will to their their right to land their right to nationality and their self-determination and the article is basically stemming from that point and says well we need to think about Palestine not only in analogy it is not an attack on analogy and the discourses of genocide or aarth side in fact I do think the neba overlaps with both genocide and apartheid and contained um variants and episodes of genocide and aarth throughout the last 76 years but I do think that we need to acknowledge the nakba for what it is to talk about it for what it is and not only reference it in analogy to other Concepts and could you talk some a little about your own uh experience as a as a human rights uh attorney uh and dealing with issues of the the Palestinian rights absolutely um I've been studying at Harvard Law School for my doctorate at the moment in the last few years but I've also been um a human rights attorney and a public defender previously uh who litigated Palestinian rights um mainly at the Israeli Supreme Court um and my experience has really informed I think my scholarship and The View with which I approach um the the the ongoing neba because you know with each case that we as lawyers litigate we we are informed in particular with with regards to Palestinian um rights we're inform of different legal framework that applies that reveals a different type of Oppression whether it is you know um the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel whether it is the rights of Palestinians in East Jerusalem or in in in the West Bank in Gaza these all come together usually before the Israeli Supreme Court to form some sort of a totality legal totality that applies different legal Concepts you know to govern each of these groups and this is part of the the article that I talk about you know this legal system of fragmentation the stratification and classification of Palestinians into different legal tiers and different ID systems that ultimately creates different realities of violence and domination which complicate our ability to grasp this uh totality in one concept by analogy that's why I think we need to adopt again the neba as a legal framework recognize it in law theorize it in law and and and and understand its root causes understand that the political ideology of Zionism has produced this neba this is also part of um the article these Concepts again are mutually constitutive I wanted to uh End by asking if you hold out hope that the Colombia law review website will be um will be no longer under construction and will print your piece uh the Colombia law reviews board of directors told The Intercept we spoke to certain members of student leadership to ask that they delay publication for a few days so that at a minimum the manuscript could be shared by all student editors to provide them with a chance to read it and um respond nevertheless we learned this morning the manuscript had been made public in order to provide time for the LW review to determine how to proceed we've temporarily suspended the website and what it will mean if your article on the nakba as a legal concept will mean for law in this country well I don't have much Faith or hope in these institutions especially being subjected to this experience not once but twice and the Harvard Law review has not yet published or apologized for their discriminatory Behavior un sensorial behavior um and I'm afraid of this I mean perhaps they will republish uh the piece I don't fully know again I have not been communicated with uh directly by the board of directors but I do want to note a few things I've read these claims you know that uh the board circulated I think they are a distraction I think the board is really trying to distract from contending with the content of the article you know if the board has only to say about some internal processes which are actually disputed by the the the editors at the Colombia law review and really I'm really grateful for these student editors for their principled stance um you know I wrote this piece and it was a regular process we we edited it I discussed it with many people and and I just want to say if all what the board has to say is some controversy about the process internally this tells me all I need to know but what it means for the knock but to be accepted as a legal term well I think we need to start talking about this and this is not the end this article is trying to open a conversation I'm trying to say things that we need to contend with and we need to develop and you know I think as much as a part had globalized and became illegal framework an abstract legal framework as much as genocide globalized following the Holocaust and became its own legal framework I think there is time now to contend with the neba as its own legal framework and start to think about how to undo the neba this is where I conclude I conclude with um a quote from um the South African delegation to the icj where they recognized NBA in their opening statement and they situate the claim for genocide um the reality of genocide in fact in the context of the ongoing neba and I I think I do want to underscore that um you know undoing the nakba is not resurrecting a past it is reimagining a future and to reimagine this future we need to start talking about the ne Ria I want to thank you so much for being with us human rights lawyer completing his doctoral studies at Harvard Law School his article toward nakba as a legal concept is not available on the Columbia Law review website at the time of this broadcast because it's been shut down the entire website but the article is available online and we will link to it democracy Now is funded by viewers like you please give today at democracynow.org

Channel: Democracy Now!

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Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 05 2024