Leading US university appoints first Mahmoud Darwish chair in Palestinian studies

Brown University has become the first in North America to appoint a faculty chair in Palestinian studies.

The Rhode Island university, among America’s high-ranking Ivy League schools, announced this week that it was establishing a Mahmoud Darwish

chair in Palestinian studies in honour of the poet.

Darwish, who died in 2008, is regarded as a national poet for Palestinians and a symbol for his people’s struggle to fight displacement and Israeli occupation. He wrote more than 30 volumes of poetry and eight books of prose.

Prof Beshara Doumani is the first holder of the chair and will begin his tenure in July. He is an academic specialising in the field of Middle East studies.

“By joining the names Mahmoud Darwish and Beshara Doumani, the appointment embraces the vitality of Palestinian life as a driving concern in academic, cultural and political affairs at a global level,” the university said.

Elias Muhanna, a professor at Brown, said that the creation of the chair and appointment of Mr Doumani were of great significance.

“This is the first faculty chair in Palestinian studies at a North American university, which represents a major milestone,” Mr Muhanna said.

“Over the last several decades, Palestinian studies has faced the kind of pressure that other fields rarely encounter,” he said, asserting that the Darwish chair brought “long-overdue institutional recognition”.

Palestinian voices have faced an uphill battle in seeking representation in the US. In 2012, former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called the Palestinians “an invented people”.

The struggle for Palestinian academic recognition has gone hand-in-hand with a political battle.

In 2018, the US closed the Palestine Liberation Organisation office in Washington and recently signalled conditional acceptance of Israeli annexation of occupied Palestinian areas in the Jordan Valley and the West Bank.