Teaching Palestine and the Middle East Part 1: Academic Freedom in Times of Crisis

This is part of a two roundtable series on pedagogy that purposefully unites teachers and professors from varied geographic and institutional contexts. Recent political attacks on institutional commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion, free speech, and academic freedom have increasingly targeted educational institutions at all levels. Particularly intense scrutiny has been directed at the teaching and discussion of Israel’s war on Gaza and Palestinian history more broadly. This climate has created a chilling effect on educators across the spectrum, many of whom seek to provide students with historical context for current events—events that, in some cases, directly impact their students’ families. In cities such as Chicago, home to one of the largest Palestinian communities in the United States, these restrictions carry especially profound implications.

This pedagogy roundtable brings together K-12 educators from Chicago and beyond, alongside professors from both large public institutions and small private colleges, to discuss the challenges of teaching about Palestine and the broader Middle East. While the recent wave of political scrutiny over historical curricula has alarmed many members of the American Historical Association—and rightly so—educators who teach Palestine and the Middle East have long been under surveillance, facing censorship, intimidation, and professional consequences for their scholarship and pedagogy.

Participants will share the innovative strategies they have developed to navigate these constraints, resist censorship, and reaffirm the importance of historical methodologies in moments of heightened political polarization. The discussion will also examine how frameworks of prejudice, surveillance, and repression have evolved across different political moments—from the post-9/11 “War on Terror” and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan to the rise of ISIS and, most recently, to the denial of scholasticide and genocide in Gaza. Additionally, panelists will explore how nationalist agendas often dictate particular historical narratives and how teaching Palestine has long been the crucible for embracing an ethical historical praxis.

This roundtable speaks to the current crisis in education by foregrounding how those who have dared to teach the history of Palestine in diverse geographic and institutional contexts have been on the frontlines of defending the historical discipline. Their experiences and strategies may provide critical insights for all those now facing political attacks for teaching the histories of racial injustice, indigeneity, reproductive rights, gender and sexuality, slavery, settler colonialism, and other contested topics in U.S. and global history.