The 2024 Provost's Lecture Series will bring together experts for UNconventional conversations about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Speakers will represent different viewpoints and perspectives.

The first session,The Heart of the Matter: Jerusalem and the Struggles of Israel and Palestine, is a virtual webinar with experts who will examine the centrality of Jerusalem for the three Abrahamic faiths and its place in past and current conflicts. The speakers represent diverse perspectives on the question of why this land is so important to people of different faiths. We ask that the VCU community approach the sessions with curiosity and openness, to advance the collective goal of expanding dialogue, building understanding, and learning from the point of view of others. The webinar is open to the entire VCU community. 

Format: Virtual webinar only

Register here   (**The zoom webinar link will be provided in the confirmation email once this form is completed and submitted.)

Speaker Bios:

Nathan J. Brown is a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. He also serves as nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the author/co-author of nine books on Middle East politics, most recently Lumbering State, Restless Society: Egypt in the Modern Era (2021) and Autocrats Don’t Always Get What they Want (2024). He has been named a Guggenheim Fellow, a Carnegie Scholar, a Fulbright Scholar, and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center. In 2013-2015, Dr. Brown was president of the Middle East Studies Association, the academic association for scholars studying the region.

Arie M. Dubnov is an Associate Professor of History and International Affairs who holds the Max Ticktin Chair of Israel Studies and serves as director of the Middle East Program.Trained in Israel and the U.S., he is a cultural and  intellectual historian of twentieth-century Jewish and Israeli history, with emphasis on the British mandate period in Palestine and the study of Jewish nationalism. His books include the intellectual biography Isaiah Berlin: The Journey  of a Jewish Liberal (2012), and three edited volumes, Zionism – A View from the Outside (2010   [in Hebrew]), Partitions: A Transnational History of Twentieth-century Territorial Separatism (2019, co-edited with Laura Robson), and Amos Oz’s Two Pens: Between Literature and Politics (2023).

Hilary Falb Kalisman is an Assistant Professor of History and Endowed Professor of Israel/Palestine Studies in the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research interests include education, colonialism, standardization, state and nation building in Israel/Palestine, Iraq and Jordan. Her first book, Teachers as State-Builders: Education and the Making of the Modern Middle East received the annual History of Education Society Outstanding Book Award in 2023. She is currently working on a political history of standardized testing in the 
Middle East.

Anwar Mhajne is an Umm al Fahem Native, is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Stonehill College. Her research focuses on feminist security studies, critical cybersecurity, disinformation, and Middle Eastern politics. Mhajne serves on the Academic Council of American Friends of Combatants for Peace. She is the co-editor of Critical Perspectives on Cybersecurity (2024). Her writing has been featured in the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, The International Feminist Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Religion and Politics, Culturico, The Carnegie 
Council for Ethics in International Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Conversation, Times of Israel, Haaretz, Middle East Eye, +972 Magazine, Quartz, The Defense Post, The Jerusalem Post, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, among others.
 

Moderators:

• Maria Rivera, Professor and Faculty Senate President, Virginia Commonwealth University
• Mangala Subrmaniam, Senior Vice Provost of Faculty Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University