Lessons on Divestment and Direct Action from the Mask of Maersk Campaign

Presenter: Roua Daas

Coming Soon

Presenter Biography

Coming soon

The Moral and Political Necessity of Divestment

Presenter: Laila Mohammad Shaikh

Founder of University of Cincinnati SJP, Young United Souls for Revolutionary Action, co-lead for Tamkeen National Student Front

Session description coming soon!

Presenter Biography

Laila Mohammad Shaikh is a Palestinian organizer and multimedia artist based in Cincinnati, Ohio. She recently took part in Birziet Universities Palestine and Arabic studies program after being a recent graduate from the University of Cincinnati with a B.A. in International Affairs , a minor in Arabic language and culture, with a certificate in legal studies. Laila is the founder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Cincinnati, a Co-founder of Young United Souls for Revolutionary Action (YUSRA), a member of the Cincinnati Palestinian solidarity coalition, Co-lead on the Student front for Tamkeen national, a legal oberver for the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), and Documenter at Signal Cincinnati. She also works as a Youth organizer for Muslim Power Hub (MPH) and President of the Student Defense and Devlopment Fund.

Outside-Inside-Outside Politics

Preseneter: Daniel Seagal

Jean M. Pitzer Professor Emeritus of History at Pitzer Collge, Jewish Voice for Peace Indiana coordinating committee

Reflecting on left activism in the US since the end of the second world war, and especially on activism in this century to dismantle the US-Israel alliance (to remove a key barrier to Palestinians liberating themselves), this presentation has two arguments. The first is the importance of refusing to choose between “outside” activism and “inside” (or electoral) work. Instead, this paper argues for the effectiveness of outside-inside-outside politics. Outside activism has the virtue of anchoring us in the lived experiences of social suffering and disempowerment; it is thus our north star, from where we must commence and to where we must always return. But we also must use outside activism to take and use the power of the state and para-state institutions to address systemic oppression and inequalities.

A recent example of outside-inside-outside politics is the conjoining of street protests in New York City against the genocidal war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu with lobbying of congressional offices to advance the Block the Bombs Act and other anti-genocide legislation. A different form of outside-inside-outside politics is working to bring outside activists, rather than careerist hacks, into public offices, and then holding them accountable to outside political movements (such as DSA and JVP), and finally, insuring that after a decent interval of time, those electeds leave office and return to the community and outside activism. A second argument concerns the importance of discipline and accountability in our outside political activism. Movement discipline builds power and guards against infiltrators. And accountability to those whose liberation we support is, again, our north star.

Presenter Biography

Daniel Segal is the Jean M. Pitzer Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and professor emeritus of history at Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges. His current scholarship focuses on the role of states and non-state societies in human history. Dan has pursued solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation for nearly fifty years. In 2018 he visited the illegally occupied West Bank and returned in 2023, as co-leader with a Palestinian colleague, of a study tour for six faculty colleagues and seven students. His most recent ethnographic and historical research has been in the Brazilian Amazon. He is on both the state coordinating committee for Jewish Voice for Peace Indiana and the Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace, and he is a proud member of Bloomington DSA. He is a past fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and a past president of the AAUP chapter of the Claremont Colleges.

Israel’s Lobby: Damaging, Desperate, and Dangerous

Presenter: Professor Ian Lustick

University of Pennsylvania Bess W. Heyman Chair, Emeritus, Author of Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power (2026)

This session presenter will be joining remotely.

American policy toward Israel, and indeed the American-Israeli relationship, have for more than fifty years, been three standard deviations from both the international mean of global positions on Israel related issues and from the mean of the domestic influence exerted by lobbies promoting the interests of foreign governments. The result has been damage to American national interests, including disastrous wars against Iraq and Iran that would not have occurred had it not been for this so-called “special relationship.” The massive scale of, and the absence of any conditions attached to, the diplomatic, economic, and military aid Washington has provided to Israel has had a drastic and radicalizing effect on Israel itself. Moderate politicians who might have exploited opportunities for securing reasonable agreements with Palestinians and the Arab world as a whole were repeatedly proven wrong when they predicted that if Israel refused to compromise the United States would force a solution on the country that would be worse than what Israel could freely negotiate. The reality was that Israeli governments could refuse all serious opportunities for peace, settle and effectively annex the occupied territories, and use military power at will and at little risk against Palestinians and neighboring countries, meant that the politicians able to win elections and form governments were those (such as Benjamin Netanyahu) ready to pander to the most extreme Israeli-Jewish and Zionist fears and fantasies. The radicalization of Israel then made it impossible for the Israel Lobby in the U.S. to successfully defend Israeli policies in front of American audiences. That fact has led both Israeli propagandists and the Israel Lobby embrace an antisemitism witch hunt designed, not to win debates or persuade opponents, but to prevent discussion, punish critics, and degrade the institutions that produce those critics. No longer does the Lobby’s influence threaten just American national interests; it threatens American liberties and the functioning of American civil society.

Presenter Biography

Dr. Ian Lustick holds the Bess W. Heyman Chair (Emeritus) in the Political Science Department of the University of Pennsylvania. He received his PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley; taught for fifteen years at Dartmouth College, worked for one year in the Department of State, and came to the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. He has published widely in the fields of Middle East politics—with a particular emphasis on Israel and Palestine, comparative politics, social science methodology, US foreign and national security policy, evolution and complexity theory, and social science-based computer simulation. He is a past president of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association, a founder and past president of the Association for Israel Studies, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Among his books are Arabs in the Jewish State (1980); For the Land and the Lord (1988, 1994); Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank/Gaza (1993); Trapped in the War on Terror (2006); and Paradigm Lost: From Two State Solution to One-State Reality (2019). His most recent book, with Eli Clifton, is Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power (2026).

“Stop Quantum” and the evolving fight against militarism in academia

Joshua Sodicoff

PhD student and graduate worker at the University of Chicago

The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park (IQMP) is an industrial campus currently being constructed in Chicago with the intention to house the first fault-tolerant quantum computers in the world. While it is meant to serve corporations and Department of War tenants, it is managed by a board composed of both businesspeople and professors and its development is being supported by a consortium of local universities and start-up incubators. The academic association has been essential to efforts to divert public concern about the project, with strategies including token educational outreach programs, inaccurate marketing of the applications of the technology, and misrepresentation of the ultimate operation of the site. In this presentation, I will speak about the IQMP as an example of the whitewashing of weapons technology through association with and normalization by academia. I will also speak about its specific threat as the likely site of systems large enough to break public key cryptography and thus enable federal access to decades of stored encrypted data. To do this, I will review the history, political economy, and basic science behind quantum computing before diving specifically into the factors driving forward the IQMP. I will then speak from my experience as an organizer with Science for the People in our campaign against the construction and operation of the IQMP about the strategies that have been utilized to contest the authority of its backers and lessons from our work. Insights will be applicable across challenges to data centers and other technological infrastructure development.

Presenter Biography

Josh Sodicoff is a doctoral candidate in the Committee on Genetics, Genomics, and Systems Biology at the University of Chicago and a co-chair for the Chicago chapter of Science for the People. In this capacity, they have brought the chapter into organizing campaigns at the intersection of knowledge production, climate and environmental justice, and anti-imperialism.

Dismantling the Ivory Tower: Human Rights, Dehumanization, and the University

Presenter

Undergraduate student at Darmouth College

Upholding the capitalist-imperialist system, human rights policy and the University structure exist in a symbiotic, oppressive relationship. This research traces the parallel development of these structures, examining the role global bodies such as the United Nations play in their success. This work is accomplished through an analysis of key moments in student-movement history in which the institution was forced to reckon most closely with the question of human rights. By exploring facets of the anti-war and South African Apartheid movements, while also considering the ongoing Student Intifada, this research begs the question of what happens when human rights become dehumanizing. This work emphasizes the role the university plays in systems of harm through strategic oppressive and repressive techniques. It argues that the oppression made visible in periods of crisis is not the exception but the basis for human rights policy on both a campus and global level. Ultimately, this research counters university reformist discourse, arguing the institution cannot be severed from its oppressive imperial threads.

Presenter Biography

Kate Pressgrove is a second year student activist at Dartmouth College studying Transnational Media and Politics as well as Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies. They believe that no one is free until the capitalist-imperialist system is permanently eradicated; it is for this reason that their time outside the classroom is focused on calling for Palestinian liberation and immigrant justice. This is primarily accomplished through their work in Dartmouth Student Justice for Palestine, and the Code Pink Local Peace Economy project. Looking forward, they are interested in building educational systems beyond the confines of the university, placing special interest in the Brazilian national literacy program as well as SNCC’s 1964 Freedom School project. They are grateful for the opportunity to share their research with others who share their commitment to justice at this conference.

Drawing Force: The Cooley Report, Dunn Meadow, and Orientalist Distortion

Jeff Moscaritolo

Creative Writing and Literature Professor at Des Moines Area Community College, PhD in American Studies at Indiana University

On April 25, 2024, demonstrators in Bloomington established an encampment protesting the Gaza genocide. They chose Dunn Meadow as their site, an officially designated assembly ground at the heart of IU’s flagship campus. They erected tents, redubbed the Meadow the “Liberated Zone,” called for an end to IU’s participation in the genocide, and began enacting an alternate vision of university life.

The day before the encampment, IU administrators had called a late-night meeting and secretly impose new restrictions on the use of tents on campus. Leaning on these new restrictions, Indiana State Police swept the encampment, once on April 25 and again on April 27, arresting fifty-seven people. But the strategy backfired. After each police crackdown, the encampment was rebuilt, and participation grew. So IU administrators pivoted, commissioning multinational law firm Cooley LLP to write an “independent” legal review of the crackdowns, which was published on July 24. Leaning on Cooley’s findings, IU quickly implemented a new expressive activity policy, effectively codifying the restrictions made during their late-night meeting in April. After one hundred days on the Meadow, the encampment disassembled.

This talk offers a critical reading of the Cooley Report, rejecting claims of its “independence.” Drawing on local journalism, oral histories, social theory, and first-hand observations, I situate the Report within a larger Orientalist logic that distorted the anti-genocide demonstrations of 2024, thereby justifying the massive escalations in security and surveillance we’ve seen in the years since.

Presenter Biography

Jeff Moscaritolo holds a PhD in American Studies from Indiana University and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. Currently, he teaches writing and literature at Des Moines Area Community College. His fiction and other writings have appeared in Indiana Review, Los Angeles Review, Carve, and Paper Darts, and his work on Dunn Meadow will appear in the journal American Studies (AMSJ), pending revisions. His dissertation, “Floating Anchor: Social Embodiment in the West Coast Swing Dance Community,” studies race and memory in the present-day West Coast Swing dance competition circuit in the United States. Other topics of interest include American Civil War memory, the hallucinatory logics of whiteness, and critical approaches to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s psychological concept of the “flow state.”

A Brief History of the Palestine Solidarity Movement

Dylan Saba

Senior Staff Attorney at Palestine Legal, writer based in New York City, host of the Turbulence podcast

This presenter will be joining remotely.

The movement for Palestinian liberation has a long history, shaped by generations of struggle, solidarity, and resistance. This talk traces the evolution of Palestine solidarity organizing in the US, from its roots in twentieth-century anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements to the emergence of campus activism, boycott and divestment campaigns, and today’s mass mobilizations.

Presenter Biography

Dylan Saba is a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal, where he advises Palestine human rights advocates on a number of issues, such as free speech violations, employment discrimination, bullying, and disciplinary actions. Dylan is half Palestinian and half Jewish American.

Prior to joining Palestine Legal, Dylan worked as a Staff Attorney for New York Legal Assistance Group’s Tenants’ Rights Unit. There, he represented low income New Yorkers in eviction proceedings and advised tenants on housing matters across New York City. Dylan is a graduate of Berkeley Law, where he volunteered with both the Workers’ Rights Clinic and the International Human Rights Workshop. Dylan has also worked for the Berkeley Law Human Rights Center and for a private public interest law firm in San Francisco. During law school, Dylan won awards for his coursework in Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Law and Social Movements, and Race and American Law.

Dylan Saba is also a frequent contributor to publications ranging from Jewish Currents to N +1 and others. He also hosts the podcast Turbulence*, which focuses on analyzing and critquing American Imperialism.

Moderator: Ben Robinson

Professor of Germanic Studies at Indiana University

Various Panelists

The concept of the university as a refuge of truth stems from Hannah Arendt’s “Truth and Politics,” but more recent versions of it can be found in statements like the AAUP’s 2019 “In Defense of Knowledge and Higher Education.” While the concept’s normative force remains intact, it is increasingly inadequate as a description of the US university. In 1945, the very leaders of the university’s WWII militarization (Vannevar Bush, James Conant, and others), issued bold calls for reimagining the peacetime uses of the university. This was coupled with massive federal investment in GI education, and subsequent federal education acts were renewed and amended to address discrimination (title IX) and expand access. That era of domestic peacetime orientation under a Pax Americana (however aspirational it had ever been) has now come to a definitive end. What does it mean to work and study at today’s post liberal university and how is that connected to the interregnum in the global security order, where the end of US unipolar power has not yet been succeeded by a vision of a stable alternative? How have Gaza, Iran, and the Ukraine fostered and exposed the institutional complicity of US higher education in economic and security competitions hostile to a concept and experience, however conditioned, of the university as a refuge for truth?

Moderator Biography

Ben Robinson is Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. He’s published on Franz Fühmann, Hannah Arendt, Christa Wolf, Anna Seghers, and more recently, C.S. Peirce. His research looks at the theory and philosophy of indicators and indexicality, from its emergence with formal logic in the 19th century to today’s social and economic indexes. He has been active with his AAUP chapter (4 years as president) as well as working closely with the graduate student union at IU and supporting students’ civil courage on campus, from the Gaza encampments to student journalism and government.