Palestinian-American scholar speaks on campus Jan. 19
Nasser Abufarha, a Palestinian-American scholar and social entrepreneur, will present a free lecture, “Insisting on Life: Martyrdom and Fair Trade in Palestine,” on campus Wednesday, Jan. 19. A guest of the university’s Center for Peace and Justice, Abufarha will speak from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in Hoover 105.
Abufarha is the founder of the Palestine Fair Trade Association and Canaan Fair Trade, which is bringing Palestinian olive oil and other traditional foods to mainstream American and European markets, while also improving economic conditions for more than 1,700 farmers in the West Bank. Canaan Fair Trade today is the largest exporter of certified fair trade and organic Palestinian olive oil to America and Europe.
Abufarha is the author of The Making of a Human Bomb: An Ethnography of Palestinian Resistance. The book, described as “required reading” by the American Journal of Sociology, explains how geographic separation of Palestinians and mimetic actions to Israeli state repression will continue to be a source of violence until Palestinians can experience actual rootedness in their land and start to explore alternative exchanges between themselves and Israelis.