Religion & Cultural Activism: Disrupting Peace and Pursuing Justice in Palestine/ Israel
Thursday, December 10, 2020 11:00 AM–1:00 PM EST
Join Diane L. Moore, the founding faculty director of Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) and Hilary Rantisi, Associate Director of the Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative (RCPI) for a conversation with cultural activists who stretch the scholarly discourse about religion, resistance, and political transformation.
Presiding: Santiago H. Slabodsky, Florence and Robert Kaufman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies, Hofstra University
Responding: Atalia Omer, Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies, The University of Notre Dame and Senior Fellow in Conflict and Peace at Harvard Divinity School’s Religion and Public Life.
Speakers
Noam Shouster is a freelance comedian, performer, peacebuilder and activist. She has performed in a variety of venues, including East Jerusalem, Berlin, Tel Aviv and Rwanda. She was also the director of the “Interpeace” program in Israel, a UN based Peacebuilding initiative aimed to engage populations normally excluded in the traditional peace camp. During 2019-2020, Noam was a resident practitioner fellow in Conflict and Peace at Harvard Divinity School’s Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative.
Vivien Sansour is the founder and director of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library. Vivien works with farmers to propagate and recover threatened heirloom varieties and creates local and international public awareness campaigns to educate people about Palestinian agricultural heritage and biodiversity. Vivien is currently a practitioner fellow in Conflict and Peace at Harvard University’s Religion and Public Life Program at the Divinity School working on a project to capture that work in an autobiographical book that weaves stories and sketches of nature, struggle, womanhood, triumph, and social change.
Suhail Khoury is a leading musician in the current musical scene in Palestine. A composer, Ney and Clarinet player, Khoury has been instrumental in the overall development of the musical life of Palestine during the last two decades. He currently assumes the role of General Director of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music (formerly NCM) as well as artistic advisor and Board member at Yabous Productions.
Rebecca Pierce is an African-American Jewish documentary filmmaker and journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work focuses on issues of racial justice, highlighting the impact of state violence on marginalized communities. She is also Editor of the racial justice blog Unruly, a publication created by the Jews of Color and Sephardi/Mizrahi Caucus in Solidarity with Palestine. Her writing has been featured in +972, The Jewish Daily Forward, The Nation, Jewish Currents, Mondoweiss, and Electronic Intifada. Rebecca was the 2019-2020 Topol Fellow on Just Peacemaking and Nonviolent Activism at Harvard Divinity School.