Meet the 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace: Noura Erakat

My name is Noura Erakat. I am a Palestinian born to first generation immigrants in the San Francisco, Bay Area. My activist consciousness developed around my self-awareness as a girl in the world- I was a feminist, before I knew there was a word for it and before I realized that being Palestinian, was not merely a national identity but a political statement. My intuitive commitment to justice guided me throughout my studies and professional pursuits, ultimately crystallizing into a commitment to advocate for Palestinian freedom. It was never a singular issue for me but I chose it as my life’s work because I realized how little attention it received in the US, especially. I have been trained as a human rights attorney and developed into a legal scholar. I am currently a Professor in Africana Studies and the Program in Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

I learned of the RCPI program through my compass who were fellows and I found it liberating to house such a program in a Divinity School rather than a school of Government. Ultimately, justice and freedom in Palestine will require a spiritual transformation and not policy reform.

I am working on developing a curriculum on Black Palestinian Solidarity that targets Palestinians in particular as well as Arabs, in general. The purpose is to enhance this existing and visionary work by further empowering a Palestinian base and enhancing the transnational nature of this framework and activist praxes. In collaboration with a broader team, I hope to draw from an Arabic language archive, to use multimedia, literature, and music, in addition to primary texts and scholarship. Ultimately, I hope it will be an open-resource document to be used in the classroom as well as in popular educational spaces among Palestinians wherever they may be.