Letter of Continued Support for Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian's Research
The Executive Board members of the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS) are following with much concern the intensification of the attack against Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian in the last few days. We were shocked to hear that Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian was arrested on 18 April and, according to family members, abused during her incarceration. She was released on 19 April; however, the following day a story on Israel’s Channel 12 TV attacked her research, arguing that the Palestinian children Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian has interviewed are liars and terrorists. We are further alarmed that the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s employer and host of INoGS’ 2016 International Conference on Genocide, responded to the TV piece with a statement rejecting her research.
INoGS recognized Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s research by awarding her one of its inaugural Impact Awards in 2020. We fully stand by our award to Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian today. As we wrote to Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian in our decision for the award,
You bring a disciplinary perspective that is uncommon in the field: a feminist criminological approach that forefronts the voices. accounts, and agencies of victims whom the state wishes to silence, destroy, and erase. Your work with and about Palestinian children under Israeli occupation and facing systematic violence is particularly significant in the way, as you write in your most recent book, Incarcerated Childhood and the Politics of Unchilding (2019), that “at the same time as the book documents violations of children’s rights and the consequences this has for their present and future well-being, it charts children’s resistance to and power to interrupt colonial violence, reclaiming childhood and, with it, Palestinian futures.” … As such, your work constitutes an example of the combination of superb research and determined striving for truth, justice, and transformative change.
We object to the condemnation of Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian and her research, which is also a charge against all scholars whose work is guided by Indigenous anti-colonial feminist methodologies that critique systems and structures of state violence, centering the voices of the people targeted by institutions of power. We are also very concerned for her well-being and safety.
As an Impact Award winner, highlighting Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s work in this dark time also allows us to remember those thousands of our colleagues, many of whom are or have at one time been INoGS members, who continue to press on through the imperative and sometimes crippling challenges of our work despite threats and actions against themselves and their families.
As we look forward to our conference in Los Angeles, INoGS’ mission to support genocide research and genocide scholarship, providing a place where research centered around mass violence, atrocity, prevention, refuge, conflict, humanitarianism, and genocide can be discussed without censure and with the support of peers, is becoming more vital and, sadly, rare in the political climate in which many of us live.
Our upcoming conference highlights genocide and survivor communities, looking at agency, resistance, and recognition – themes chosen several years ago but immediately relevant. As at all INoGS conferences, we strive to make this an inclusive and safe event where scholars from all backgrounds and identities can come to discuss their work. If you have any concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to any of the INoGS Executive Board at info@inogs.com or the conference organization committee at cagr@dornsife.usc.edu.
Yours Sincerely,
The INoGS Executive Board, Spring 2024
