LAFAYETTE COLLEGE HISTORY DEPARTMENT PRESENTS ITS ANNUAL WILSON-POWELL LECTURE

The question addressed in this talk is why, across
so many parts of the liberal West that so solemnly
proclaims the universality of law and human rights,
is Muslim and Christian Palestinian life consistently
devalued? What is the historical narrative that
authorizes this devaluation? How much has this
narrative changed over the course of the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries? And to what extent is the
Gaza genocide one of its principal consequences?

USSAMA MAKDISI is Professor of History and Chancellor’s Chair at the University
of California Berkeley. Prof. Makdisi’s work explores the intertwined histories of the Ottoman
Empire, the modern Arab world, and the United States, with particular attention to questions
of sectarianism, empire, religion, and cross-cultural encounter. He is the author of several
influential books, including Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of
the Modern Arab World (University of California Press, 2019); Faith Misplaced: The Broken
Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820–2001 (PublicAffairs, 2010); and the prize-winning Artillery
of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Cornell
University Press, 2008). He also co-hosts the podcast “Makdisi Street” with his brothers, the
literary scholar Saree Makdisi (Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA)
and Karim Makdisi (Professor of International Politics at the American University of Beirut).
Together, they bring an informed, historically-grounded perspective to contemporary debates
on the Middle East, blending scholarship with public-facing conversation.