Dr. Sa’ed Adel Atshan:
Dr. Sa’ed Adel Atshan is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College. He has conducted research on the politics of humanitarian aid provision in the Palestinian Territories. Dr. Atshan has worked with a range of organizations that include Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Seeds of Peace International Camp, the Palestinian Negotiations Affairs Department, and the Government of Dubai.
Dr. Atshan holds a BA in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies from Swarthmore College, an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School, and an MA and PhD in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.
Dr. Atshan has won awards and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and the Paul and Daisy Soros Foundation. He was also awarded a Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace.
Nafisa Haji:
Nafisa Haji is a novelist and educator. She is the author of “The Sweetness of Tears” (HarperCollins, 2011) and “The Writing on My Forehead” (William Morrow, 2009). Ms. Haji was born and mostly raised in Los Angeles, and has lived in Chicago, Karachi, Manila, and London. Her family originally migrated from Bombay to Karachi in 1947 during Partition, when the Indian Subcontinent was divided into two states, and later to the United States. Ms. Haji previously taught elementary school in downtown Los Angeles for seven years in a bilingual Spanish program, and speaks Spanish fluently. She has served on the board at the Marin Interfaith Council, where she represented the International Association of Sufism. She holds a BA in American History from the University of California at Berkeley and a PhD in Education from the University of California at Los Angeles.
Rahim Kurwa:
Rahim Kurwa is a member of the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. He previously served for four years on the steering committee of the National Students for Justice in Palestine. Mr. Kurwa is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studies the transition in federal housing policy from traditional public housing to housing choice vouchers. His academic focus is on locational outcomes of tenants moving between these programs, the social consequences attached to their movement, and the broader public discourse around the voucher program and its participants.
Josh Ruebner:
Josh Ruebner serves as Policy Director for the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. He is the author of “Shattered Hopes: Obama’s Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace” (Verso Books, 2013) as well as the forthcoming “Israel: Democracy or Apartheid State?” Mr. Ruebner’s analysis and commentary on U.S. policy toward the Middle East appears frequently in media such as NBC, ABC Nightline, C-SPAN, Al Jazeera, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Hill, Detroit Free Press, Huffington Post, Middle East Report, and more. Mr. Ruebner is a former Analyst in Middle East Affairs at Congressional Research Service, a federal government agency providing Members of Congress with policy analysis. He holds a graduate degree in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.