Jere L. Bacharach Service Award
Rabab Abdulhadi
San Francisco State University
2022 Co-Recipient
Rabab Abdulhadi
Rabab Abdulhadi
Rabab Abdulhadi is honored and recognized for her service to the field of Middle East Studies. Dr. Abdulhadi is a public intellectual and a scholar-activist who has applied her scholarship, and dedicated her life, to developing and broadening Middle East Studies.
Dr, Abdulhadi was the first director of the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan, Dearborn (2004-2006). Subsequently, she became the founding director and Senior Scholar of the Arab & Muslim Ethnicities & Diasporas Studies (AMED) at the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University (SFSU), as well as Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies and Affiliated Faculty in Sexuality Studies and Queer Ethnic Studies. She also played a leading role from 2007 to the present in the “Islamophobia in Systems of Knowledge Project,” which included the establishment of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project (IRDP) at the Center for Race & Gender, University of California, Berkeley and the founding of the International Islamophobia Research Association (IISRA), which publishes the digital Islamophobia Studies Journal and organizes an annual international Islamophobia Conference.
In her work as the founding director of AMED (Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies) at San Francisco State University, Dr. Abdulhadi maintains a rigorous academic program through which students, staff and members of the community can collectively engage in the struggle for international justice. She has worked to develop critical intellectual and scholarly thinking while creating spaces for advocacy for justice, dignity, and peace. As AMED Director, she negotiated a Memorandum of Understanding between SFSU and An-Najah National University in Palestine.
Her work since the onset of the pandemic in spring 2020 exemplifies her commitment to the theory and praxis of critical and accountable public education. Her webinar, Teaching Palestine, provided accessible and free educational programming streamed live in an interactive format that engaged both student and community audiences. Topics included discussions on Black Liberation and its interconnection to Palestine, gender, and sexual justice. What makes her service to our profession and our field stand out in this regard is her deep commitment to Palestinian Studies, in relation to not only gender, sexuality, feminist, and queer studies, but also others. She has cultivated and grows connections with Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities, scholars, and studies.
Dr. Abdulhadi has been repeatedly targeted by the Israel lobby in a campaign designed to silence her, dismantle the AMED Studies program, and muzzle campus activism at SFSU. Despite lawsuits and threats, she has continued her advocacy and scholarship and is a leader at SFSU and the wider community.
Dr. Abdulhadi is also a founder, board member, or advisor of an arrary of scholarly and activist organizations as well as professional unions that are too numerous to name here. The common linkage is that through all of her initiatives, Dr, Abdulhadi has substantially expanded the institutional spaces and structures for interdisciplinary scholarship in Middle East Studies.