UC Berkeley Launches New Palestinian Studies Program This Fall

UC Berkeley will launch an endowed program and chair in Palestinian and Arab Studies — one of the first in the nation — amid an ongoing war between Israel and Hamas that has fueled high student demand and interest in better understanding the region.

Ussama Makdisi, a UC Berkeley history professor and leading scholar of modern Arab history, was named the program’s inaugural chair. Makdisi said the program, announced Monday, represents an opportunity to build more understanding about the Palestinian people, who are often seen through the lens of conflict but who have a rich history of their own.

He said it would also allow students and faculty to connect Palestinian history more deeply with related fields such as Indigenous, Latinx and Black studies.

“It’s really important for us to contextualize and understand more deeply all the beauty, all the complexity of a pluralist people who have been very unfairly maligned and defamed. And at the same time, it can teach us a lot about ourselves,” Makdisi said.

“It’s a beautiful history that needs to be brought out. Of course, there are also tragic aspects to the history that we’re seeing play out right now.”

A $3.25 million gift by anonymous donors led to the establishment of the program and the May Ziadeh Chair in Palestinian and Arab Studies, which holds a mandate of providing students with an opportunity to discuss and learn freely about Palestinian and Arab history, culture, politics and society.

May Ziadeh was a pioneering Palestinian-Lebanese feminist, poet and writer, who played a key role in the Arab cultural renaissance in the modern Middle East. Ziadeh “personified the deep interconnections between Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world,” the University said in a release.

The University has also contributed $500,000 to student-facing activities, undergraduate scholarships and conferences.

Makdisi said there has been a high demand for courses about Palestinian history and culture since he first began teaching at the University in 2022, but it has increased since the war kicked off by Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7.

“There’s just a tremendous hunger to know more about Palestinian history, more about Palestinian society, more about Palestinian culture, more about their life, more about their context,” Makdisi said.

“Most people in this country are just not exposed to any of this knowledge.”

Makdisi joined UC Berkeley in 2022 from Rice University, where he was the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies.

UC Berkeley’s new program, which will be housed in the University’s Social Science Department, is believed to be one of a few to focus on Palestinians in the nation, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“At a time when understanding the complexities of the Middle East is more crucial than ever, this gift allows the Social Sciences to take a leading role in fostering critical scholarship and dialogue,” Berkeley Social Sciences Dean Raka Ray said in a statement.

Makdisi also highlighted the urgency of grappling with this history in light of the obliteration of education institutions, teachers, and students in Gaza, which the UN has termed “scholasticide.”

“There’s a huge amount of work ahead of us,” Makdisi said.

The program will host its inaugural conference on Nov. 12 and 13.

The announcement of the program came just as students returned to Berkeley’s campuses after a turbulent spring that saw mass protests and encampments over University investments in weapons companies. After state legislators decided to withhold $25 million in funding from the UC, university leaders announced policy changes to campus free speech.

“Historians understand that there’s a desperate need to provide our students a better sense of what’s going on now,” Makdisi said.

“But it’s also important to provide what Berkeley is all about — a first-class education.”