NYU Gallatin Global Fellowship in Human Rights Blog

2018 Fellows

Week One: Emotional Learning

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Kiara Soobrayan
Jesuit Refugee Service
Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

I have been working at the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) as a monitoring and evaluation intern for a week now. I’ve spent most of that time visiting refugees in their homes, evaluating their living conditions and health, and assessing their progress since joining JRS. The work is incredibly emotionally draining. The majority of our clients live in situations of extreme poverty with no help or assistance outside of JRS. This work is emotionally demanding in more ways than one, often causing you to question your morals completely.

One of the men who we are providing medical assistance to has a penchant for young girls. High on drugs, the underage sex workers who work at the brothel beside his house flock to his little home in search of drugs. Some of the girls are 15 or 16 years old. JRS is providing him with life-sustaining aid, and he is using his life to provide drugs to young girls in exchange for sex. He is committing statutory rape.

Do we stop providing aid to him? Do we get to make the decision about who lives and who dies?  Does Man X forfeit his rights because he’s violating the rights of others? These questions have been at the back of my mind for the last few days. I don’t have an answer at the moment.

The rest of my time has not been any less eventful. I’ve met many incredible people who sacrifice huge amounts of themselves to do this kind of work. The health workers who I have accompanied form personal relationships with their clients. When a client passes away, they mourn their death. I have had a difficult time dealing with this newfound knowledge. How does one cope with losing so many people? Doesn’t it feel disheartening?

On a more positive note, I’ve been practicing my French with our clients from the Congo. I’m really happy that the language helps put people at ease and makes them feel more at home in this difficult environment. If you would like to see some pictures of my journey with JRS, please take a look at my new Instagram that features pictures from my visits.

Keep On, Keepin’ On

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Bayan Abubakr
Tadamon–The Egyptian Refugee Multicultural Council   
Cairo, Egypt

A few days after I arrived in Cairo, the Egyptian police arrested Wael Abbas, a prominent human rights activist and blogger. I had already been feeling apprehensive about spending three months in an incredibly fascist and authoritarian country (although I have lived in the U.S. for a while, so I should be used to it…) while working with refugees and migrants (or, as the Egyptian government sees them, a nuisance to the state).

Upon starting my internship at Tadamon, I have come to learn that it, as an organization, has become used to the tyrannical nature of the state it operates in, that being the only way it could function in Egypt. At the moment, Tadamon’s biggest projects  is Malazy. Malazy  works to provide safe spaces in the form of centers in Maadi (Cairo) and Mari Girgis (Old Cairo) to migrant and refugee women in need of legal, psychological, and medical support.

My first tasks required me to create a database for both centers to track the livelihood, ethnicity, age, sexuality, and religion of the women Tadamon serves, and to train the staff at both centers to use and implement the database. This database would be used by Tadamon to not only be of better service to these communities, but to apply to grants as well.

Tadamon runs entirely on grants and donors. They have been pretty successful in securing grants from the European Union and the UN, and Malazy is entirely funded by a grant from the EU. However, the Egyptian government has refused to grant Tadamon the money the EU sent to them for Malazy, on the basis that one of our co-partners (another NGO in downtown Cairo) does not really work with refugees (they’re focused on the empowerment of women in Egypt), and therefore, this project could not exist and Tadamon doesn’t need the money. Nonetheless, Tadamon’s staff has taken the blow and has continued with the project while finding ways to legally acquire the funds .

Over the past five months, over 600+ women have used the facilities and resources on hand in both centers. There are plans to expand the project across Egypt, and I am tasked with expanding the database to cover more centers. I am also working on writing a memo (in the form of an interim report) briefing the EU on the situation with the Egyptian government. Other than that, I work between Tadamon’s main center in Downtown Cairo, where I do logistical work, and the community center in Maadi, where I work one-on-one with the refugees who come to attend holding programs, one-on-one sessions with the lawyer, doctor, and psychologist in the center, and development trainings.

25 Años de Ser Humanas

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Ellie Alter
Just Associates (JASS)
Mexico City, Mexico

I find myself returning over and over again to the question of whether or not specifying human rights on the basis of gender is advantageous. By coincidence, my first assignment at JASS Mesoamérica has brought me back to this central debate within feminism: does the specification of women’s human rights reify heteronormative identities, thereby “fencing” women in? Or is such specification necessary in order to counter the traditional androcentricity of human rights?

June 25 marks the 25th anniversary of the Vienna Declaration, a document that challenged the traditional paradigm of the universal subject of human rights to incorporate women, expanding this notion to include the vast diversity of subjects that make up humanity. Asserting that “women’s rights are human rights,” feminists at the conference gave voice to the daily experiences of women and advocated a transformation of human rights to include a gender analysis.

These achievements were made possible by the mobilization of women activists around the world, including JASS Mesoamérica’s Regional Advisor, Alda Facio, who took part in organizing a 1991 petition that gathered millions of signatures, calling for the declaration to “comprehensively address women’s human rights at every level of its proceedings.” As a result of their advocacy, the Vienna Declaration incorporated and re-energized feminist agendas within the human rights field, leading to the enactment of concrete measures such as the creation of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, and ultimately, the adoption of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women in 1994.

For many feminists, including some of my colleagues, the declaration symbolizes a turning point: human rights institutions and their doctrines began, in consequential ways, to specify rights according to the unique experiences of women. Some in the organization feel strongly enough about the impact of the declaration that they have championed the tagline, “25 años de ser humanas,” for the campaign, suggesting that women have only been expressly recognized as human beings in international law since the Vienna Conference.

This came as interesting news to me, that for some feminists, Vienna signifies the point in which women’s humanity was first, or more properly, asserted in the field, as opposed to the passing of CEDAW in 1979. For reasons I am still exploring, many seem to feel that Vienna set the stage for progress that CEDAW had yet to accomplish, rendering women’s experiences and humanity visible on an important stage.

Even upon learning this, I felt somewhat conflicted when I was assigned this project. On the one hand, I understood the impact of this declaration and the reasons to celebrate it, but on the other hand, I worried about the unintended side effects of specifying women’s rights and defining women’s experiences. In what ways did the declaration reinforce the boundaries of gender identity that feminists sought to dismantle? And what about those who do not identify with the gender binary? Were they left excluded or with a larger platform? These are all questions I hope to unpack in the coming weeks.

To be sure, no one is suggesting that the work of infusing the human rights field with gender analyses was completed in Vienna. Furthering that mission is what JASS is engaged in. It is perhaps because this organization is on the front lines of this cause, that it is fascinating to see which of these moments in history they celebrate.

Furthermore, I have found their process of deliberating on such questions refreshing and encouraging. Above all, JASS’s team has shown a commitment to dialogue: that all involved should have the room to raise their intellectual or personal qualms. I suppose that on some level, I naively expected that such accomplished feminists would dabble in dogma, but in fact, their success in building solidarity—which spans across three continents—seems in part due to their emphasis on dialogue rather than conclusions. 

Not only does this render an inclusive plurality of perspectives, but it also poses a different approach to my initial question about specifying women’s rights: that perhaps there are no universal advantages or disadvantages in any one approach to human rights. As we so often came to understand last semester, each approach must be understood in its context, and no approach is safe from questioning. Put another way, as stated in a JASS publication, “A lesson can be drawn […] from the questioning attitude that promotes feminism in the first place: when feminists question something, we are not denying it […] we [feminists] do not all have the same information or knowledge about feminism, but we have all learned to question everything.*

*Translated from Spanish

Recent Death in Immigration Detention Underscores Need to Advocate for Health and Human Rights of Civil Detainees

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Ben Wagner
Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture (PSOT)
New York, USA

Originally written on June 4, 2018.

Last week marked the commencement of my summer project interning at PSOT, the same week that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the death of Roxana Hernandez, the 6th detainee to die in ICE custody in the fiscal year 2018. Roxana, a transgender woman fleeing from Honduras, was one of about 25 transgender women participating in the Central American migrant caravan that arrived at the U.S. border at the end of April. The transgender migrants were forced to flee due to the “violence, hate, stigma and vulnerability” they faced in their home countries. According to Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the immigration rights group and organizer of the caravan, Roxana surrendered at San Ysidro port of entry between San Diego and Tijuana, requesting asylum.

Roxana Hernandez, age 33, with long blonde hair and pink lipsticks
Roxana Hernandez, 33, a transgender woman from Honduras who died in ICE custody at a hospital in Albuquerque, NM, on May 25, 2018 (Image credit: Jose Gutierrez)

Soon after requesting asylum, Roxana was initially held in a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processing facility, often referred to as hieleras (Spanish for “iceboxes”), notorious for their freezing temperatures and poor conditions. Presenting with clear signs of medical distress, including being HIV positive and having pneumonia, Roxana was detained for 5 days in a cell where she was freezing cold, lacked adequate food and medical care, and where the lights are kept on 24 hours a day.

cell interior showing detainees wrapped in silver sheets
CBP “icebox” holding cell in Tuscon, AZ (Image credit: American Immigration Council)

A 2015 report from the American Immigration Council describes the “icebox” holding cells as “wholly inadequate for any overnight detention.” Official CBP policy states that detention in these holding cells should last no longer than 12 hours, according to a CBP memo cited in a lawsuit that was filed July 2015 in a federal district court in Tucson, AZ, brought by the American Immigration Council, the National Immigration Law Center, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona. The report also describes the holding facilities as “routinely lacking in adequate food, water, and medical care,” often housing up to 45 people in a single cell designed to only hold 25.

A week later, Roxana was transferred to the transgender unit in the Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, NM, a privately run federal prison for men that contracts with ICE. In detention, transgender women are notoriously targeted and harassed by fellow guards and inmates, where they experience violence and abuse and are unable to access medical care.

By the next day, Roxana was taken to a local hospital with symptoms of pneumonia, dehydration, and “complications associated with HIV,” according to ICE. Hours later, she was transferred to a hospital in Albuquerque, where “she remained in the intensive care unit until her passing.”

ICE’s treatment of Roxana, an extremely vulnerable and traumatized transgender woman seeking asylum from persecution, highlights the egregious human rights violations and medical neglect that plague the U.S. immigration detention system. In light of this tragedy, I along with PSOT reaffirm my commitment to serving people under immigration detention in the U.S., particularly members of the LGBTQ community who are seeking asylum from persecution and torture and who want safety and acceptance, which everyone deserves.

Hippocrates Would Have Included Human Rights

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Ben Wagner
Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture (PSOT)
New York, USA

My name is Ben Wagner, and I’m a third-year BA-MPH dual-degree candidate at Gallatin and the College of Global Public Health, studying global health and human rights on the pre-med track. My focus this summer is the intersectionality of health and human rights as it relates to immigrants detained in the US civil detention system. 

Over the past two years, working as an administrative assistant with the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture (PSOT) in New York City, I have been introduced to both victims of human rights abuse and those who care for them. PSOT has made it evident that healthcare professionals can have a critical role in promoting and protecting human rights.

Inside of Bellevue hospital foyer
Bellevue Hospital Center

Recently arrived refugees are often unaware of PSOT. They typically enter through the emergency room, only to be referred to PSOT during intake. Dr. Allen S. Keller, director of PSOT and the NYU School of Medicine Center for Health and Human Rights, wrote in a recent article about a client who was tortured and beaten for speaking out against his government and who then fled to New York. After being granted asylum due to a medical affidavit submitted by PSOT, the client said, “You have given me back my life.” Saving lives is every doctor’s goal, yet few physicians work to eradicate torture and other human rights abuses.

Dr. Keller examining a patient's heart in a examination room
Dr. Keller with a patient in the clinic, image courtesy of PSOT website

Prevention, a core function of modern medicine, routinely includes education, documentation, identification, and treatment.  Applied to human rights issues, education in the form of advocacy advances legislative action to outlaw torture. Documenting human rights abuses exposes the systems and agencies that allow abuse to occur.  Identifying and treating victims of human rights abuse within a medical framework transforms politics into healthcare, allowing for radical reassessment of best practices. 

More than 400,000 people from around the world are locked up as prisoners, often without any pending criminal charges, in the US civil detention system. Physical and sexual assault, which occurs both by detainees and the guards protecting them, is exacerbated by overcrowding and is significantly under-reported.  Often fleeing from traumatic abuse in their own countries, detainees are re-traumatized by the civil detention system. 

Not fundamentally different from PSOT’s clients, immigrant civil detainees deserve the same medical attention.  Documenting human rights abuse within the civil detention population provides an evidence-based foundation to forcefully advocate for better treatment of detainees.  And if even a single detainee can say, “I have gotten my life back,” all of medicine and human rights will have advanced.

Centering Community Voices in the Fight for Food Security

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Maria Polzin
Community Systems Strengthening (CSS) Project (University of Cape Town)
Cape Town, South Africa

My name is Maria Polzin, and I am a rising senior in Gallatin studying how emotions are politicized along the intersections of race, gender, and environmental studies. I have interned at the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault, the Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence, and I run an ongoing project entitled Survivors, which uses the arts to empower survivors of sexual assault. While much of my work has focused on combating violence, I believe no social justice issue can be divorced from the environment. I am interested in learning more about how certain relationships with the environment are formed, politicized, and amplified or ignored in political discourse. Food insecurity, particularly, exemplifies viable grounds to explore such intersections between people, politics, and the environment.

As I began to explore food insecurity in America, I noticed much of the contemporary dialogue focuses on the absence of grocery stores in low-income neighborhoods. This approach can be effective in terms of mapping food deserts; however, too much of a focus on supermarkets risks overlooking the nuanced ways people obtain and produce food outside of the formal economy. Furthermore, there are many instances when supermarkets cannot effectively address food insecurity. For example, community members may lack time or money, or they may have cultural preferences regarding what they eat and from whom they purchase food.

A human rights approach to food insecurity can begin to frame the right to food within these larger contexts through the understanding that all rights are interconnected. How does realizing the right to food limit or promote one’s right to participate in the cultural life of community, the right to environmental security, amongst others? Centering the voices of individuals most affected by food insecurity throughout the exploration of such intersections has the potential to illuminate sustainable solutions to food insecurity because community members know best when and where certain rights should be prioritized.

I am thankful for the opportunity to go to South Africa in May, where I will be interning with the Community Systems Strengthening (CSS) for Health Project at the University of Cape Town. CSS is a three-year project that aims to model how strengthening community networking and capacity, particularly with a leadership role played by health committees, can sustainably address some of the threats to health in three specific communities, with a vision of rolling out the model to other sites beyond the life of the project. South Africa provides a unique context for CSS because South Africa has one of the few constitutions in the world that includes extensive socio-economic rights, such as the right to access food and health systems. CSS calls on these rights to both foster community engagement and demand policy reform.

In efforts to support the project in centering the voices of community members, I will be compiling an oral history archive that explores community members’ and community stakeholders’ engagement with food and food security. Employing what I learn through the interviews, I will begin drafting workshop outlines that trained community volunteers can make use of to initiate dialogues around the democratization of food systems. Throughout this process, I will volunteer to assist community activists with work on food gardens and food security advocacy.

While I have been preparing for this research through my academic studies, I understand I am entering these spaces as an outsider, so I have few concerns regarding what community members will say or what relationships they may or may not want to have with me. By keeping an open mind, I seek to act as a facilitator of dialogue rather than a teacher so that the community members can be the experts in their own lives.

How We Gon’ Win?

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Jensine Raihan
Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity (PBKMS) (aka Association of West Bengal Agricultural Farm Workers)
West Bengal, India

I don’t think I can properly describe how much the first day of this academic year, the first day of my undergraduate career, felt like the first day of a journey leading me to the doorsteps of Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity (PBKMS). I am an undergraduate student studying computer science at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, but more than anything, however, I am interested in organizing the poor and the most oppressed to build power for a fundamentally different society that is centered around human and collective interests.

Since 2013, I have been involved in membership-based social justice organizations in New York City. Primarily, I work with working-class Indo-Caribbean and South Asian immigrants and youth. Upon graduating, I hope to help strategy, envisioning, and organizing efforts that build a potent working-class movement in the United States. Perhaps my education in computer science will support that endeavor. Perhaps it won’t.

How fitting is it that I am attempting to ground myself on my objectives in working with PBKMS as one of the best days of the year, International Worker’s Day, comes to a close? To begin, I think understanding the strategies and organizations of mass-based formations, that organize the poor, and building relationships with those formations is fundamental to movement-building. Movements, particularly those in imperialist countries (like the United States) that have such wide ranging impacts on countries of the global South, need to relate to, work in solidarity with, and support movements globally.

I want to begin understanding the struggles of international revolutionary efforts by working with PBKMS. PBKMS is a union of about 70,000 agricultural workers in West Bengal that organizes its members for decent wages, the right to work, and food. I will support their communications work by conducting training on social media, developing their website, and helping with other related needs.

women in traditional Indian clothing marching down a street

PBKMS is part of the new trade union movement in India that diverts from traditional union formations, which are affiliated with particular parties. Moreover, the union organizes in a region that has witnessed the longest democratically elected communist government in the world. These different dynamics make the organization interesting because they have not only dealt with a particularly conservative national administration but also experienced hostility from a left local government.

I am curious to understand how the organization deals with with these different dynamics, how they decide which alliances to form, how they organize and conduct political education with their members, and how they build power among their base. Understanding these things would help me gain a better grasp of how Indian leftist organizations deal with challenges and develop strategy to advance the interests of poor people and workers.

crowd gathered outside with Indian flags

I’ll end with that. Inquilaab Zindabad (Long Live Revolution)!

Building Bridges: Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras, and the US

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Abie Green
NYU Law Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law
USA (New York), Haiti, Central America

My name is Abie Green and I am a senior at Gallatin, set to graduate in January 2019. I am studying intersectionality, human rights, and the law with a minor in American Sign Language. This summer I will be working with NYU Law’s Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law on a project on immigration law in the context of issues of race, discrimination, and foreign policy, both historically and currently. The center does various work and projects around issues of race, discrimination, and the law. 

protesters waving "save TPS" signs and American flagsFor this summer, I will be focusing on the top three countries receiving Temporary Protected Status (TPS) within the US that have not been renewed under the Trump administration. These countries are Haiti, El Salvador, and Honduras. I will be working with communities from these countries in New York and will take trips to Haiti and either El Salvador or Honduras to coordinate with organizations that are a part of this immigration issue. The goal is to get the groups to coalesce on their needs and to create a plan of action that suits these needs in order to best serve those who have lost TPS.Approximate number of immigrants with Temporary Protected Status. Haiti has 46,000. El Salvador has 195,000. Honduras has 57,000.I am interested in the unique but more often than not, shared history of US imperialistic intervention in these countries. This has contributed to the destabilizing of these countries and many of the problems TPS recipients have fled from, along with a history of racist immigration policy and immigration decisions based on foreign policy needs, which have also marred all of these countries’ histories with the US.

It will be interesting as I start to work with these communities to see what they believe the major challenges are, to see the needs they prioritize, and to discover what legal pathways are even legitimate options for people of countries that have lost TPS, particularly given the fraught history of asylum and refugee policies. My biggest challenge will likely be coordinating between these three groups, particularly in bringing Haiti into the discussion, given cultural differences. I am a bit nervous throwing myself into these communities but I am hoping to prove that I want to work with them in pushing forward their agenda.  

Tadamon @ Cairo, Egypt

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Bayan Abubakr
Tadamon–The Egyptian Refugee Multicultural Council 
Cairo, Egypt

I am currently a junior majoring in history and politics with a minor in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. The focus of my degrees and my research thus far has been the effects that ethno-nationalism, institutionalized anti-blackness, and pan-Arabism have had on state formations in the Arab world. My primary focus has been on Sudan and Egypt, and the ways in which the Arabization project in Sudan has contributed to the conflicts in Darfur, South Sudan, and the Nuba Mountains (South Kordofan). This project and these conflicts have led to the one of largest and most neglected refugee crises in the world. As of 2015, there were an estimated 40.2 million displaced Sudanese peoples. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights estimates that there are between two to five million Sudanese refugees and migrants in Egypt. 

The Egyptian and Sudanese security states have a fairly strong relationship. This relationship has given the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) of Sudan a strong base in Cairo, one that they use to intimidate and threaten Sudanese refugees and migrants. Oftentimes, the NISS accuses refugees of being spies or enemies of the Sudanese state, and have demanded that the Egyptian state extradite them to Sudan. Furthermore, these refugees and migrants are not protected by the Egyptian state, and the UNHCR does not legally recognize the majority of them as “refugees,” so only a minority are subject to protections under international refugee law. Sudanese refugees in Egypt have found it incredibly difficult to escape the viciousness of the Sudanese government and the realities of being a neglected refugee in Egypt.

The Sudanese refugee crisis, particularly as it relates to Egypt, is one of the most understudied and forgotten crises. It is a critical issue that needs to be addressed, as it is a microcosm of the larger refugee crisis in the Middle East, and it speaks to the experiences of black refugees and migrants in Arab countries. There are systemic issues and flagrant miscarriages of justice that need to be addressed in Egypt’s dealing of its Sudanese refugees.  

Tadamon is an independent non-political network of civil society organizations working to promote the welfare of refugees and their mutual co-existence with Egyptian communities. Tadamon was formed to address the conflicts and tensions between refugee and Egyptian communities.  Tadamon has spearheaded a number of initiatives in Cairo to actively work to diffuse these tensions and foster community between refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants, and Egyptians in Cairo. Tadamon recognizes that Egyptian and migrant communities in certain neighborhoods in Cairo compete for the same scarce resources, and that many nonprofits and community organizations exclusively target the refugee or Egyptian population, an approach which Tadamon recognizes only exacerbates existing problems and strife. Tadamon counteracts this approach by curating programs, workshops, development practices, and trainings to encourage and promote coexistence and solidarity among and within these communities while also working to alleviate poverty among them.

I will assist Tadamon in executing these goals and I will work directly with several IGOs, NGOs, and academic institutions to provide them with the research that informs their work on the livelihood and challenges of Sudanese refugees in Cairo.

Remembering and Repairing with Zochrot

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Rose Asaf
Zochrot
Jaffa, Israel

My name is Rose Asaf, and I am a Junior in the College of Arts and Sciences studying American studies in the social and cultural analysis and comparative politics departments. As an Israeli-American Jewish woman, I grew up with a strong sense of attachment to the nation-state of Israel, never once learning about the Palestinian narrative. Not until I pursued independent research near the end of high school did I begin to recognize how lopsided my prior education had been.

As my family and I used to joyfully celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut, I did not know that millions of Palestinians in Palestine and in the diaspora commemorate al-Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic. I did not know that my celebration coincided with another’s mourning. I did not know that the land I once found so holy and pure was actually seized through forced evacuations, ethnic cleansing, and total destruction.

I struggled with the process of unlearning the ideological imperatives of Zionism that once seemed inseparable from my identity, and now I commit myself to working against the injustice that was hidden from me for so long. For many years, I have been in solidarity with the Palestinian people as part of a greater nexus of the Palestinian solidarity movement. I have worked both within and outside of Jewish communities to bring awareness to the Palestinian narrative that I find to be so intentionally suppressed in many institutional Jewish spaces. As the co-founder of NYU’s Jewish Voice for Peace chapter, I have worked with intention to confront the criminality and brutality of the State of Israel head-on. Additionally, as the incoming secretary for Students for Justice in Palestine, I have worked with my comrades to educate our peers on the Palestinian struggle and to educate people about ways in which they can show solidarity from abroad.

This summer, in Israel, I plan to continue that work I have already started. I will be working with an Israeli organization called Zochrot, which means “remembering” in Hebrew. As an organization, Zochrot commits itself to addressing the Nakba denial and erasure that exists in Israeli society while simultaneously advocated for the right of return of Palestinian refugees and just compensation and reparation for those whose homes and possessions were destroyed in the Nakba.

Zochrot’s slogan is “to commemorate, witness, acknowledge, and repair,” which gets at the core of its work. Using forensic and archeological approaches, Zochrot documents Palestinian localities that were destroyed during the Nakba and leads tours throughout Israel to bring attention to the destroyed villages that have been intentionally covered by national parks and forests planted by the Jewish National Fund. Focusing on the past to bring forth a just future, Zochrot centers the power of acknowledgment in their work as a necessary precondition to reparations. I look forward to researching the physical and intangible denial of the Nakba through archeology, oral histories, and archival studies.