Transnational Alliances: The AAUG&apos;s Advocacy for Palestine and the Third World

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Transnational Alliances: The AAUG's Advocacy for Palestine and the Third World

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Author(s): Suraya Khan

Publication date (Print): Winter 2018

Journal: Arab Studies Quarterly

Publisher: Pluto Journals

Keywords: Transnational, Arab-American, Third World, Activism, Identity, AAUG, PLO, 1967 War

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Abstract

This article examines how the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG) articulated the Palestine question as both an Arab-American and a Third World issue after the 1967 War. Using archival documents and recollections from several AAUG members, this article traces the ways in which activism on Palestine and other issues facilitated the creation of a transnational Arab-American “intellectual generation.” Although the AAUG often focused on Palestine, it educated its members and engaged in activism on issues affecting other communities who grappled with racism, imperialism, and colonialism. In doing so, it attracted diverse allies to the Palestinian cause, such as Black Americans, Africans, South Asians, and other members of the “global Third World.” This article further analyzes the AAUG's transnational engagement with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) during its first decade. Using both traditional and academic activism, the AAUG firmly associated Palestine with the Third World and fostered an Arab-American intellectual movement.

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Journal

Journal ID (doi): 10.13169

Journal ID (publisher-id): arabstudquar

Title: Arab Studies Quarterly

Publisher: Pluto Journals

ISSN (Print): 02713519

ISSN (Electronic): 20436920

Publication date (Print): Winter 2018

Volume: 40

Issue: 1

Pages: 53-72

Article

Publisher ID: arabstudquar.40.1.0053

DOI: 10.13169/arabstudquar.40.1.0053

SO-VID: 977faa79-5c6e-4e3c-b023-cf10dad1b237

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History

Notes

“AAUG - The First Year,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. IV, No. 1 (March 1971), 1.
“Minutes of the Ad Hoc Conference Committee meeting in the Chicago Theological Seminary Chapel, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois,” December 9, 1967, Box 23, Folder 9, AAUG Papers, Eastern Michigan University.
While the scale of the AAUG's work, its wide membership, and its ideological underpinnings were unique, it is important to recognize earlier Arab immigrants' efforts to advocate for Palestine. Two noteworthy groups were the Arab National League (1936–1939) and the Institute of Arab-American Affairs (1944–1950). See Lawrence Davidson, America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001), and Hani Bawardi, The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to U.S. Citizenship (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014).
Jean-François Sirinelli, “The Concept of an Intellectual Generation,” in Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century France: Mandarins and Samurais ed. Jeremy Jennings (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), 86–87. Sirinelli cites Jean Luchaire's definition of a generation as “a collection of individuals marked by one big event or by a series of such events.” Such an event brings a specific generation into existence when it is “the determining event” in the lives of those who had not been as affected by prior events.
The AAUG's first published monograph, for instance, was The Arab Americans: Studies in Assimilation eds. Elaine Hagopian and Ann Paden, AAUG Monograph Series, No. 1 (Wilmette, IL: Medina University Press International, 1969). Some works that highlight the role of the AAUG in Arab-American identity formation and in the field of ethnic studies include Helen Hatab Samhan, “Politics and Exclusion: The Arab American Experience,” Journal of Palestine Studies 16, no. 2 (1987): 20–28; Arabs in America: Building a New Future ed. Michael Suleiman (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999); Gregory Orfalea, The Arab Americans: A History (North Hampton, MA: Olive Branch, 2006); Sarah M. A. Gualtieri, Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); Keith Feldman, A Shadow Over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015); Salim Yaqub, Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.-Middle East Relations in the 1970s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016); and Pamela Pennock, The Rise of the Arab American Left: Activists, Allies, and Their Fight against Imperialism and Racism, 1960s-1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017).
Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 157.
Quoted in Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod: Resistance, Exile, and Return (Palestine: Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies at Birzeit University, 2003), 107.
As Said and Abu-Lughod wrote in the first issue's introductory article, the Arab Studies Quarterly was to be enlisted in the AAUG's task of “combatting ignorance and prejudice where knowledge of Arabs is concerned.” Its boards of working and consulting editors came from the AAUG's ranks and it received financial backing from the organization. “Why ASQ?” Arab Studies Quarterly Vol. 1, No. 1 (Winter 1979), v–vi.
AAUG Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 1, March 1970, 6.
“Final Statement,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 4 (Dec. 1970), 4, 6.
For more on this rhetoric, see Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). A discussion of the news coverage is found in the AAUG Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 4, December 1969, 2, 5–6.
Letter from Michael Suleiman to Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, December 5, 1970, Michael Suleiman Collection, Box 31A, Folder 9, AANM; Phone interview with Janice Terry, February 24, 2015. For more on the AAUG and MESA, see Timothy Mitchell, “The Middle East in the Past and Future of Social Science,” in The Politics of Knowledge ed. David Szanton (University of California Press, 2004); and Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod: Resistance, Exile, and Return 106–107.
AAUG Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 1, 6–7.
United States of America, v. Eqbal Ahmad, Philip Berrigan, Elizabeth McAlister, et al, 1972, Pennsylvania Dist. Court, 347, F. Supp. 912. For more on the trial, see Stuart Schaar, Eqbal Ahmad: Critical Outsider in a Turbulent Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).
AAUG Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 4 (December 1970), 1.
For critical engagement with the literature on Black Americans and Zionism, see Feldman, A Shadow Over Palestine and Alex Lubin, Geographies of Liberation: The Making of an Afro-Arab Political Imaginary (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press 2014). Feldman and Lubin shed new light on Black American leaders' engagement with Zionism and the Arab or Palestinian Nationalist movements. See also Pam Pennock's book, The Rise of the Arab-American Left which closely analyzes solidarity movements across racial and ethnic boundaries.
Yaqub, Imperfect Strangers .
Personal interview with Elaine Hagopian, Cambridge, MA, September 30, 2015, 22.
Gualtieri, Between Arab and White .
Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod: Resistance, Exile, and Return 97–98.
“Arab-American Community News,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 7, No. 1 (March 1974), 7.
“Meetings in the Arab World: Afro-Arab Symposium at Sharjah, UAE,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 11, No. 1 (March 1977), 10.
AAUG Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 4 (December 1970), 2, 4.
See Benjamin Sevitch, “W. E. B. Du Bois as America's Foremost Black Zionist,” in The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections ed. Edward J. Blum (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009), 233–253.
Gerald Horne, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
Shirley Graham Du Bois, “Confrontation in the Middle East,” The Black Scholar 5, no. 3 (1973): 32–37.
AAUG Newsletter Vol. 9, No. 4 (December 1975), 7.
AAUG Newsletter Vol. 10, No. 3 (June 1976), 10.
AAUG Newsletter Vol. 5, No. 3 (July 1972), 6.
Barbara Winslow discusses the media discourse surrounding the Chisholm campaign in Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for Change (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2014), 116.
Quoted in AAUG Newsletter Vol. 5, No. 1 (April 1972), 1, 4.
Shirley Chisholm, The Good Fight (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 59.
AAUG Newsletter Vol. 5, No. 2 (June, 1972).
“Israel-South Africa Ties Exposed by AAUG Delegates at the Congressional Black Caucus,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 5, No 3 (July 1972), 1, 5.
“Seminar on Israel, S. Africa Diamond Industries Held,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 5, No. 3 (July 1972), 4. The Arab-American representatives on the steering committee were Abdeen Jabara of the AAUG, Riyad Mansour and Haidar Al-Mustafawi of the Organization of Arab Students, and Hasan Husseini of the Arab-American Association of Ohio University.
AAUG Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 1 (March 1971), 8.
“Arab-American Community News,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 7, No. 1 (March 1974), 7.
“American Blacks, Latinos, and Educators Form Delegation to Lebanon,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 12, No. 2 (July 1979), 8.
“At the PUSH Convention: A Push for better Black-Arab relations,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 13, No. 3 (September-October 1980), 4.
“Twelfth AAUG Convention Highlights,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 13, No. 1 (December 1979-March 1980), 1–2.
“Chairman Arafat Sends Message to Convention,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 12, No. 3, September 1978, 3.
Salim Yaqub, “‘Our Declaration of Independence’: African Americans, Arab Americans, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967–1979,” Mashriq & Mahjar 3, no. 1 (2015), 21.
“AAUG Statement on Andrew Young,” Vol. 12, No. 3 (September 1978), 1.
Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod: Resistance, Exile, and Return 115–116.
Edward Said, “My Guru: Elegy for Ibrahim Abu-Lughod,” London Review of Books 23, no. 24 (December 13, 2001).
Email exchange with Mariam Said, March 20, 2017.
AAUG Newsletter Vol. 7, No. 2 (June 1974), 6.
AAUG Newsletter Vol. 6, No. 3 (August 1973), 8.
The Edward Said Reader eds. Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), xxxi.
Abu-Lughod, Resistance, Exile, and Return 133.
Fouad Moughrabi, “Remembering the AAUG,” Arab Studies Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 3–4 (Summer/Fall 2007), 102.
Ghada Talhami, “A Cultural, Not a Political Lobby: The Mixed Legacy of a Grand Plan,” Arab Studies Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 3–4 (Summer/Fall 2007), 131.
Refer to some of the founders' reflections on the AAUG's achievements and shortcomings in Arab Studies Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 3–4 (Summer/Fall 2007). See in particular Rashid Bashshur, “Unfulfilled Expectations: The Genesis and Demise of the AAUG,” Michael Suleiman, “‘I Come to Bury Caesar, Not to Praise Him’: An Assessment of the AAUG as an Example of an Activist Arab-American Organization,” and Elaine Hagopian, “Reversing Injustice: On Utopian Activism.”
Naseer Aruri, “AAUG: A Memoir,” Arab Studies Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 3–4 (Summer/Fall 2007), 36.
For more on this backlash, as exemplified by the Nixon administration's “Operation Boulder,” see Samhan, “Politics and Exclusion”; Pamela Pennock, The Rise of the Arab-American Left; and Salim Yaqub, Imperfect Strangers .

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] “AAUG - The First Year,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. IV, No. 1 (March 1971), 1.

[2] “Minutes of the Ad Hoc Conference Committee meeting in the Chicago Theological Seminary Chapel, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois,” December 9, 1967, Box 23, Folder 9, AAUG Papers, Eastern Michigan University.

[3] While the scale of the AAUG's work, its wide membership, and its ideological underpinnings were unique, it is important to recognize earlier Arab immigrants' efforts to advocate for Palestine. Two noteworthy groups were the Arab National League (1936–1939) and the Institute of Arab-American Affairs (1944–1950). See Lawrence Davidson, America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001), and Hani Bawardi, The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to U.S. Citizenship (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014).

[4] Jean-François Sirinelli, “The Concept of an Intellectual Generation,” in Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century France: Mandarins and Samurais ed. Jeremy Jennings (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), 86–87. Sirinelli cites Jean Luchaire's definition of a generation as “a collection of individuals marked by one big event or by a series of such events.” Such an event brings a specific generation into existence when it is “the determining event” in the lives of those who had not been as affected by prior events.

[5] The AAUG's first published monograph, for instance, was The Arab Americans: Studies in Assimilation eds. Elaine Hagopian and Ann Paden, AAUG Monograph Series, No. 1 (Wilmette, IL: Medina University Press International, 1969). Some works that highlight the role of the AAUG in Arab-American identity formation and in the field of ethnic studies include Helen Hatab Samhan, “Politics and Exclusion: The Arab American Experience,” Journal of Palestine Studies 16, no. 2 (1987): 20–28; Arabs in America: Building a New Future ed. Michael Suleiman (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999); Gregory Orfalea, The Arab Americans: A History (North Hampton, MA: Olive Branch, 2006); Sarah M. A. Gualtieri, Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); Keith Feldman, A Shadow Over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015); Salim Yaqub, Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.-Middle East Relations in the 1970s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016); and Pamela Pennock, The Rise of the Arab American Left: Activists, Allies, and Their Fight against Imperialism and Racism, 1960s-1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

[6] Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 157.

[7] Quoted in Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod: Resistance, Exile, and Return (Palestine: Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies at Birzeit University, 2003), 107.

[8] As Said and Abu-Lughod wrote in the first issue's introductory article, the Arab Studies Quarterly was to be enlisted in the AAUG's task of “combatting ignorance and prejudice where knowledge of Arabs is concerned.” Its boards of working and consulting editors came from the AAUG's ranks and it received financial backing from the organization. “Why ASQ?” Arab Studies Quarterly Vol. 1, No. 1 (Winter 1979), v–vi.

[9] AAUG Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 1, March 1970, 6.

[10] “Final Statement,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 4 (Dec. 1970), 4, 6.

[11] For more on this rhetoric, see Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). A discussion of the news coverage is found in the AAUG Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 4, December 1969, 2, 5–6.

[12] Letter from Michael Suleiman to Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, December 5, 1970, Michael Suleiman Collection, Box 31A, Folder 9, AANM; Phone interview with Janice Terry, February 24, 2015. For more on the AAUG and MESA, see Timothy Mitchell, “The Middle East in the Past and Future of Social Science,” in The Politics of Knowledge ed. David Szanton (University of California Press, 2004); and Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

[13] Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod: Resistance, Exile, and Return 106–107.

[14] AAUG Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 1, 6–7.

[15] United States of America, v. Eqbal Ahmad, Philip Berrigan, Elizabeth McAlister, et al, 1972, Pennsylvania Dist. Court, 347, F. Supp. 912. For more on the trial, see Stuart Schaar, Eqbal Ahmad: Critical Outsider in a Turbulent Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).

[16] AAUG Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 4 (December 1970), 1.

[17] For critical engagement with the literature on Black Americans and Zionism, see Feldman, A Shadow Over Palestine and Alex Lubin, Geographies of Liberation: The Making of an Afro-Arab Political Imaginary (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press 2014). Feldman and Lubin shed new light on Black American leaders' engagement with Zionism and the Arab or Palestinian Nationalist movements. See also Pam Pennock's book, The Rise of the Arab-American Left which closely analyzes solidarity movements across racial and ethnic boundaries.

[18] Yaqub, Imperfect Strangers .

[19] Personal interview with Elaine Hagopian, Cambridge, MA, September 30, 2015, 22.

[20] Gualtieri, Between Arab and White .

[21] Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod: Resistance, Exile, and Return 97–98.

[22] “Arab-American Community News,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 7, No. 1 (March 1974), 7.

[23] “Meetings in the Arab World: Afro-Arab Symposium at Sharjah, UAE,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 11, No. 1 (March 1977), 10.

[24] AAUG Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 4 (December 1970), 2, 4.

[25] See Benjamin Sevitch, “W. E. B. Du Bois as America's Foremost Black Zionist,” in The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections ed. Edward J. Blum (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009), 233–253.

[26] Gerald Horne, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois (New York: New York University Press, 2000).

[27] Shirley Graham Du Bois, “Confrontation in the Middle East,” The Black Scholar 5, no. 3 (1973): 32–37.

[28] AAUG Newsletter Vol. 9, No. 4 (December 1975), 7.

[29] AAUG Newsletter Vol. 10, No. 3 (June 1976), 10.

[30] AAUG Newsletter Vol. 5, No. 3 (July 1972), 6.

[31] Barbara Winslow discusses the media discourse surrounding the Chisholm campaign in Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for Change (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2014), 116.

[32] Quoted in AAUG Newsletter Vol. 5, No. 1 (April 1972), 1, 4.

[33] Shirley Chisholm, The Good Fight (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 59.

[34] AAUG Newsletter Vol. 5, No. 2 (June, 1972).

[35] “Israel-South Africa Ties Exposed by AAUG Delegates at the Congressional Black Caucus,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 5, No 3 (July 1972), 1, 5.

[36] “Seminar on Israel, S. Africa Diamond Industries Held,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 5, No. 3 (July 1972), 4. The Arab-American representatives on the steering committee were Abdeen Jabara of the AAUG, Riyad Mansour and Haidar Al-Mustafawi of the Organization of Arab Students, and Hasan Husseini of the Arab-American Association of Ohio University.

[37] AAUG Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 1 (March 1971), 8.

[38] “Arab-American Community News,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 7, No. 1 (March 1974), 7.

[39] “American Blacks, Latinos, and Educators Form Delegation to Lebanon,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 12, No. 2 (July 1979), 8.

[40] “At the PUSH Convention: A Push for better Black-Arab relations,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 13, No. 3 (September-October 1980), 4.

[41] “Twelfth AAUG Convention Highlights,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 13, No. 1 (December 1979-March 1980), 1–2.

[42] “Chairman Arafat Sends Message to Convention,” AAUG Newsletter Vol. 12, No. 3, September 1978, 3.

[43] Salim Yaqub, “‘Our Declaration of Independence’: African Americans, Arab Americans, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967–1979,” Mashriq & Mahjar 3, no. 1 (2015), 21.

[44] “AAUG Statement on Andrew Young,” Vol. 12, No. 3 (September 1978), 1.

[45] Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod: Resistance, Exile, and Return 115–116.

[46] Edward Said, “My Guru: Elegy for Ibrahim Abu-Lughod,” London Review of Books 23, no. 24 (December 13, 2001).

[47] Email exchange with Mariam Said, March 20, 2017.

[48] AAUG Newsletter Vol. 7, No. 2 (June 1974), 6.

[49] AAUG Newsletter Vol. 6, No. 3 (August 1973), 8.

[50] The Edward Said Reader eds. Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), xxxi.

[51] Abu-Lughod, Resistance, Exile, and Return 133.

[52] Fouad Moughrabi, “Remembering the AAUG,” Arab Studies Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 3–4 (Summer/Fall 2007), 102.

[53] Ghada Talhami, “A Cultural, Not a Political Lobby: The Mixed Legacy of a Grand Plan,” Arab Studies Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 3–4 (Summer/Fall 2007), 131.

[54] Refer to some of the founders' reflections on the AAUG's achievements and shortcomings in Arab Studies Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 3–4 (Summer/Fall 2007). See in particular Rashid Bashshur, “Unfulfilled Expectations: The Genesis and Demise of the AAUG,” Michael Suleiman, “‘I Come to Bury Caesar, Not to Praise Him’: An Assessment of the AAUG as an Example of an Activist Arab-American Organization,” and Elaine Hagopian, “Reversing Injustice: On Utopian Activism.”

[55] Naseer Aruri, “AAUG: A Memoir,” Arab Studies Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 3–4 (Summer/Fall 2007), 36.

[56] For more on this backlash, as exemplified by the Nixon administration's “Operation Boulder,” see Samhan, “Politics and Exclusion”; Pamela Pennock, The Rise of the Arab-American Left; and Salim Yaqub, Imperfect Strangers .