I, Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb, Professor of Media Studies at California State University, San Bernardino, was prohibited from delivering a portion of the presidential address at the National Communication Association (NCA) Convention on November 18, 2023 at 5 p.m. The event, hosted by the largest association for communication studies scholars in the U.S., was also intended to recognize me with a presidential citation for “Leadership in Creating a More Community- and Culturally-Centered Discipline.” In September, Dr. Walid Afifi, the elected president of NCA, asked several communication studies scholars to contribute parts of his presidential address, aiming to envision the future of the discipline in an innovative manner. He specifically selected scholars advocating for various social justice issues, with me focusing on Palestine in my contribution, and delivering the speech in Arabic.
My understanding is that multiple individuals from the national office of NCA, including the executive director and the senior director of strategic communications, were involved in preventing me from delivering my portion of the President’s Address at the NCA annual conference against the will of the president. This decision, which was conveyed to me and the other speakers just half an hour before we were supposed to go on stage, ultimately resulted in the cancelation of the entire Presidential Address of Dr. Walid Afifi, the first Palestinian President in the association’s history, which also silenced the voices of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, differently abled, trans, and queer NCA members who were supposed to deliver the address with me. Dr. Afifi was told that the speeches naming colonial violences would cast the NCA in a negative light “from which NCA might never recover.”
When I pushed for more answers, I was told that my speech was singled out for removal because of my references to genocide and “free Palestine” in the speech. These concerns were raised with Dr. Afifi only an hour before the start of the event, even though the speech was translated and shared with NCA five days earlier, without any prior objections. All speakers, including me, then refused to present their parts of the address. During the award presentation, when my name was called for the presidential citation, I briefly stood with duct tape over my mouth before leaving the stage. Dr. Afifi mentioned that I rejected the award. Another speaker who was supposed to receive an award also decided to reject their award in solidarity with me. Immediately following the awards ceremony and before the Presidential Address, around a hundred scholars stood up, with some placing duct tape over their mouths in solidarity, and they all walked out of the ballroom.
Upon the decision to censor my speech, we suggested protesting by going onto the stage in defiance of the cancelation decision, but we were cautioned that we might face removal by security hired by NCA. To defuse the situation, we opted to exit the ceremony and perform our speeches and spoken words outside. We started our speeches and performances as planned in the atrium of the hotel. Hotel security prevented us from using a megaphone in the hotel atrium. They instructed us to go back inside the ballroom, but once we gave up the megaphone, we were prevented from entering. Accordingly, we continued our presentations outside the ballroom before relocating to an adjacent room to complete our speeches as initially planned. What follows is the speech I had planned to give.
English translation of Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb’s speech intended to be delivered as a part of the 2023 NCA Presidential Address in Arabic
Salam and Marhaba everyone! What an absurd coincidence that I address the NCA Convention assembly under the theme of “Freedom” at a time when it has perhaps been more evident than ever before that my home country of Palestine is not free! How absurd it is that I am expected today to envision with you all a future of freedom when we are witnessing genocide unfolding in front of our very own eyes and with our own money in Palestine! How can I envision a future where we are all equal when Palestinians are dehumanized and invisiblized everyday in this country by both our government and our media, or when epistemic violence is used against us in academia and to silence our voices every day? When there is a deafening silence in our discipline as we detach from the genocide happening in Palestine, especially by those “decolonial scholars” who wear their decoloniality as a meaningless badge? Decoloniality is a verb: it is an action and it is rooted in praxis. Also, when our realities are invisibilized from our disciplinary publications; by one count, in the entire history of all journals published by the NCA, 12 articles are the sum total of knowledge that included at least some centering of the Palestinian experience. I wonder, would a Palestinian voice be on this stage today had we not had a Palestinian president of our association? Past history tells us no. When it comes to invisibility, would we have been able to consider the humanity of Vietnamese people without the pictures of Nick Ut? How can I envision a community-centered approach to our discipline when my Palestinian community is being expelled from the realm of justice and humanity?
In spite of all of that and in spite of my pain, I will share my vision for our discipline: it is a vision that is based on decolonial approaches to knowledge production. Imagine if our scholarly tools allowed us to understand Gaza and its humanity, to understand people’s culture, life, laughter, and resilience outside the realm of violence and destruction? My former Gazan student and I attempted this when we tried to reclaim part of our narrative in the United States, as we have learned from the works of the father of post-colonial school of thought, the late Edward Said. Using immersive technologies last year, we managed to document life in Gaza beyond the images of destruction, death, and violence. We wanted to capture the multi-dimensional and multi-faceted life in Gaza, showing people’s resistance to the brutal Israeli occupation and siege and their resilience through their daily transactions. We succeeded in capturing hundreds of happy moments of life in Gaza, which we took and put in virtual spaces in Mozilla Hubs. We preserved places and faces that no longer exist; they are well hidden in virtual eternity. Take the Orthodox Church that no longer exists in the geography of Gaza but will forever live in our virtual heart. We also wanted to imagine a liberated Gaza in digital spaces as the liberation/freedom reality did/does not seem real. This imagination is further and closer than ever before; it is the intangible/unthinkable/un-accessed truth.
The Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece by Jeffery Fliers on October 13 titled “Now is the Time for Administrators to Embrace Neutrality.” In it, Fliers was the furthest from neutrality. To not take a side against genocide, is indeed to take a side. Raz Segal clearly stated in Jewish Currents that what is happening in Gaza is “A Textbook Case of Genocide,” but are we, people of color in general, and Palestinians in particular, allowed the same freedom to describe our genocide or Nakba? Can the subaltern speak, as Gayatri Spivak inquires? Spivak exclaims: “How can we touch the consciousness of the people, even as we investigate their politics? With what voice-consciousness can the subaltern speak?”
Look at me here performing today in a way to be “accepted” by you all and to get my word across, but in fact, all I want to do is to scream “stop the genocide in Gaza now and free Palestine.”
Arabic version of Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb’s speech intended to be delivered as a part of the 2023 NCA Presidential Address
مرحبا وسلاما للجميع،
كم هو عجيب أن ألقي خطابي أمام الجمعية الوطنية لعلوم التواصل تحت موضوع “الحرية” في وقت قد يكون فيه واضحًا أكثر من أي وقت مضى أن بلدي فلسطين ليست حرة! كم هو مثيرا للسخرية أن يُتوقع مني اليوم أن أتصوّر معكم جميعًا مستقبلًا حرًا ونحن نشاهد إبادة جماعية أمام أعيننا ممولة من جيوبنا في فلسطين! كيف يمكنني تصوّر مستقبل يكون فيه الجميع متساوين عندما يتعرض الفلسطينيون للاقصاء والتعرية من انسانيتهم كل يوم في هذا البلد على يد حكومتنا ووسائل الإعلام! عندما يتم استخدام العنف المعرفي ضدنا في الحياة الأكاديمية ويتم اسكاتنا عن البوح بالحقائق! عندما يكون هناك صمت مُطبق في مجالنا التدريسي وننفصل عن الإبادة الجماعية التي تحدث في فلسطين، خاصة من قِبَل الباحثين المختصين في دراسة مجابهة الاستعمار؛ الذين يستخدمون دراساتهم كشعار لا أكثر. الاستعمار ليس مجرد مصطلح، بل هو فعل … إنه عمل متجذر بالتطبيق. أيضا، عندما تُمحى حقائقنا من انتاجاتنا البحثية؛ فبالنظر للمنشورات العلمية للجمعية الوطنية، نجد انه تم نشر ١٢ مقال علمي فقط حول القضية الفلسطينية. أتساءل، هل كنت ساكون على هذا المسرح أتحدث اليكم اليوم اذا لم يكن رئيس جمعيتنا فلسطيني؟! يقول لنا التاريخ السابق لا. عندما يتعلق الأمر بطمس الحقائق، هل كنا سنكون قادرين على رؤية إنسانية الشعب الفيتنامي بدون صور نيك آوت؟ كيف يمكنني أن أتصوّر نهجاً مُرَكَّزاً على المجتمع في تخصصنا عندما يتم طرد مجتمعي الفلسطيني من ميدان العدالة والإنسانية.
على الرغم من كل ذلك ورغم ألمي، سأشارك رؤيتي لتخصصنا: إنها رؤية تستند إلى نهج مجابه للاستعمار في إنتاج المعرفة. تخيل لو أن أدواتنا العلمية سمحت لنا بفهم غزة وإنسانيتها … أن نفهم ثقافة الناس وحياتهم وضحكهم وصمودهم خارج نطاق العنف والدمار؟ حين حاولت انا و طالبي السابق من غزة اعادة جزءًا من سردنا في الولايات المتحدة، استنادًا إلى أعمال الراحل إدوارد سعيد صاحب نظرية الاستشراق، باستخدام تقنيات الواقع المعزز العام الماضي، نجحنا في توثيق حياة غزة خارج الصور الخاصة بالدمار والموت والعنف. أردنا التقاط حياة متعددة الأبعاد ومتنوعة الجوانب في غزة، مظهرين صمود الناس أمام الاحتلال الإسرائيلي الوحشي والحصار من خلال معاملاتهم اليومية. نجحنا في التقاط مئات اللحظات السعيدة في حياة غزة بتقنية التصوير ٣٦٠ درجة، وضعناها في فضاءات افتراضية في Mozilla Hubs . حافظنا على أماكن ووجوه لا تعود موجودة … إنها مختبئة جيدًا في الخلود الافتراضي. على سبيل المثال … الكنيسة الأرثوذكسية التي لم تعد موجودة في جغرافيا غزة ولكن ستعيش إلى الأبد في قلبنا الافتراضي. أردنا أيضًا تخيّل غزة المحررة في الفضاءات الرقمية حيث لا تبدو الواقعية في التحرير والحرية حقيقية. هذا التخيل هو أبعد وأقرب من أي وقت مضى؛ إنها الحقيقة اللا ملموسة/الغير قابلة للتخيل/الغير متاحة.
في 13 أكتوبر، نشرت “ The Chronicle of Higher Education ” مقالًا لجيفري فليرز بعنوان “الآن حان الوقت لتبني الحياد من قبل المسؤولين”. فيه كان فليرز أبعد ما يكون عن الحياد. عدم اتخاذ موقف ضد الإبادة هو بالفعل اتخاذ موقف. أكد راز سيجال بوضوح في “ Jewish Currents ” أن ما يحدث في غزة هو “ابادة جماعية بالمعنى الحرفي في كتب التدريس” ( https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide )، ولكن هل لنا، كشعوب مسحوقة بشكل عام وفلسطينيين بشكل خاص، الاذن بوصف إبادتنا أو نكبتنا؟ هل يمكن للمسحوق أن يتكلم، كما تستفسر سبيفاك؟ سبيفاك تتسائل : كيف يمكننا لمس وعي الناس ونحن ندرس مواقفهم السياسية؟ بأي وعي يمكن للمسحوق أن يتكلم؟!
انظرو إليّ هنا، أتحدث اليكم اليوم بطريقة تستجدي انتباهكم، ولكن في الواقع، كل ما أريد فعله هو أن أصرخ “اوقفوا هذه الإبادة الجماعية في غزة وتعيش فلسطين حرة عربية!”