Events

Please join us April 13th from 12-1pm in the IASH Room (LN 1106) for the Israel Studies Roundtable Lunch III, featuring BU's own Dr. Lubna Omar.

Shattered Sites, Silenced Stories: The Destruction of Palestinian Heritage


This talk examines the dual destruction of heritage sites and living stories across the Palestinian landscape, where the shattering of physical monuments is inseparable from the silencing of the oral traditions they sustain. It explores a systematic process of memoricide—the attempt to rewrite the stratigraphy of the land by erasing the material evidence of historical continuity. By analyzing the targeting of tangible landmarks and the inalienable traditions rooted within them, we will discuss how these attacks function not only as a violation of international law but as a deliberate strike against the collective memory and enduring identity of a people.  

Dr. Lubna Omar is an Instructor in Anthropology at Binghamton University and Associate Director of the Center for Southwest Asia and North Africa Studies. A zooarchaeologist, her research and teaching focus on human-animal relations and the development of urban economies in Southwest Asia, particularly northern Mesopotamia. She has conducted fieldwork in Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, and Japan. In addition to her research, Dr. Omar is active in cultural heritage initiatives, collaborating on projects that frame regional heritage from non-Western perspectives to challenge traditional narratives and document vulnerable archaeological sites."


Vegetarian boxed lunches will be served.
Please register on B-Engaged.

'Population Paul Reveres': How a Nativist Vanguard Ignited Modern Anti-Immigrant Hysteria

Dr. Wendy Wall, Binghamton University
April 30th  |  7:00 p.m.  |  Anderson Center President's Reception Room

This talk explores the emergence of the modern anti-immigration movement by tracing the activities and evolving tactics of a network of individuals and organizations who have worked for most of the past 80 years to combat liberalizing tendencies in U.S. immigration policy, and ultimately to overturn the idea that the U.S. is "a nation of immigrants." The cast includes eugenically minded ecologists and well-placed businessmen who spread alarms about an impending "population explosion" a decade before the publication of Paul Ehrlich's 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb. It also includes environmental groups, anti-tax activists, an heiress with a passion for birds, and a Michigan ophthalmologist who founded many of the groups spearheading the push for immigration restrictions today. By embracing an ever-evolving array of media, legal, and other tactics--and by trying to appeal to Americans across both liberal-conservative and rural-urban divides--these groups helped to reshape the national dialogue about immigration and normalize ideas that were once considered fringe.


Wendy Wall is an associate professor of history at Binghamton University (SUNY) whose research and teaching focuses on the political culture of the 20th-century U.S.  In addition to her prize-winning book, Inventing the "American Way": The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement, she has published essays on topics including the mid-20th-century interfaith movement and the role of religious language and organizations in postwar debates over immigration reform. Her current book project traces the history of the anti-immigration movement since World War II. She is also leading a public history project aimed at documenting and explaining the widespread use of racially restrictive covenants in Broome County property deeds between 1900 and the 1960s, and exploring their long-term implications.

This event is sponsored by the Bernard Lasky Lecture Series Endowment, the Department of Judaic Studies, and the College of Jewish Studies.