Dartmouth Events

Is Zionism a colonial movement? This question has long been a subject of debate and was the title of the classic article by Derek Penslar, professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard University, nearly two decades ago. Prof. Penslar will join Yael Berda, professor of Sociology at Hebrew University, to discuss this still-contentious issue, in a conversation moderated by Dartmouth’s Jonathan Smolin, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies.

Prof. Penslar has argued that Zionism and the State of Israel do not reproduce classic European colonialism but represent a case of settler colonialism that is constantly shifting, therefore challenging the usefulness of static concepts such as “colonial.” Yael Berda’s book Colonial Bureaucracy and Contemporary Citizenship presents the state of Israel in comparative context, asking how the legacy of European colonialism functions after the empire has withdrawn. She compares three former British colonies, Israel, India, and Cyprus, to see how colonial-era laws and bureaucracies continue to dominate the post-colonial state.

Free and open to the public. Tickets required, get yours here.

The event will be livestreamed, sign up to attend online here.

A recording of the event will be posted on YouTube.

---

Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History and the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. He previously taught at Indiana University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Oxford, where he was in inaugural holder of the Stanley Lewis Chair in Modern Israel Studies.  Penslar has published a dozen books, most recently Zionism: An Emotional State (2023).  He is currently writing a book titled The War for Palestine, 1947-1949: A Global History. Penslaris a past president of the American Academy for Jewish Research, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford.

Dr. Yael Berda is the Rose Issacs chair Professor of sociology at Hebrew University, and Fellow at Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Berda is lawyer and associate professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at Hebrew university of Jerusalem and fellow at the Middle East initiative at the Kennedy school of government, Harvard University. Berda teaches, researches and writes on the insectios of sociology of law, race and imperial rule. She studies ways that bureaucracies shape politics, the colonial legacies of Modern empires. She has written numerous articles and three books, among them “Living Emergency” @ stanford university press 2017 and recently “colonial bureaucracy and contemporary citizenship: legacies of race and emergency in the former British Empire” @cambridge University press. Berda completed her PHD in sociology at Princeton University and her post doctoral work at the Harvard academy for international and area studies. Formerly a human rights lawyer, Berda is highly engaged in political and social change. Among others, she is on the boards of A Land for all, chair of IR Amim and Academia for equality.

This is an event of the Middle East Initiative and Dartmouth Dialogues, a collaborative effort of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding and the Middle Eastern Studies and Jewish Studies Programs at Dartmouth. With generous support from Tal and Ariel Recanati P’21