Professor Eric Cheyfitz of Cornell University will be teaching a course in spring 2025 with the title of " Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance ."
Professor Eric Cheyfitz of Cornell University will be teaching a course in spring 2025 with the title of "Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance." Professor Cheyfitz is an activist in the anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement - he first came to my attention in the spring of 2014, when he was invited to speak at Ithaca College in favor of the academic boycott of Israel.
This is the course description as published in the Cornell online catalog:
AIIS 3500 Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2024-2025. The first half of the course will be devoted to situating Indigenous peoples, of which there are 476,000,000 globally, in an international context, where we will examine the proposition that Indigenous people are involved historically in a global resistance against an ongoing colonialism. The second half will present a specific case of this war: settler colonialism in Palestine/Israel with a particular emphasis on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) finding "plausible" the South African assertion of "genocide" in Gaza. Outcomes
Identify and analyze key components of Indigenous perspectives on political, social, and environmental systems(this can be observed/assessed through written reflections and discussions).
Define and differentiate key terms such as "Indigeneity," "Resistance," "Settler Colonialism," and "Genocide" in both international law and Indigenous contexts(this can be observed/assessed through writing assignments and presentations).
Conduct a historical analysis of Indigenous peoples' current situations(this can be observed/assessed by researching and presenting findings in a paper).
Conceptualize your idea of a just society through the comparison of Western and Indigenous epistemologies (this can be observed/assessed through argumentative essays and class debates based on insights gained from the previous outcomes).
Apply these outcomes to an understanding of the history of Israel/Palestine with a focus on the history of Gaza and the current Gaza war (this can be observed/assessed by researching and presenting findings in a paper).
Professor Cheyfitz is not only anti-Israel - he thinks Israel is as bad as Nazi Germany. From the JTA article about the course:
Cheyfitz has written repeatedly that he considers Israel’s war against Hamas to be a genocide, that Israel is a “close fit” with Nazi Germany and, in 2014, that “Gaza has become an extermination camp, run by Jews.”
