Alexander Jabbari

Thinking about how the Israeli gov intervened to get Omri Boehm, Israeli-born philosopher and grandson of Holocaust survivors, banned from speaking at the 80th anniversary ceremony of the liberation of Buchenwald this year, because he planned to say that "Never again" is about more than just Jews.

Identity and Cultural Diplomacy of the Abraham Accords In December 2020, three months after the Abraham Accords were signed enabling the first commercial flights between Israel and the UAE, a short video went modestly viral on Israeli twitter. A man in a…

NEW: Identity and Cultural Diplomacy of the Abraham Accords

Shir Alon interrogates how the Abraham Accords normalization process has sought to transform Arab and Jewish identity in the region.

Material Politics of Normalization Summer/Fall 2025

NEW: "Material Politics of Normalization" the Summer/Fall Issue of Middle East Report!

A hard hitting collection of 11 essays, reviews, and interviews on the architecture of normalization with Israel, from the Abraham Accords to the Gaza Genocide.

buff.ly/ZmeaAty

No Other Land Film - Support Masafer Yatta - Watch No Other Land

You can now watch Oscar Award winning documentary No Other Land in the United States of America.

Link below.

Will try to remember!

"Ceviche" and "escabeche" in Spanish may have a Persian #etymology. The RAE says they're from Arabic sikbāj, itself from Middle Persian sik "vinegar" + bāg "soup" (cf. سکبا).

Hunting in America - Tehila Hakimi
Devoured this violent little novel in just a couple hours. It's great.

Application deadline is Monday, October 13!

Ultraleftism Can’t Free Palestine Two years into Israel’s genocide, the US movement in solidarity with Palestinians is far weaker than it should be. To cut off American arms to Israel, we need to build a powerful movement oriented to ordinary Americans beyond activist circles.

Two years into Israel’s genocide, the US movement in solidarity with Palestinians is far weaker than it should be.

To cut off American arms to Israel, we need to build a powerful movement oriented to ordinary Americans beyond activist circles.

Wonderful!

I have a feeling the Urdu hajj pe jānā, literally "to go on Hajj," is calqued from English. English uses the phrasal verb "to go on" holiday, pilgrimage, etc.

The article is available open-access here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

My latest article "Cosmopolitan Philology and Sacred Grammar" is out in @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social. I examine the 1st Persian grammar "Minhaj al-Talab" (1660, from China), using it to think through the history of Persian philology & the relationship between cosmopolitan/vernacular & Persian/Islam.

Tomorrow at McGill!

Deleted my academia.edu account and you should too

Orly Noy doesn't mince words: "The urgent task now is to bring this holocaust to an end. But stopping it is only the first step. If Israeli society is ever to return to the fold of humanity, it must undergo a deep process of denazification."

The genocide grinds on. Israel is surrounding Gaza City, blowing up entire neighborhoods, blocking aid. 740,000 people are still in northern Gaza even as the conditions for life are deatroyed. Please help.

Emergency Fundraiser: Northern Gaza Displacement Emergency Fundraiser: Northern Gaza Displacement

Please donate and share to help families being forcibly displaced from Gaza City
chuffed.org/project/1494...

Emergency Fundraiser: Northern Gaza Displacement Emergency Fundraiser: Northern Gaza Displacement

Please donate and share to help families being forcibly displaced from Gaza City
chuffed.org/project/1494...

Offene Stellen an der ÖAW Aktuelle Stellenausschreibungen aus den Instituten und der zentralen Verwaltung der ÖAW

We have an open position for a pre-doctoral researcher in Dr. Ariane Sadjed's "Persian Jews – History, Community, Memory" team, looking at the Jewish communities of central Asia.

See here for job profile and other details: applications must be in by October 1st.
www.oeaw.ac.at/jobs?jh=pp87...

Looking forward to giving this talk, on some of my latest work, at McGill later this month

If you do find your name, go here to file to get your money!

www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars.

OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

So excited about this new Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies role at the University of Minnesota! Come live in the Twin Cities and do cool work! ✨

Haifa Alfaisal, "From Balāgha to Intiqād: Politicising the Science of Literature in Modern Arabic Literary Thought," 276-277.

In Arabic (and subsequently Persian and Urdu) نقد naqd connotes both cash and criticism.

The connection lies in an earlier sense of the word: testing the authenticity of coins.

JOB POSTING
Assistant Professor, Buddhist Studies
Religious Studies Program, University of Minnesota
Area, time period, and discipline are open and it's a great place to work!

بله حتما! چرا که نه؟

Opinion | Students Hate Them. Universities Need Them. The Only Real Solution to the A.I. Cheating Crisis.

Students Hate Them. Universities Need Them. The Only Real Solution to the A.I. Cheating Crisis.
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/o...

A Thai word we should borrow into English is แซ่บ saep, meaning "tasty" or "deliciously spicy." It sounds like "zap!" and is really fun to say.

Please donate and share: Healing Hands Fund is sending a neonatologist to Gaza & raising money for baby supplies. They are a small grassroots organization of pediatricians and their colleagues who have expertise and experience getting crucial health supplies to Palestine. t.co/PD8lTbYccn