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The American Studies Association has scheduled Palestinian scientist Mazin Qumsiyeh, who wrote an article praising a perpetrator of a deadly Jerusalem bus attack, for its October 22–25, 2026 annual meeting in Chicago.
The program includes sessions titled “Dezionizing the U.S. University,” “Techno-Counterinsurgency from Turtle Island to Palestine” and “Love Snow, But Fuck ICE: Improvising Resistance to Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis.” Other participants include former Weather Underground figures Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and San Francisco State University professor Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, who publicly idolized PFLP airline hijacker Leila Khaled.
“Dezionizing” Universities and “Fuck ICE”
The conference program opens Thursday morning with “Dezionizing the U.S. University,” featuring academics from the University of California system, Wake Forest University and Lara Sheehi. Other sessions include “Against Zionist and White Nationalist Attacks on the Academy,” “Zionism Is Racism: Introducing the Critical Zionism Studies Syllabus” and “Resisting Zionism: Anticolonial Feminist Pedagogy and Practice.” The latter includes a paper titled “Against Civility: Anti-Zionist Feminist Disobedience in the Academy.”
Anti-police and anti-immigration-enforcement themes also recur throughout the meeting. Sessions include “Improvising Just Futures: Prefigurative Politics Beyond Policing,” “Making Research Work for Abolitionist Movements” and a paper on the “Legacy of Radical Queer Anti-Police Organizing.”
The program also repeatedly casts American power through the language of empire and counterinsurgency. One panel is titled “Improvising against the U.S. Empire: Race, Global Violence, and Radical Imaginations,” while another examines “American Empire and Its Spatial Logic: Militarism, Infrastructure, and Cognitive Control.” Another panel titled “Techno-Counterinsurgency from Turtle Island to Palestine” is chaired by CUNY Graduate Center professor Orisanmi Burton and includes NYU professor Helga Tawil-Souri.
Qumsiyeh Photographed with Terror Cell Leader
Jewish Onliner previously identified a captioned photograph on Qumsiyeh’s own blog showing him alongside Basel al-Araj. Qumsiyeh wrote that he met al-Araj in 2009 and described years of shared activism and demonstrations. Israeli police spokesmen said al-Araj “was the head of a terrorist cell that planned to carry out [attacks] against Israeli targets” and that he had purchased weapons. Al-Araj was killed in a March 2017 gunfight with Israeli forces.
Qumsiyeh is scheduled for “Cultivating Otherwise: Seed Sovereignty, Abolitionist World-Building, and Liberation from Chicago to Palestine.” An organizer statement for the 2012 Global March to Jerusalem lists him and “M K Sawalha (UK)” on its International Advisory Committee. Later reporting identified the entry as Mohammed Kassem Sawalha, whom the Justice Department had named in 2004 among alleged high-ranking Hamas leaders identified as co-conspirators. Hamas later identified Mohammed Sawalha as a member of its political bureau during a 2017 delegation to Moscow, according to The Independent.
Qumsiyeh has also appeared on Iranian Press TV with figures later sanctioned by the United States. He appeared with Khaled Barakat in a September 2024 broadcast and separately with Samidoun international coordinator Charlotte Kates. Treasury sanctioned Samidoun and Barakat in October 2024, describing Samidoun as a PFLP fundraising front and Barakat as a member of the PFLP’s leadership. Press TV itself was sanctioned in 2023.
An Arabic newsletter republished under Qumsiyeh’s name in June 2016 referred to “freedom martyrs such as Baha Alyan” and later described those discussed as heroes. Alyan and Bilal Abu Ghanem carried out an October 2015 shooting and stabbing attack on Jerusalem’s No. 78 bus that killed three people. Abu Ghanem was later convicted of three murders and seven attempted murders.
Hijacker Admiration and a Samidoun Platform
Abdulhadi is scheduled to chair “Resisting Zionism: Anticolonial Feminist Pedagogy and Practice.” She previously invited Leila Khaled to a 2020 online class that Zoom subsequently blocked. In an interview with San Francisco State University’s student newspaper, Abdulhadi said, “We really idolize somebody like Leila Khaled,” while discussing Khaled’s airplane hijacking as an example of female agency.
Fellow San Francisco State University speaker Omar Zahzah is scheduled for “Palestine in Movement: Improvisations Across the Global Imperial Body.” Zahzah previously appeared at a July 2022 webinar organized by Samidoun that included a prerecorded contribution from PFLP Central Committee member Suhair Khader and remarks from Barakat. The webinar preceded Samidoun’s U.S. designation by more than two years.
Weather Underground Figures and “Assata Is Welcome Here”
The ASA program offers graduate students an off-site mentoring dinner hosted by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Both were leading Weather Underground figures, and the FBI describes the organization as a domestic terrorist group responsible for bombings targeting sites including the U.S. Capitol, Pentagon and State Department. The ASA advertises their dinner as an opportunity to discuss “education, activism, scholarship, political commitment, and building a life around the work you care about.” Ayers also appears in opening-night programming and a session titled “Bill Ayers’ Improvisation as Pedagogical Ethic.”
UC Davis professor Jemma DeCristo is meanwhile scheduled to chair “Assata Is Welcome Here.” Assata Shakur, who died in Cuba in 2025, was convicted of murder in the killing of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster before escaping prison and eventually receiving asylum in Cuba. DeCristo was censured and suspended by UC Davis after a 2023 post about “zionist journalists” referred to their homes and children and said “they should fear us more.”
A Tax-Exempt Educational Charity
The American Studies Association is an IRS-recognized 501(c)(3) tax-exempt public charity that solicits tax-deductible donations to support its annual meeting, graduate participation and professional development. Its bylaws state that the organization exists “exclusively for educational and academic study purposes,” while its elected National Council bears responsibility for the association’s activities and resources. The speaker roster and conference programming place renewed scrutiny on how a tax-exempt educational association can shape academic discourse and influence the political ideas presented within American higher education.
Put him in the pillory!