Speaker Bios:
Rabbi Aryeh Cohen, PhD
Rabbi Aryeh Cohen, PhD is Professor of Rabbinic Literature and a former chair of the Rabbinics Department in the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies. Cohen’s research is on the border of scholarship and activism. His latest book, Justice in the City: An Argument from the Sources of Rabbinic Judaism, emerges from rabbinic literature and contemporary philosophy to engage concerns of the city: restorative justice, labor, houseleness.
Dr. Cohen is a co-convener of the Black Jewish JusticeAlliance (BJJA) and a member of Clergy for Black Lives. With Clergy for Black Lives, he co-organized one of the largest memorial demonstrations in Downtown Los Angeles after the murder of George Floyd. Dr. Cohen is a commissioner of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, and an advisor to the Los Angeles County District Attorney as a member of the DA’s Interfaith Advisory Board. Dr. Cohen is the president of the Society of Jewish Ethics, and past co-chair of the board of CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice).
Eman Khadra Ansari, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Harvard Medical School
Eman Ansari is a Palestinian-American pediatric pulmonary and critical care physician, a practicing pediatric emergency physician at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH), and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. She is the head of the PICU committee at PCRF and has been active in the space of health and humanitarian aid to Palestine. She’s a mother of four and lives with her husband and children in Newton, MA.
Susan M. Akram
Clinical Professor and Director, International Human Rights Clinic
Boston University School of Law
Professor Susan Akram is a graduate of the University of Michigan (BA), Georgetown University School of Law (JD), Oxford University (MsT), and the Institut International des Droits del’Homme (Diplome). She directs BU Law’s International Human Rights Clinic, in which she supervises students engaged in international advocacy in domestic, international, regional, and UN fora. She teaches or has taught courses in International Human Rights, Refugee and Migration law, US Immigration law and Palestinian Refugees under International Law. She has taught at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, at Al-Quds and Birzeit Universities in Palestine, the Oxford University Refugee Studies Center and the University of Murcia in Spain. She is a double Fulbright Senior Scholar award recipient, to Palestine (1999-2000) and Spain (2021-22). Her research and publications focus on immigration, asylum, refugee, forced migration and human and civil rights issues, with an interest in the Middle East, the Arab, and Muslim world.
Leila Farsakh, Ph.D.
Professor of Political Science,
University of Massachusetts Boston
New Book: Rethinking Statehood in Palestine
Latest Article: “The Refugee Problem”, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n22/leila-farsakh/the-refugee-problem
Webpage: SelectedWorks – Leila Farsakh
Leila Farsakh is Professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is the editor of Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization Beyond Partition (University of California Press, 2021), and author of Palestinian Labor Migration to Israel: Labour, Land and Occupation, (London: Routledge, second edition, 2012). She has also published widely on the political economy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and alternative to partition in Israel/Palestine in a wide range of academic journals and non-academic venues. In 2001, she won the Peace and Justice Award from the Cambridge Peace Commission, in Cambridge-Massachusetts.
Gregory Khalil
Co-Founder & President, Telos
Adjunct Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Gregory Khalil is the co-founder and President of Telos, a Washington D.C.-based non-profit that equips American leaders and their communities to better engage seemingly intractable conflict. Much of Telos’ work has centered on the role of faith leaders and culture shapers in America’s relationship to Israel/Palestine and the broader Middle East. Before founding Telos, Greg was a legal and communications adviser to Palestinian leaders on peace negotiations with Israel. Since 2019, Greg has also co-taught a course called “Covering Religion” at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Jon A. Levisohn, Ph.D.
Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Associate Professor of Jewish Educational Thought
Brandeis University
Jon A. Levisohn is a philosopher of education, who focuses primarily on Jewish education. He is on the faculty at Brandeis University, where he chairs his department (which encompasses both Jewish and Islamic studies) and directs a research center that focuses on Jewish education. Among his books and articles, he is the editor of the forthcoming book, The Aims of Religious Education: Catholic, Islamic and Jewish Perspective. For about a decade, he has been active in Encounter, which is dedicated to bringing American and Israeli Jews to meet with Palestinians in the West Bank, and to understand more deeply the Israeli-Palestinian reality.