The 19th B.N.Ganguli Memorial Lecture was delivered by Sari Nusseibeh on ‘Ideals and Interests: The Case of the Arab Transportation Network in East Jerusalem’ on 21 April 2017 at CSDS. The lecture was chaired by Shail Mayaram.

B. N. Ganguli Memorial Lectures are instituted in memory of the distinguished economist Professor B. N. Ganguli, former Chair, CSDS Board of Governors. Earlier speakers in the series include Professors Charles Taylor, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Raimundo Panikkar, Bhikhu Parekh, Ernest Gellner, Ali Mazrui, Roberto Unger, Michael Walzer, John Keane, Amit Bhaduri, Giorgio Agamben, Bina Agarwal, José Casanova, Partha Chatterjee, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Claudio Lomnitz and Jomo Kwame Sundaram.

While formal Palestinian policy continues to seek separation from Israel (ideal), various Palestinian interests on the ground seem to be pursuing the prudential but opposite course of utilizing Israeli law to their advantage (rights). The case of a transportation strike that took place in Arab Jerusalem last month on the same day a Palestinian leadership meeting in Beirut was discussing a best strategy for separation from Israel formed the general outlines of the investigation in the lecture.

Sari Nusseibeh is Professor of Islamic and Political Philosophy at the University of Al-Quds in Jerusalem, where he also served as President until 2014. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Oxford and Harvard. He has written and lectured widely in the inter-crossing fields of politics and philosophy, his most recent publication being The Story of Reason in Islam (Stanford, 2016).

Shail Mayaram is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

Friday, 21 April 2017
6 pm, CSDS Seminar Room
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi