About

I am a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. My work investigates the reproduction of settler societies and global systems of militarism and policing. I received my PhD in American Studies from New York University.

My first book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom (Verso 2024) argues that Israeli institutions of higher education are enlisted in Israel’s settler-colonial project. From campuses strategically built to anchor Israeli territorial expansion and Palestinian dispossession, through tailored degree programs for the military and secret police, to academic disciplines subordinating their research agendas to service military rule, Israeli universities are imbricated with the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Challenging the widespread understanding of Israeli universities as bastions of democracy, the book shows how Israel’s most vaunted liberal institutions are also sites where colonial expertise is reproduced and where Palestinian critical scholarship, pedagogy, and student dissent are stifled.

My current book project, which draws on my doctoral dissertation, investigates the reproduction and international export of Israeli security expertise. It reveals that scientific and social experimentation with Israeli citizens is foundational to global technologies and models of security. Research and writing for this project have been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and the Killam Laureates Trust.

I research, write, and teach in collaboration with coalitions organizing for abolition, demilitarization, and decolonization in Palestine, the United States, and Canada. I am from Jerusalem, and currently live on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations.