Rabab Abdulhadi

Rabab Abdulhadi (PhD) is founding Director/Senior scholar of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies Program. Before joining SFSU, she served as the first Director of the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. A co-founding Editorial Board member of the Islamophobia Studies Journal, She co-authored Mobilizing Democracy: Changing US Policy in the Middle East and co-edited Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence and Belonging, winner of the 2012 Arab American Non-Fiction Book Award; a special issue of MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies; and American Quarterly’s forum on “Palestine and American Studies.” Her academic articles appeared in Feminist Studies; Women’s Studies Quarterly; International Feminist Journal of Politics; Gender and Society; Radical History Review; Peace Review; and Journal of Women’s History. She is a contributor to Return to the Source; Freedom of Speech and Higher Education; The University and Social Justice; the Life and Courage of Shamima Shaikh; ; This Bridge We Call Home; New World Coming; Shifting Borders; We Will Not Be Silenced; and Countering the Islamophobia Industry. As a journalist based at the UN Headquarters for 10 years, she wrote for The Guardian, Al-Fajr; Womanews; Palestine Focus; Voice of Palestinian Women; Christianity and Crisis; Falasteen Al-Thahwra; Al-Hadaf; and Al-Hurriyah. She continues her public engagement in Mondoweiss, Al-Shabaka, Jadaliyya; Al-Quds Al-Arabi; Al-Akhbar; Washington Report on Middle East Affairs; The Intercept; Counterpunch; TruthOut; Monthly Review; and Middle East Eye; and TV and radio stations, such as Aljazeera, Press TV; Pacifica and NPR affiliates. She is currently working on critical oral histories of Palestinian activism and editing an anthology on Teaching Palestine; and roundtables on Black Liberation; Abolition and Reparations; and whose Narrative? Gender, Justice and Palestine, censored by Zoom due to Zionist campaign and university collusion.

Abdulhadi is an activist scholar who is equally engaged with scholarly and community service, including Al-Shabaka; Afro-Middle East Center; World Congress of Middle East Studies; Feminists for Justice in/for Palestine; National Students for Justice in Palestine; California Scholars for Academic Freedom; US Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and the newly formed Cops off Campus and CSU Coalition to Disarm and Defund. She is an advisor to National Students for Justice in Palestine and SFSU faculty advisor to Afghan Student Association; General Union of Palestinian Students; Muslim Student Association and Muslim Women Student Association. She co-organized and led several delegations to Palestine, including the Indigenous and Women of Color Feminist Delegation, US Prisoner, Academic, Labor Solidarity and Teaching Palestine, including Birzeit, AN-Najah, Seville, and South Africa. Her work has been recognized with several scholarly and community honors, including Phi Beta Kappa; Sterling Fellowship; New Century Scholarship; AAUP Georgina Smith Award; ADC Alex Odeh Award; IFCO/Pastors for Peace Lucius Walker Award; Courage awards by Al-Awda and American Muslims for Palestine; Arab Feminist Union-Palestine; National Women’s Studies Association; and recognized with teaching excellence awards by Yale University, American University in Cairo, and SFSU for exceptional service to students.