UMass Boston Political Scientist Focuses on a New Civic Blueprint for Jerusalem
Leila Farsakh has been dealing with the fight over Jerusalem since the day she was born in Jordan – where her parents fled after the Arab-Israeli War.
Now the UMass Boston assistant professor of political science is co-directing Jerusalem 2050, a project intent on providing new answers to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The project’s latest initiative has invited experts from around the world to create a vision of Jerusalem as a city that must serve its citizens, rather than exist as the historical focal point of a violent struggle between religious groups.
“How can we think of a city that is open to everybody? How can we think beyond a nation state? How can we get out of the present impasse - of occupation, separation wall, insecurity, and violence – we see today?” said Farsakh, a Palestinian Muslim who visits her relatives in the West Bank every year. “We are all still human beings.”
Unlike her family living 15 miles away, Farsakh can visit Jerusalem anytime she wishes. “I have relatives who haven’t seen Jerusalem in 15 years. They can’t access the city,” said Farsakh, who has who has been living in the United States for seven years.
Jerusalem 2050: Vision for a Place of Peace challenges the world’s greatest minds – including those from Israel and Palestine – to use imagination and creativity to determine how Jerusalem can become a vibrant and democratic urban center. The project is sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Farsakh is a research affiliate at the Center for International Studies.
An international contest that seeks utopian visions of a future Jerusalem, Jerusalem 2050 was launched last month. A jury of nine scholars will select the best plans in five areas, including economics and the arts, and award MIT fellowships that allow the winners to further develop their ideas and meet with global leaders who can help give life to their proposals.
The project strives to redefine the ways in which the city serves its citizens and promotes civil society.
“It has been very challenging to sit down and question our assumptions over what is a just solution,” said Farsakh, who calls the project intellectually fascinating and politically necessary. “We don’t know where people’s imaginations will go. That’s why it’s so interesting.”
Farsakh isn’t entering the contest, but she has her own vision of what Jerusalem should be. It’s not the two-state solution – separating Israelis and Arabs – which she grew up believing in.
“My ideal is a Jerusalem which is an international city,” said Farsakh, who is married to a Christian man and maintains close friendships with people from many religious backgrounds. “Anyone can live there. They should live as equal citizens, not segregated by nationality.”
Farsakh has been an assistant professor at UMass for three years, teaching courses on Middle East and third world politics. In September she will co-chair Engaging Islam, a campus conference that will examine the religion’s interplay between politics, culture and identity.
The author of a book on the Palestinian labor migration to Israel, Farsakh has also written articles on the Middle East conflict and worked with several international organizations including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris and the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute in Ramallah.
Farsakh holds a PhD from the University of London, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, England, and was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. In 2001 she won the Peace and Justice Award from the Cambridge Peace Commission, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
For more information on the Just Jerusalem Competition please visit web.mit.edu/justjerusalem/