The Erasure of a People in Organizations and Society

Seminar summary

With the progressive destruction of Gaza universities and libraries, the reduction of Gaza’s population to evacuees in their own land, the erasure of Palestinians is concrete, physical, and historic. However, this erasure takes many forms beyond Gaza. Press outlets have been found to discourage the use of the words ‘Palestine’, social media companies have been censoring or shadow banning posts relating to Palestinian suffering, many Universities have maintained ‘neutrality’ or repressed Palestinian voices. In this paper I explore the censorship of Palestinians in the West as a form of corporate activity connected to ideology and politics. I explore the roots of this ideology in the politics of the Nakba, the historical displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people started in 1948 by Israel. I theorise the Nakba as an earthquake with its epicentre in Israel, and its ripple effects traveling through the space and through time. A key feature of this erasure is the politicisation of the Palestinian existence as antagonistic to the existence of others and to Western politics. In defining this politicisation, I analyse how anti-Palestinian racism has become part of the fabric of organizations and society, perpetuating structures of discrimination. I explain the three dimensions of anti-Palestinian racism: the denial of Palestinian existence, the denial of Palestinian suffering under the Israeli oppressive regime, the conflation of Palestinians and their supporters with antisemitism and terrorism. I exhort organizations and leaders to act up and put in place measures that protect Palestinians’ self-expression to avoid unwittingly contributing to the erasure of the Palestinian people.

How to attend this seminar

This seminar will take place on Friday 18 October 2024 at 1pm.

We welcome you to join us online.

This seminar is free to attend with no need to register in advance.

Speaker bio

Dr Zahira Jaser

Zahira Jaser is an Italian-Palestinian Associate Professor at the University of Sussex Business School, where she convenes and teaches modules in leadership, diversity, and applied research (at Undergraduate, MSc and MBA level). She is the Director of the MBA  program. Her research and writing focus on how managers navigate power in hierarchical settings, and how technology mediates relationships between managers and workers. Lately she has been researching the impact of anti-Palestinian racism in organizations and society. Her research and writings have been featured in Science, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the BBC, Wired, the Harvard Business Review and the MIT Sloan Management Review; as well as published in academic journals such us the Journal of Management Studies, Organization Theory, Organization Studies, Academy of Management Learning and Education Journal, Political Psychology and Leadership. Zahira is an impact-driven, as she seeks to bring change though her research by helping organizations implement responsible business practices which are just, sustainable, and ethical in reaching financial goals. She has a practitioner mindset, because, before entering academia, she was a banker and a manager for 15 years at JP Morgan, Société Générale and Barclays. She holds a PhD in Management from Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) and a MSc in Organizational Behaviour from the London School of Economics, she received her BA with honours in Political Science and Economics from Università Di Padova, Italy - where she wrote her dissertation on the economy of the Palestinian Occupied Territories.