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Please join us for a conversation with Dr. Michael Fakhri, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, alongside Palestinian food activists, seed savers, and chefs in an evening focused on food sovereignty and dignity in Palestine.
The event will begin with an overview of Dr. Fakhri’s 2024 UN report “Starvation and the right to food, with an emphasis on the Palestinian people’s food sovereignty,” followed by a discussion with Reem Assil, award-winning Palestinian-Syrian speaker and chef; Laila El-Haddad, journalist and co-author of the critically acclaimed “The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey;” and Vivien Sansour, Founder and Director of The Palestine Heirloom Seed Library. The discussion will be co-moderated by Dr. Fakhri and Dr. Kristin Reynolds, Chair of Food Studies at The New School, with a welcome by Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Professor of International Affairs at The New School.
Small, nourishing bites will be provided to celebrate the steadfastness of Palestinian cuisine and culture, connected to themes of the report.
Sponsored by the Food Studies Program at the Bachelor's Program for Adults and Transfer Students, the Food and Social Justice Action Research Lab, the Julien J. Studley Graduate Program in International Affairs, Tishman Environment and Design Center, Global Studies Program at The New School, the Palestine Land Studies Center at the American University of Beirut, and Hospitality for Humanity.
The New School’s Bachelor's Program for Adults and Transfer Students reflects the goal of lifelong higher learning articulated by the founders of The New School in 1919. In 1943, The New School began offering a bachelor's degree program for adults to address the educational needs of returning WWII veterans. Today, we continue to dedicate ourselves to that mission in a program that offers exceptional services and an innovative curriculum to nearly 1,000 adult students in New York City and online.
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Reem Assil is a Palestinian-Syrian chef and activist, based in Oakland, CA, working at the intersection of food, community, and social justice. She is the founder of nationally-acclaimed Reem’s California, an Arab bakery and restaurant that builds community across cultures and experiences through the warmth of Arab bread and hospitality. Reem has garnered an array of top accolades in the culinary world, including James Beard finalist for Outstanding Chef (2022) back to back semifinalist for Best Chef: West (2018-19). Before dedicating herself to a culinary career, Reem spent over a decade as a community and labor organizer, building leadership to have a voice in their jobs and their neighborhoods. Reem is the author of IACP award-winning cookbook Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora (2022).
Laila El-Haddad is a Palestinian journalist, culinary ethnographer and leading voice on the situation in Gaza. She is the co-author of The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey and the co-editor of the anthology Gaza Unsilenced with the late Dr. Refaat El-Areer. During her time as a reporter in Gaza between 2003 to 2007, she covered pivotal events such as the Israeli Disengagement and the Palestinian elections and authored a blog about navigating life as a Palestinian mother and journalist. A graduate of Duke University and the Harvard Kennedy School with a focus on political science and public policy, her work centers around the intersections of food and politics in the Palestinian context, with a focus on Gaza. Her groundbreaking appearance on CNN's "Parts Unknown" with Anthony Bourdain in 2013 highlighted Gaza with humanity and nuance. Most recently, El-Haddad was a plaintiff in the lawsuit against President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Austin for their failure to prevent and complicity in Israel’s unfolding genocide against her family and the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza.
Vivien Sansour is an artist and researcher. She founded the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library in 2014 where she works with farmers in Palestine and around the world on issues relating to food sovereignty and biocultural conservation. She created The Traveling Kitchen, a social engagement project aimed at bringing to the forefront conversations about climate crisis, food politics, and the imagining of new worlds. Her work has been showcased in venues such as The Chicago Architecture Biennale, Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Venice Art Biennale. She is former Peace and Conflict Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, and Distinguished Artistic Fellow at Bard College in New York.
Kristin Reynolds is Chair and Associate Professor of Food Studies; and Founding Director of the Food and Social Justice Action Research Lab at The New School. Her work focuses on power dynamics affecting social justice in the global food system, and supporting racial and economic equity through action research and collaborations with community-based groups.
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr is a Professor of International Affairs at The New School. Her teaching and research have focused on human rights and development, global health, and global goal setting and governance by indicators. From 1995 to 2004, she was lead author and director of the UNDP Human Development Reports. Her recent publications include: Millennium Development Goals: Ideas, Interests and Influence (Routledge 2017); Fulfilling Social and Economic Rights (with T. Lawson-Remer and S. Randolph, Oxford 2015), winner of the American Political Science Association’s 2016 Best Book in Human Rights Scholarship and the 2019 Grawemeyer Prize for Ideas to Improve the World Order.
Fukuda-Parr contributes actively to international policy and research processes. She is Chair of the UN Committee on Development Policy,Chair of the Boards of Knowledge Ecology International, Co-Director of the Collective on the Political Determinants of Health at the University of Oslo, and Distinguished Fellow at the JICA Research Institute, Tokyo.
