From Disability Justice to Decolonization: Delayed-Death, Disabled Life, and Genocide in Gaza

Anthropologist Samee Sulaiman examines mass disablement in Gaza as a deliberate technology of colonial elimination, tracing how bombardment, siege, displacement, and destruction of healthcare infrastructure produce debility and premature death. Drawing on Palestinian testimony, disability justice scholarship, and documentation of the assault on Gaza, Sulaiman argues that disability cannot be separated from the political conditions that continually produce mass injury.

Sulaiman is a Lebanese-Palestinian anthropologist whose research centers disability, political violence, and social movements across the Levant. He completed his PhD at Brown University in 2023 and held a postdoctoral position at Yale's Council on Middle East Studies before joining Columbia as the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Fellow. His ethnographic work with Lebanese and Palestinian disability activists explores how disability justice, decolonization, and liberation are inseparable from one another.

The talk happens in a classroom setting at Columbia's Anthropology Department in Morningside Heights. Advanced registration is required by Thursday, November 5—use the Google form linked on the event page. All attendees, including Columbia and Barnard ID holders, must register.