About Us

Northeast Based. Nationally ENGAGED.

We are over 1,000 faculty, instructors, fellows, and research associates at colleges and universities across the New England region—comprising the US states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Together, we are Black, White, Native, Latine, Southwest Asian-North African, and Asian Americans, among other ethnicities and nationalities. We represent diverse intellectual and religious backgrounds, including but not limited to Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh faith traditions and secular humanistic principles. We teach, research, and publish in numerous disciplines and professions, from the humanities and social sciences to physical and life sciences; from law, business, and engineering, to health care, the arts, and government.

Across our diverse backgrounds and specializations, we believe scholarship is a form of public service and carries ethical and professional responsibilities to our subjects, the communities we work in, and the world around us. Those responsibilities include the advancement of just and peaceful resolutions to problems, based on facts, credible evidence, and informed dialogue; and opposing violence, bigotry, and dis/misinformation.

With these principles in mind, we came together in December 2023 to release an urgent open letter to our US Senators in the New England region concerning the ongoing crisis in Gaza, in Israel-Palestine more broadly, and the role of the United States in prolonging or ending the violence. In February 2024, we released a national open letter addressed to President Biden with scholars anywhere in the US invited to sign. This was followed by our April 15 Tax Day Statement, and most recently, our current National Statement to University Presidents concerning the ongoing campus protests across the United States.

We view these collaborative efforts as a vital exercise in engaged scholarship and educating the public on a matter of importance to all citizens and residents of the United States of America, regardless of geographic, ethnic, religious, or political background. 

Based in the Northeast but engaging educational communities and the public nationwide, New England Scholars Speak aspires to continue a long tradition in our region of generating some of the most important social and political reform movements in US history—from the American Revolution to abolition, and the founding of America’s oldest colleges to the desegregation of the Ivy League.

New England Scholars Speak is a strictly volunteer public service and educational initiative. We do not solicit or receive funds or remuneration of any kind for this work in the public interest.

Contributors

The following scholars contributed to the production of one or more of our letters to date. Working Group members are New England academics who volunteered for the research, writing, or review of our letters and/or assisted with technical, administrative, or public outreach activities. Advisory Council members are external scholars beyond our region consulted for their expertise in subjects relevant to one or more of our letters to date. Affiliations and titles below are stated for identification of scholars and their disciplines only. All Working Group and Advisory Council members have volunteered as individuals and not as representatives of the university, college, hospital, or academic unit for which they work, nor in the administrative positions which they serve.

Working Group

Faiz Ahmed, Joukowsky Family Distinguished Associate Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, Brown University

Aslı Bâli, Professor of Law, Yale Law School

Amahl Bishara, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Tufts University

Ryan D. Doerfler, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Beshara Doumani, Professor of History and Mahmoud Darwish Professor of Palestinian Studies, Brown University

Leila Farsakh, Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Boston

Katharina Galor, Hirschfeld Senior Lecturer in Judaic Studies, Brown University

Daisy Goodman, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College

Lara Jirmanus, Clinical Instructor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Michael D. Kennedy, Professor of Sociology and International and Public Affairs, Brown University

Emily Cleveland Manchanda, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine

Elias Muhanna, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and History, Brown University

Malak Rafla, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Part-Time, Harvard Medical School

Danya Reda, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Massachusetts School of Law

Helen C. Scott, Professor of English, University of Vermont

Robert Self, Mary Ann Lippitt Professor of American History, Brown University

Advisory Council

Cemil Aydin, Professor of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Peter Beinart, Professor of Journalism and Political Science, City University of New York

Laurie Brand, Professor Emerita of Political Science and International Relations and Middle East Studies, University of Southern California

Ilana Feldman, Professor of Anthropology, History, and International Affairs, George Washington University

Heather Ferguson, Associate Professor of Ottoman and Middle East History, Claremont McKenna College

Amy Hagopian, Professor Emeritus, Health Systems and Population Health, University of Washington

Charles Hirschkind, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley

Darryl Li, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences, University of Chicago and Associate Member, University of Chicago Law School

Zachary Lockman, Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and of History, New York University

Eve M. Troutt Powell, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania

Shira Robinson, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs, George Washington University

Laura Robson, Oliver-McCourtney Professor of History, Penn State University

Raz Segal, Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide, Stockton University

James Vernon, Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley

Max Weiss, Associate Professor of History and Associated Faculty in Comparative Literature, Princeton University

William Youmans, Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University

For queries addressed to our Working Group, please write to newenglandscholarsspeak@gmail.com. As with all contributors to New England Scholars Speak, Working Group and Advisory Council members serve on a volunteer basis in addition to their regular professional commitments and work hours. Thank you in advance for your patience as we tend to the administration of our site, our signatory forms, and our correspondence with the public within these constraints. If we are unable to respond to your query, we may share your communication with another signatory who is a constituent of your jurisdiction or better situated to address your query.