Hussein Ibish

Hussein Yusuf Kamal Ibish is a Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine. He was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1963. He has a Ph.D. in Comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is active in advocacy for Arab causes in the United States. He is a weekly columnist for NOW Lebanon. He describes himself as an agnostic from the Muslim-American community.

Background and education

Ibish comes from an academic background. His father, Yusuf Ibish, studied at Harvard University's Department of Government in the 1950s and was on the faculty of the American University of Beirut as a scholar of Islam. Hussein Ibish attended Emerson College, earning a bachelor of science degree in mass communications in 1986. He has a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Career

• Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine
• Executive Director of the Hala Salaam Maksoud Foundation for Arab-American Leadership 2004-2009
• Communications Director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), 1998–2004
• Vice-President of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom, 2001-2004
• Washington Correspondent, Daily Star, Beirut
• Teaching Assistant, African-American Studies Dept., UMass, Amherst. Afro-Am 236: History of the Civil Rights Movement, September 1996 - December 1997
• Editor, The Voice, Fall 1993 - Spring 1995; Spring 1997
• Graduate Intern, Bilingual Collegiate Program, UMass, Amherst, September 1992 - May 1993
• Founding member of the Progressive Muslim Union (later resigned)

Ibish started a blog in 2009.

Awards

Ibish has won three awards. In 2002, he received the "Arab-American of the Year" award from the Arab-American Community Center for Economic and Social Services in Ohio (AACCESS, Ohio). A year later, he was named "Best TV Spokesperson for the Arab Cause" by the New York Press. In 2004, Ibish received the Dedicated Service Award from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Publications

• What's Wrong with the One-State Agenda? Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal. American Task Force for Palestine (ATFP), 2009
• "Hate Crimes and Discrimination against Arab Americans 1998-2000". American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), 2001)
• "Hate Crimes and Discrimination Against Arab-Americans Sept. 11, 2001-Oct. 11, 2002" (ADC, 2003)
• "Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination against Arab Americans: 2003-2007" (ADC, 2008)
• "At the Constitution's Edge: Arab Americans and Civil Liberties in the United States" in States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons, Joy James, ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000
• "Anti-Arab Bias in American Policy and Discourse" in Race in 21st Century America, Curtis Stokes, Theresa Melendez, Genice Rhodes-Reed, eds. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001
• "Race and the War on Terror" in Race and Human Rights, Curtis Stokes, ed. Michigan State University Press, 2005
• "Symptoms of Alienation: How Arab and American Media View Each Other" in Arab Media in the Information Age. ECSSR, 2005
• "The Palestinian Right of Return" (ADC, 2001)
• "The Media and the New Intifada" in The New Intifada, Roane Carey, ed. Verso, 2001
• Editor, Principles and Pragmatism. ATFP, 2006

Ibish's op-ed columns have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Arab American News, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Newsday, Lexington (Kentucky) Herald Leader, San Diego Union-Tribune, Milwaukee Journal, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Washington Post, Detroit Free Press, Dallas Morning News, The Record, Sunday Gazette-Mail, Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle and The Nation.

As a speaker

Ibish has accepted a number of invitations for talks, lectures and debates at colleges and universities, including Yale Law School, Harvard Business School, Princeton, MIT, Tufts University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), The New School (formerly the New School for Social Research), North Carolina State University, University of California, Irvine and the University of Costa Rica.

Keynote presentations about race in 21st-century America were delivered at the third National Conference, Michigan State University (East Lansing – 2003) and the National Convention of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (2003). He also addressed the seventh annual National Latina/o Law Student Conference (Nuestro Deber: Our Duty to Empower Our Communities – 2003), and numerous Arab-American student conferences.

Ibish twice addressed the National Association of Attorneys General Annual Spring Meeting (in 2002 and 2004). In addition, he addressed the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, the Nixon Library and the Unity National Journalists of Color Conference (2004).

Charlie Rose interviewed him on stage at the Rising Tide Summit III (2000). Ibish was invited to participate in the first US-Islamic World Conference hosted by the Brookings Institute and the Qatari Foreign Ministry in Doha, Qatar (2004).

He was a panelist at the Nation Institute forum, Patriot Games: Civil Liberties After September 11 (moderated by Phil Donahue); panelists also included Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Molly Ivins, Nadine Strossen and Elaine Jones.

Ibish's presentations have been broadcast on C-Span television (including a National Press Club Newsmaker Press Conference, The Condition of Arab-Americans Post-September 11 on November 20, 2001); Newsmaker press conferences are by invitation of the Press Club itself.

External links

• IbishBlog official blog
• Profile at The American Task Force on Palestine
• Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talk I on YouTube by Leon Charney on The Leon Charney Report

• Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talk V on YouTube by Leon Charney on The Leon Charney Report

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Hussein Ibish at IMDb
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Interview and articles

• Q&A - Hussein Ibish by Judith LeBlanc (Colorlines)
• Ibish Responds to Daniel Pipes in New York Post
• Ibish vs. Jerry Falwell on CNN's Crossfire
• Arab-Americans after 9/11: Hussein Ibish (USA Today)
• What went wrong in Arab world? America, ask yourself (LA Times)
• The Israel Shamir Case
• The Shoney's Incident: Determine the Truth Behind False Alarm
• CNN CROSSFIRE - Israel Retaliates to Suicide Bombing by Invading Arafat Compound
• Ibish/Herschensohn Debate at Nixon Library Challenges Outdated Israeli Myths
• Media watchdog Ibish visits UM-D to speak against Iraq war
• Target Terrorism: Forcing Suspects to Talk (CNN CROSSFIRE)
• Obama's second term: two views on the Peace Process - view two, Fathom: For a better understanding of Israel and the region, 30 January 2013