On September 10-11, San Francisco State University’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED) department hosted a two-day conference in Lebanon that included lectures from Palestinian activists, journalists, and individuals connected to U.S. designated terrorist groups.
Titled “Memorializing the Sabra & Shatila Massacre: Bearing Witness, Resilience, & Accountability,” the conference was organized by SFSU professor and AMED department director Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi to commemorate the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre.
Among the speakers was Salah Salah, a founding member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), his wife Samira Salah, and another PFLP member, Leila Khaled, who was convicted of hijacking airplanes and holding passengers hostage.
PFLP, a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary group, is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States.
Other speakers included Sami Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor who pleaded guilty to assisting Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as two Palestinian-Lebanese resistance fighters, Kifah Afifi and Anwar Yassine.
According to SFSU media relations specialist Kent Bravo, speaking to The Jerusalem Post, the weekend conference was “neither sponsored nor authorized by SF State, and we have contacted organizers to notify them of unauthorized use of the SF State name.”
Campus Reform reached out to AMED and SFSU for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
