In this episode of “Occupied Thoughts,” FMEP’s Dr. Sarah Anne Minkin talks to Dr. Yara Asi, Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida in the School of Global Health Management and Informatics, and one of FMEP’s 2023-2024 Palestinian Non-Resident Fellows. Dr. Asi discusses her background, explains why and how the public health lens is so uniquely important to understanding Palestinians’ lives and experiences of oppression, and analyzes this moment in time and history for Palestinians.
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Recorded February 21, 2023
Dr. Yara M. Asi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida in the School of Global Health Management and Informatics and a Visiting Scholar at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University in her capacity as Co-Director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights. She is also a Non-resident Fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, a 2020-2021 Fulbright US Scholar to the West Bank, and the co-chair of the Palestine Health Justice Working Group in the American Public Health Association. She previously served as the Fall 2021 US Fellow at Al Shabaka Palestinian Policy Network. Her research agenda focuses on global health, human rights, and development in fragile populations. She has also worked with Amnesty International USA and the Palestinian American Research Center on policy and outreach issues. She has presented at multiple national and international conferences on topics related to global health, food security, health informatics, and women in healthcare, and has published extensively on health and well-being in fragile and conflict-affected populations in journal articles and book chapters. She has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, +972 Magazine, The New Arab, and The Conversation, and has been featured on Al Jazeera, The World, and other outlets. Her forthcoming book with Johns Hopkins University Press will examine war as a public health crisis.
Sarah Anne Minkin, PhD, is the Director of Programs & Partnerships. She is an expert on the intersection between Israeli civil society and Palestinian civil rights and human rights advocacy as well as the ways that American Jews approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She leads FMEP’s programming, works to deepen FMEP’s relationships with existing and potential grantees, and builds relationships with new partners in the philanthropic community. A graduate of Yale University, Sarah Anne earned her doctorate at the University of California-Berkeley and is an affiliated faculty member at UC-Berkeley’s Center for Right-Wing Studies.
Resources:
See these recent publications by Dr. Yasi:
- As a Researcher, I Study the Health of Palestinians. It’s Time to Pay Attention., New York Times, December 29, 2022
- How my family came face to face with settler violence on the road to Nablus, +972 Magazine, October 20, 2022
- Israel restricting medical permits for Palestinians is a mechanism of oppression, The New Arab, February 24, 2023
Follow Dr. Yasi on Twitter: @Yara_M_Asi