Gauri Mangala

The festival panel noticed a shift in this year’s collection of applications. While overall application numbers have dwindled, a larger proportion featured strong political themes and messages.

By Gawhara Abou-eid

The Hebron facility had long played a crucial role in preserving heirloom seed varieties critical to Palestinian foodways and climate resilience. With preservation in the West Bank increasingly endangered, diaspora-based efforts have stepped in to continue the work.

By Ragad Ahmad

When universities can redefine academic freedom to exclude certain perspectives, when they can retroactively criminalize respected ideas and abandon institutional principles in the face of external pressures, then no field of knowledge remains safe.

By Lauren Abunassar

Community gatherings like “Acts of Resistance” become a way to reject the notion that our grief or our desires for freedom and witness are singular—an understanding that is a key piece of reclaiming agency.

By Joseph Fahim

Criticism is imperative not only for understanding Arab culture, but for confronting the mediocrity that can arise from silencing critical perspectives.

By Elissa Odeh

Wahab still remembers his first stand-up show in Ferndale, Michigan: “They gave me five minutes, so I wrote three minutes of jokes and figured the other two would be filled with laughter,” he said. “Let’s just say it didn’t quite work out that way.”