Editors’ Note

As we write, encampments are springing up at universities around the world as students, staff, and faculty advocate for justice in Palestine. The special section we publish here on “Decolonizing Research/Politicizing Ethics” asks us to consider the role in and of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for the academy and the academic. Where does theory reside? What is the scholar's position with respect to their subject of study? This section comes at a critical juncture in our present; it informs a critical perspective on de-centering a western hegemony on theory-making and power-positioning. In their editors’ introduction, Mayssoun Sukarieh and Lila Abu-Lughod and invite us to think about the standards of academic research and to ponder the university's imbrication in erstwhile and continuing colonial projects. Abu-Lughod draws together the scholarship on Indigenous pasts and presents with that of MENA to illustrate the convergences of colonial erasures. Eight essays ranging...