Ramallah, 01/04/2024—The A.M. Qattan Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Najwa Al-Qattan as the new Chair of the Board of Trustees as of 1 April 2024. At the same time, the Foundation and the Board of Trustees wish to express their deepest gratitude to Omar Al-Qattan, the outgoing Chair, for his decade-long unparalleled leadership and tireless work in the service of culture and education in Palestine and the Arab world, and for his determination to champion critical thinking, creativity and ingenuity, with a special focus on children, educators and young artists. The outgoing Chair expressed his deepest gratitude to the many brilliant and creative colleagues and partners with whom he had the privilege to serve and reiterated his and the Al-Qattan family’s unfailing commitment to the Foundation and its teams, particularly those brave colleagues who remain in the Gaza Strip.
Najwa al-Qattan is emerita professor of Middle Eastern history, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She holds a B.A. in philosophy from the American University of Beirut, an M.A. in philosophy from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University. She is the recipient of awards and grants from SSRC, NEH, the Middle East Studies Association and the Turkish Studies Association. She has published on the Ottoman Muslim court in Damascus and Beirut, the Jews and Christians of the Ottoman Empire and Lebanon in the First World War in several books and journals, including IJMES and CSSH. She has served on numerous scholarship and grants committees, including at MESA, TSA and PARC. From 2010 to 2017, she also served as the President of PARC’s Board of Directors.
Internationally, this new appointment comes at a critical time in Palestinian history during the Palestinian struggle for self-determination in the face of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza. The Foundation’s core commitment and mission is to continuously reinvent itself; to consistently and creatively support the development of the culture and education sectors; to dynamically interact with and influence developments locally, regionally and internationally; and to empower lifelong learning, critical thinking, creativity and excellence. Working side by side with its partners, the Foundation will thus strive to safeguard the wellbeing, freedom and independence of the Palestinian people in every aspect of its work in the coming years.