Sara Roy
Encyclopedia
Sara Roy is an American
political economist
and scholar. She is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University
.
Roy's research and over 100 publications focus on the economy of Gaza
and more recently on the Palestinian Islamic movement. Reviewing her 2007 Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, Bruce Lawrence
writes that "Roy is the leading researcher and most widely respected academic authority on Gaza today." She has also studied Palestinian politics and the broader Israeli–Palestinian conflict
.
from Harvard University
's Graduate School of Education
in 1988.
Roy spent time doing dissertation fieldwork in Israel
and in the Gaza Strip
as a research assistant to the third West Bank
Data Base Project. This was a non-official survey led by Meron Benvenisti
, whose goal was to examine the impact of Israel's national unity coalition government on the West Bank and to a lesser extent Gaza
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19860601fabook10977/meron-benvenisti/conflicts-and-contradictions.html Roy prepared a background paper about the Gaza Strip for the Project in 1986 http://books.google.com/books/harvard?id=2g0Ghw6RK_4C&pgis=1, before submitting, in 1988, her doctoral thesis entitled Development under occupation: a study of United States government economic development assistance to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 1975-1985.http://lms01.harvard.edu/F/7EJYI6U1QVN9YV5PAXLJIT5IA57T78E8Q99H2CBXKG4PXGQJC4-46663?func=full-set-set&set_number=680825&set_entry=000004&format=999
Roy is also the author of The Gaza Strip Survey (1986) and The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De‐development (1995, 2001), now in its second edition with a third edition forthcoming. She is the editor of The Economics of Middle East Peace: A Reassessment (1999). She is completing Between Extremism and Civism: Political Islam in Palestine (Princeton University Press, forthcoming in 2010).
Of The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De‐development, Meron Benvenisti
, Former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, wrote, "Sara Roy's pioneering research... gives the lie to pretenses that Gaza's conditions suddenly arose out of thin air."
Of Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, Edward Said
, the influential cultural critic and author, wrote, "The special thing about Sara Roy's writing is its combination of very high quality research - in this no one matches her - with an equally high level of personal integrity and commitment."
Roy's work has appeared in the Journal of Palestine Studies
, Current History
, Middle East Journal
, Middle East Policy
, International Journal of Middle East Studies
, The Beirut Review, American Political Science Review
, Critique
, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Chicago Journal of International Law
, Index on Censorship
, La Vanguardia
, Le Monde Diplomatique
and the London Review of Books
, as well as in The Lancet
.
Most recently, she authored the piece, "Gaza: Treading on Shards," in The Nation
magazine.
Roy has served on the Advisory Boards of American Near East Refugee Aid
and the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University
and on the Board of Directors of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program - U.S. branch.
In addition to her academic work, Roy has served as a consultant to international organizations, the U.S. government, human rights organizations, private voluntary organizations, and private business groups working in the Middle East.
at Baylor University
.http://www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org/node/1320 Roy had been invited by founding director Marc H. Ellis
to connect her family's experience in the Holocaust to her academic work on the Palestinian people.
Roy explained that both her parents had survived the Holocaust, but that 100 members of her extended family, who had resided in the Jewish shtetl
s of Poland
, had been killed. Her father, Abraham, was one of the two known survivors of the Chelmno extermination camp
, while her mother, Taube, survived Halbstadt
(Gross Rosen
) and Auschwitz
. Having visited Israel many times when she was growing up, she added, "[i]t was perhaps inevitable that I would follow a path that would lead me to the Arab-Israeli issue", providing several examples of parallels between Nazi treatment of Jews and Israeli soldiers' treatment of Palestinians which, in her opinion, "were absolutely equivalent in principle, intent, and impact: to humiliate and dehumanize."
She further developed these themes in the 2008 Edward Said
Memorial Lecture at Adelaide University, in which she commented that "Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians is not the moral equivalent of the Nazi genocide
of the Jews. It does not have to be. The fact that it is not in no way tempers the brutality of the repression, which has become frighteningly normal. Occupation is about the domination and dispossession of one people by another. It is about the destruction of
their property and the destruction of their soul. At its core, occupation aims to deny Palestinians their humanity by denying them the right to determine their existence, to live normal lives in their own homes. And just as there is no moral equivalence
or symmetry between the Holocaust and the occupation, so there is no moral equivalence or symmetry between the occupier and the occupied, no matter how much we as Jews regard ourselves as victims".
Roy was born and raised in West Hartford, where she attended Hall High School (Connecticut)
. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College
. She currently resides in Boston
, Massachusetts
.
’s Fletcher Forum on World Affairs
. After the editor-in-chief accepted the piece, he wrote to inform Roy that the article had been reviewed for "objectivity," and that "all reviewers found the piece one-sided" and then rejected it, but apologized "for the way in which this process was carried out." Middle East Policy
later published the review with Roy's note on the affair which described the rejection as a "blatant... case of censorship
."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
political economist
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
and scholar. She is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
.
Roy's research and over 100 publications focus on the economy of Gaza
Economy of Gaza
The Economy of Gaza, once mostly dependent on small-scale industries and agriculture, is now almost entirely dependent on foreign aid. Foreign aid is the "main driver" of economic growth in the Palestinian territories.-19th century:...
and more recently on the Palestinian Islamic movement. Reviewing her 2007 Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, Bruce Lawrence
Bruce Lawrence
Bruce B. Lawrence is the Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor of Religion at Duke University.-Biography:A graduate of Fay School and Princeton University, with a Master of Divinity from Episcopal Divinity School , he earned his doctorate at Yale University in History of Religions...
writes that "Roy is the leading researcher and most widely respected academic authority on Gaza today." She has also studied Palestinian politics and the broader Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The conflict is wide-ranging, and the term is also used in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Jewish and Zionist yishuv and the Arab population living in Palestine under Ottoman or...
.
Career
Sara M. Roy earned an Ed.D. with a specialization in International DevelopmentInternational development
International development or global development is a concept that lacks a universally accepted definition, but it is most used in a holistic and multi-disciplinary context of human development — the development of greater quality of life for humans...
from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
's Graduate School of Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education
The Harvard Graduate School of Education is one of the graduate schools of Harvard University, and is one of the top schools of education in the United States. It was founded in 1920, the same year it invented the Ed.D...
in 1988.
Roy spent time doing dissertation fieldwork in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
and in the Gaza Strip
Gaza Strip
thumb|Gaza city skylineThe Gaza Strip lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about long, and between 6 and 12 kilometres wide, with a total area of...
as a research assistant to the third West Bank
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
Data Base Project. This was a non-official survey led by Meron Benvenisti
Meron Benvenisti
Meron Benvenisti is an Israeli political scientist who was Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem under Teddy Kollek from 1971 to 1978, during which he administered East Jerusalem and served as Jerusalem's Chief Planning Officer. He is a medieval scholar and published books and maps on the Crusader period in...
, whose goal was to examine the impact of Israel's national unity coalition government on the West Bank and to a lesser extent Gaza
Gaza
Gaza , also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 450,000, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories.Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC,...
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19860601fabook10977/meron-benvenisti/conflicts-and-contradictions.html Roy prepared a background paper about the Gaza Strip for the Project in 1986 http://books.google.com/books/harvard?id=2g0Ghw6RK_4C&pgis=1, before submitting, in 1988, her doctoral thesis entitled Development under occupation: a study of United States government economic development assistance to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 1975-1985.http://lms01.harvard.edu/F/7EJYI6U1QVN9YV5PAXLJIT5IA57T78E8Q99H2CBXKG4PXGQJC4-46663?func=full-set-set&set_number=680825&set_entry=000004&format=999
Roy is also the author of The Gaza Strip Survey (1986) and The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De‐development (1995, 2001), now in its second edition with a third edition forthcoming. She is the editor of The Economics of Middle East Peace: A Reassessment (1999). She is completing Between Extremism and Civism: Political Islam in Palestine (Princeton University Press, forthcoming in 2010).
Of The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De‐development, Meron Benvenisti
Meron Benvenisti
Meron Benvenisti is an Israeli political scientist who was Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem under Teddy Kollek from 1971 to 1978, during which he administered East Jerusalem and served as Jerusalem's Chief Planning Officer. He is a medieval scholar and published books and maps on the Crusader period in...
, Former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, wrote, "Sara Roy's pioneering research... gives the lie to pretenses that Gaza's conditions suddenly arose out of thin air."
Of Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
, the influential cultural critic and author, wrote, "The special thing about Sara Roy's writing is its combination of very high quality research - in this no one matches her - with an equally high level of personal integrity and commitment."
Roy's work has appeared in the Journal of Palestine Studies
Journal of Palestine Studies
The Journal of Palestine Studies is an academic journal established in 1971. It is published and distributed by University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine Studies. The current editor is Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University....
, Current History
Current History
Current History is the oldest United States-based publication devoted exclusively to contemporary world affairs. The magazine was founded in 1914 by George Washington Ochs Oakes, brother of New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs, in order to provide detailed coverage of World War I. Current History...
, Middle East Journal
Middle East Journal
The Middle East Journal is published by the Washington, D.C.-based Middle East Institute. It was first published in 1947, making it the oldest U.S. peer-reviewed publication on the modern Middle East...
, Middle East Policy
Middle East Policy
Middle East Policy is an academic peer-reviewed journal on the Middle East region in the field of foreign policy founded in 1982, published quarterly by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Middle East Policy Council...
, International Journal of Middle East Studies
International Journal of Middle East Studies
The International Journal of Middle East Studies is a scholarly journal published by the Middle East Studies Association of North America , a learned society.-See also:* Edinburgh Middle East Report* Middle East Research and Information Project...
, The Beirut Review, American Political Science Review
American Political Science Review
The American Political Science Review is the flagship publication of the American Political Science Association and is the most prestigious journal in political science according to the ISI 2004 Journal Citation Report...
, Critique
Critique
Critique is a method of disciplined, systematic analysis of a written or oral discourse. Critique is commonly understood as fault finding and negative judgement, but it can also involve merit recognition, and in the philosophical tradition it also means a methodical practice of doubt...
, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Chicago Journal of International Law
Chicago Journal of International Law
The Chicago Journal of International Law is a semiannual, student-edited law review published by the University of Chicago Law School since spring 2000. CJIL contains articles covering issues of international law and policy....
, Index on Censorship
Index on Censorship
Index on Censorship is a campaigning publishing organisation for freedom of expression, which produces an award-winning quarterly magazine of the same name from London. The present chief executive of Index on Censorship, since 2008, is the author, broadcaster and commentator John Kampfner, former...
, La Vanguardia
La Vanguardia
La Vanguardia is Catalonia's leading daily newspaper as well as the fourth best-selling in Spain. It has its headquarters in Barcelona, Catalonia's largest city....
, Le Monde Diplomatique
Le Monde diplomatique
Le Monde diplomatique is a monthly newspaper offering analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first created mainly for a diplomatic audience as its name implies...
and the London Review of Books
London Review of Books
The London Review of Books is a fortnightly British magazine of literary and intellectual essays.-History:The LRB was founded in 1979, during the year-long lock-out at The Times, by publisher A...
, as well as in The Lancet
The Lancet
The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals...
.
Most recently, she authored the piece, "Gaza: Treading on Shards," in The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
magazine.
Roy has served on the Advisory Boards of American Near East Refugee Aid
American Near East Refugee Aid
The American Near East Refugee Aid is an American 5013 non-governmental organization that provides humanitarian and development aid to the Middle East, specifically, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Jordan...
and the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University
Baylor University
Baylor University is a private, Christian university located in Waco, Texas. Founded in 1845, Baylor is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.-History:...
and on the Board of Directors of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program - U.S. branch.
In addition to her academic work, Roy has served as a consultant to international organizations, the U.S. government, human rights organizations, private voluntary organizations, and private business groups working in the Middle East.
Biography
Roy stated that "the Holocaust has been the defining feature of my life" as part of the Second Annual Holocaust Remembrance Lecture, which she delivered to the Center for American and Jewish Studies (now Center for Jewish Studies) and the George W. Truett Theological SeminaryGeorge W. Truett Theological Seminary
George W. Truett Theological Seminary is a Baptist theological seminary in Waco, Texas. The seminary, named after Southern Baptist preacher George Washington Truett, was founded in 1993 as part of Baylor University.-History:...
at Baylor University
Baylor University
Baylor University is a private, Christian university located in Waco, Texas. Founded in 1845, Baylor is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.-History:...
.http://www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org/node/1320 Roy had been invited by founding director Marc H. Ellis
Marc H. Ellis
Marc H. Ellis is an American author, liberation theologian, and University Professor of Jewish Studies, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University.-Biography:...
to connect her family's experience in the Holocaust to her academic work on the Palestinian people.
Roy explained that both her parents had survived the Holocaust, but that 100 members of her extended family, who had resided in the Jewish shtetl
Shtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
s of Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, had been killed. Her father, Abraham, was one of the two known survivors of the Chelmno extermination camp
Chelmno extermination camp
Chełmno extermination camp, also known as the Kulmhof concentration camp, was a Nazi German extermination camp that was situated 50 kilometres from Łódź, near a small village called Chełmno nad Nerem . After annexation by Germany Kulmhof was included into Reichsgau Wartheland in 1939...
, while her mother, Taube, survived Halbstadt
Halbstadt
Halbstadt is German for 'half-city'. It may refer to:* Meziměstí, , a town in the Hradec Králové Region of the Czech Republic* Molotschna, , a Russian Mennonite settlement in Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine...
(Gross Rosen
Gross-Rosen concentration camp
KL Gross-Rosen was a German concentration camp, located in Gross-Rosen, Lower Silesia . It was located directly on the rail line between Jauer and Striegau .-The camp:...
) and Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
. Having visited Israel many times when she was growing up, she added, "[i]t was perhaps inevitable that I would follow a path that would lead me to the Arab-Israeli issue", providing several examples of parallels between Nazi treatment of Jews and Israeli soldiers' treatment of Palestinians which, in her opinion, "were absolutely equivalent in principle, intent, and impact: to humiliate and dehumanize."
She further developed these themes in the 2008 Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
Memorial Lecture at Adelaide University, in which she commented that "Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians is not the moral equivalent of the Nazi genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
of the Jews. It does not have to be. The fact that it is not in no way tempers the brutality of the repression, which has become frighteningly normal. Occupation is about the domination and dispossession of one people by another. It is about the destruction of
their property and the destruction of their soul. At its core, occupation aims to deny Palestinians their humanity by denying them the right to determine their existence, to live normal lives in their own homes. And just as there is no moral equivalence
Moral equivalence
Moral equivalence is a term used in political debate, usually to criticize any denial that a moral hierarchy can be assessed of two sides in a conflict, or in the actions or tactics of two sides...
or symmetry between the Holocaust and the occupation, so there is no moral equivalence or symmetry between the occupier and the occupied, no matter how much we as Jews regard ourselves as victims".
Roy was born and raised in West Hartford, where she attended Hall High School (Connecticut)
Hall High School (Connecticut)
William H. Hall High School, also known as Hall High School, is a four-year public high school located in West Hartford, Connecticut. The school colors are blue and white, and the mascot is the "Warrior." It is one of two public high schools in the West Hartford Public Schools, the other being...
. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
. She currently resides in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
.
Controversy
Roy drew public attention when a book review she had written of Mathew Levitt's book Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad was rejected by Tufts UniversityTufts University
Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...
’s Fletcher Forum on World Affairs
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University is the oldest school in the United States dedicated solely to graduate studies in international affairs. It is regarded as one of the world's foremost schools of international affairs. Every Fall, the school enrolls approximately 265...
. After the editor-in-chief accepted the piece, he wrote to inform Roy that the article had been reviewed for "objectivity," and that "all reviewers found the piece one-sided" and then rejected it, but apologized "for the way in which this process was carried out." Middle East Policy
Middle East Policy
Middle East Policy is an academic peer-reviewed journal on the Middle East region in the field of foreign policy founded in 1982, published quarterly by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Middle East Policy Council...
later published the review with Roy's note on the affair which described the rejection as a "blatant... case of censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
."
Publications
- The Gaza Strip Survey (1986)
- The Economics of Middle East Peace: A Reassessment (1999, editor)