Sa'ed Atshan

Sa'ed Atshan (; born 1984) is a Palestinian-American anthropologist and professor at Swarthmore College.

Early life and education Atshan is Palestinian-American. He was born in the United States and identifies as Quaker.

In 2002, Atshan moved to the United States to attend Swarthmore College for his undergraduate degree, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 2006. He then completed graduate studies in multiple fields at Harvard University, where he earned a Master of Public Policy (M.P.P.) from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2008, a Master of Arts in social anthropology in 2010, and a joint Ph.D. in both anthropology and Middle Eastern studies with a specialization in medical anthropology under psychiatrist Arthur Kleinman in 2013. He completed postdoctoral research as a fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies.

Activism In the late 2000s, Atshan began volunteering with the Ramallah Friends School as a college counselor and mentor for students in their senior year. However, as of 2018, Atshan has never been an active member of the BDS movement. Two of the school's teachers, who invited Atshan on behalf of the school's Peace and Equality in Palestine club, were suspended. Atshan's planned talk was titled "On Being Queer and Palestinian in East Jerusalem", as part of the museum's exhibit on Jerusalem.

Career Atshan is currently an associate professor of peace and conflict studies and anthropology and the Chair of the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College, a historically Quaker private liberal arts college near Philadelphia.

During the 2020–2021 academic year, Atshan was a visiting assistant professor of anthropology and senior research scholar in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Atshan has also received awards such as The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, the Young Global Leader Award from the Council for the United States and Italy, the Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace, and he has been inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College.

Personal life Atshan is a Quaker and a pacifist;

Atshan, Saʼed; Galor, Katharina; Stuckrad, Kocku von (2021). Israelis, Palästinenser und Deutsche in Berlin: Geschichten einer komplexen Beziehung(1 ed.). Boston: De Gruyter. Atshan, Sa'ed; Galor, Katharina, eds. (2022). Reel gender: Palestinian and Israeli cinema. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Atshan, Sa'ed (2026). In a Land of Aid: Essays on the Palestinian Condition. Stanford University Press. . .