Lisa Hajjar
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lisahajjar.bsky.social
Lisa Hajjar
@lisahajjar.bsky.social

Sociologist of law and conflict. I write about torture, war crimes, military courts and occupations. Ask me about Guantánamo.

Lisa Hajjar is an American sociologist. She is a professor and department chair at the University of California, Santa Barbara sociology department, and a co-editor and contributor at the online magazine Jadaliyya. .. more

Political science 56%
Sociology 25%
Pinned
My book covers Guantánamo as the bipartisan forever debacle, domestic and transnational battles over torture, how the executive excess of our present was institutionalized, and much more.
On sale now 30% off with code HOLIDAY30.

www.ucpress.edu/books/the-wa...
The War in Court by Lisa Hajjar - Paper
Scholarship is a powerful tool for changing how people think, plan, and govern. By giving voice to bright minds and bold ideas, we seek to foster understanding and drive progressive change.
www.ucpress.edu

Cheney should have died in a maximum security prison because torture is a gross crime. He spawned the US torture program that spawned the extrajudicial execution program. He was spared the fate he deserved because Obama decided to "look forward, not backward." Trump is what looking forward enabled.

We live in the dystopian world Dick Cheney made. Alligator Alcatraz, masked ICE agents disappearing brown people, blowing up random boats of people declared "enemy combatants" in a "war" with no borders, unfettered presidential power. Cheney created the lawless executive power Trump now exploits.

Over 3 million life-years lost in Gaza - The Lancet www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
Sammy Zahran and Ghassan Abu-Sittah found that 60,199 recorded deaths translated to an average of 51 years of life lost each—most of them civilians, including over 1 million years among children under 15.
Over 3 million life-years lost in Gaza
On July 31, 2025, the Palestinian Ministry of Health (PMH) in Gaza released a list of named people directly killed in Gaza since Oct 7, 2023.1 The list had 60 199 decedents with their reported age, se...
www.thelancet.com

Reposted by Lisa Hajjar

Reposted by Lisa Hajjar

Gift link

The Peril of a White House That Flaunts Its Indifference to the Law

The White House has made no legal argument explaining its bald claim that the president has wartime power to summarily kill people suspected of smuggling drugs.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/u...
The Peril of a White House That Flaunts Its Indifference to the Law
www.nytimes.com
My team at the Crowd Counting Consortium (@djpressman.bsky.social, Hammam, & Chris Shay) has a new piece, whose title speaks for itself. A 🧵 with some key descriptive takeaways:
The resistance reaches into Trump country
As organizers for No Kings 2 seek historic turnout on Oct. 18, the broader pro-democracy movement has already broken new ground.
wagingnonviolence.org

Exceptionally good analysis by Mouin Rabbani.

open.substack.com/pub/mouinrab...
Hamas Responds to Trump
The Palestinian movement appears to have, for the moment, successfully thrown the ball back into the US-Israeli court.
open.substack.com

Reposted by Lisa Hajjar

Reposted by Lisa Hajjar

“By cloaking naked power in the trappings of the law, the Trump administration, like the Bush administration before it, channels objections to its behavior into sterile disputes about who has the best lawyers—a dispute that no one really expects to resolve.”

Reposted by Lisa Hajjar

Reposted by Lisa Hajjar

Reposted by Lisa Hajjar

Do you ever write titles of articles or books in American English? For the love of grammar, "is" is a verb and ALL verbs are capitalized in titles. DO NOT LOWER CASE "IS" IN TITLES!!!!!!

Reposted by Lisa Hajjar

Farmers bankrupt, firefighters raided, allies betrayed, the #CDC emptied and #Trump still finds time to order himself a Navy boat parade. #ukraine #Gaza #uspolitics
open.substack.com/pub/marygedd...
The Self-Sabotage Doctrine
Trump’s America torches its farmers, raids its firefighters, abandons its allies, and still finds time for a Navy boat parade.
open.substack.com
What is it called when government owns the means of production again?

Reposted by Lisa Hajjar

Omar Bartov and I discuss the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land with Jonathan Hafetz on his podcast Law on Film. It speaks volumes about anti-Palestinian racism that it is impossible to stream or buy the film in the United States.
www.buzzsprout.com/2073468/epis...
No Other Land (2024) (Palestinian-Israeli) (Guests: Omer Bartov & Lisa Hajjar) - Law on Film
No Other Land (2024) is the Oscar-winning documentary that shows the brutal destruction of a Palestinian community in the occupied West Bank. Recorded between 2019 to 2023, the film tells the story of...
www.buzzsprout.com

Reposted by Lisa Hajjar

Got a project in mind for our special issue on ethnic studies+student activism? Apply to our workshop, Oct 11, to get feedback on your ideas and connect with others on the dreams and struggles embedded in this work. Space is limited; apply soon!

Engineering Destruction conference July 29 - 31. Here is the program schedule and Zoom link. All panels will be streamed with simultaneous translation in Arabic, English, and Spanish.
Please share!
www.jadaliyya.com/Details/46811
Engineering Destruction: Militarization and the War Economy
The conference sheds light on militarization and its rapid expansion and global impact, particularly in light of the brutal genocide perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people, which has ext...
www.jadaliyya.com
This is an executive order that lays the groundwork for sending homeless people and people with mental illness to concentration camps to be "civilly committed." It was never going to stop with immigrants.

This is horrifying beyond words.

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...
Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose and
www.whitehouse.gov

The conference will be hybrid at Birzeit and through Zoom, with simultaneous interpretation available in Arabic, English, and Spanish.

Engineering Destruction: Militarization and the War Economy

29-31 July online and at Birzeit

This conference is organized by the Ibrahim Abu Lughod Institute of International Studies, Arab Council for the Social Sciences, Security in Context, and the National Pedagogical University in Colombia

Scholars fear that the the capitulation of universities is hurting an entire field of study at the time when it’s most needed. Thea Abu El-Haj warned that the special issue’s cancellation also sets a dangerous precedent...“it’s not going to stop with Palestine.”

www.theguardian.com/education/20...
Revealed: Harvard publisher cancels entire journal issue on Palestine shortly before publication
As Harvard’s feud with Trump escalated, so did tensions over an ‘education and Palestine’ issue of a prestigious journal. Scholars blame the ‘Palestine exception’ to academic freedom
www.theguardian.com

Afeef Nessouli and Steven Thrasher won a Pulitzer Global Reporting Grant to write a series of stories for the Intercept. This is their first story with reporting by Afeef who was the only American journalist in Gaza--he spent nine weeks there as a medical volunteer.

theintercept.com/2025/07/21/i...
Our Reporter Got Into Gaza. He Witnessed a Famine of Israel’s Making.
The people of Gaza face starvation under the joint U.S.-Israeli food distribution system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
theintercept.com