Oct
05
2008
Until my family and I landed in New Jersey in August 2007, I had lost
touch with what it meant to be a US citizen. I had arrived in Jersey
City in 1969 as a 14 year old boy with my family who immigrated from
the Palestinian areas. In 1980 after college and a few jobs, I
returned to east Jerusalem and worked in journalism since. Since then,
I have not spent any extended period in the US. My appointment as a
Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton brought my own family and
I back to New Jersey. Although many of my family members couldn’t
vote, we hungrily consumed the US presidential elections, religiously
following the primary season with all its ups and downs.
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Jun
06
2008
It ended rather quickly. After punching in the grades on the special peoplesoft web site of the university my last formal activity at Princeton University was over. In the span of this year I taught upper class students a seminar entitled New Media in the Arab world, ran a freshman seminar class entitled Authentic Arab Voice and taught helped a few more upper class with their Arabic in the Arabic Media III class.
My journey to Princeton started years ago when NY Times reporter Chris Hedges urged me to apply for a Ferris Journalism Professorship. He encouraged me again when I met him three years ago at a human rights event in Italy , I finally decided to apply and sure enough I was chosen one of the 2007 Ferris.
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Jun
01
2008
published in the Huffington post
The Kippa, the Keffiya, Green and Orange
by Daoud Kuttab
Upon arriving for my freshman orientation at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania back in 1971, I was asked to wear a cardboard beanie. Having just come from Jerusalem I was rather upset at having to wear that head covering. The beanie that I was given looked very much like the kippa that Jewish settlers wear in the occupied Palestinian territories. I later discovered that there was no connection between the two head coverings. Since then I have seen that small rounded item put on the head on different individuals include the Catholic Pope and the Anglican Bishop.
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Sep
03
2007
Daoud Kuttab: Journalism Professor at Princeton
Veteran Arab journalist Daoud Kuttab left for the US August 9th to take up a teaching post at Princeton University.
Kuttab is the first Arab to ever win the prestigious Ferris Journalism Â
Professorship. He plans to teach a course on new media in the Arab world.
 Kuttab who writes in local and regional newspapers is the director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University and the founder of the Arab world’s first internet radio AmmanNet.
Jul
05
2007
Pardon is not  part of the Israeli lexicon?
By Daoud Kuttab
I still remember that hot day in the summer of 1994 when Jordan’s King Hussein signed the peace treaty with
Israel’s Yitshaq Rabin in Wadi Araba. I had gone down to cover the event and remember Buthina Duqmaq of the Mandella Institute for political prisoners reminding me that a number of Jordanian prisoners were still held in Israeli jails even though the two countries were signing a peace agreement.
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Jun
11
2007
By Daoud Kuttab
Both my parents were away from home on the eve of the June 1967 war and I was home alone with my younger siblings. At the time we were living near in a rented house next to Rachel’s Tomb just outside Bethlehem. Jordanian soldiers were posted near our home and I remember how my older brother Jonathan came running and screaming as I was sitting leisurely in the balcony of our home. Go inside, don’t you hear the sirens, I had thought they were test sirens. Once we went he suggested that we go downstairs where it would be safer, we took a board game and a transistor radio which was broadcasting the ‘heroic’ news from Sawt al Arab that the Egyptians were bringing downs tens of Israeli planes. Continue Reading »
Aug
03
2006
The following appeared in the New York Times TimesSelect section under the heading in the Line of Fire
August 2, 2006, 9:31 pm
By Daoud Kuttab, Ramallah, West Bank
For about three hours on Tuesday, I was really concerned. My sister Grace and her four children were traveling from Jordan to see relatives in the West Bank using the northern Jordan-Israel crossing point. The source of my concern was a news item I saw on TV saying that a Hezbollah rocket had fallen on Bisan in northern Israel. Bisan, literally on the other side of the border crossing that the family was about to reach, is now called Beit Shean and is 100 percent inhabited by Israelis. I was debating whether to ask them to turn back or or let them take their chances. When I finally called Grace on her cellphone, she told me that they had almost reached the crossing point. I told her what was happening. She said that they wanted to continue on. I then advised her that once they crossed into Israel, they should drive quickly south towards Jerusalem. I never expected her be denied entry by the Israelis for a completely different reason.
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Nov
10
2005
By Daoud Kuttab
The problem in our household after the triple bombing in Amman was how to tell our six year old daughter, Dina. The urgency of the problem was because the Jordanian government had called for a day of mourning the following day and schools were expected to be closed. Because she is so inquisitive we knew that once we tell Dina there was no school in the morning she will want to know why.
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My wife Salam was also worried about Dina’s reaction because every night as she puts her to sleep they pray, among other things, for the security of the city and the country. The night before I had been made responsible for putting her to sleep and the security of the city was part of her nightly prayer routine. Continue Reading »