Naseer Aruri

Naseer H. Aruri (Arabic: نصير عاروري‎‎, 7 January 1934 – 10 February 2015) was an internationally recognized scholar-activist and expert on Middle East politics, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and human rights. Aruri was Chancellor Professor (Emeritus) of Political Science, having served on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth from 1965-1998. In 1993, he was the recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences “Distinguished Research Award”. Aruri’s papers have been preserved and are on display at the Claire T. Carney Library Archives and Special Collections at UMASS-Dartmouth.

He was born in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine in 1934. His father was a high school principal in Jerusalem and he and his family split their time between Jerusalem and the West Bank village of Burham, where the family home still stands. Aruri emigrated to the United States in 1954 in order to pursue a college education. He arrived in Springfield, Massachusetts, where his brother, Said, was already a student at the American International College (AIC). He received his B.A. in History from AIC and his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. While a student at AIC, he was "adopted" by the sizeable Lebanese community of Springfield and later married Joyce Thomas, the daughter of a Lebanese immigrant. The couple eventually settled in the Town of Dartmouth, Massachusetts and have four children and 13 grandchildren.

Aruri was elected to three consecutive terms as a member of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International, USA (1984-1990). He was also a member of the Board of Directors of the New York-based Human Rights Watch/Middle East, 1990-1992. Aruri was a Founding Member of the Arab Organization for Human Rights (AOHR), Cairo and Geneva in 1982 and a member of the editorial board of Third World Quarterly (London). He was a key participant in the drafting of the Arab Covenant of Human Rights under the auspices of the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Justice, in Siracusa, Italy in December 1986. He is a member of the Independent Palestinian Commission for the Protection of Citizens Rights (Ramallah) since its inception in January 1994, and a member of the Advisory Board of Directors of the International Institute for Criminal Investigations in The Hague. Aruri has spoken at the United Nations on several occasions and delivered the Keynote address on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights at the invitation of the United Nations Staff Union – U.N. Headquarters, New York, on December 9, 1988. He has testified as an “expert witness” in US Federal and Canadian Courts in cases dealing with political asylum and deportation.

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