On April 10, Thea Renda Abu El-Haj, professor of education, received the 2025 Emily Gregory Award. A leading anthropologist in education, Abu El-Haj conducts research responding to the implications that globalization, transnational migration, and conflict have on education, identity, and rights. This year, her contributions to the field earned her the Henry T. Trueba Award for Research Leading to the Transformation of the Social Contexts of Education from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the George and Louise Spindler Award from the Council on Anthropology and Education of the American Anthropological Association.
Abu El-Haj’s Unsettled Belonging: Educating Palestinian American Youth After 9/11 (2015) won the 2016 American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Award for its ethnographic account of Palestinian-American identity in the aftermath of 9/11. And her 2006 debut, Elusive Justice: Wrestling with Difference and Educational Equity in Everyday Practice, examined overlooked aspects of educational equity in current policy and practice.
Each year for the Emily Gregory Award, students nominate leading educators at Barnard — some of whom have ranked in the top 2 percent of global citations. Nominated alongside Abu El-Haj for this year’s award were term assistant professor of English Atefeh Akbari; BJ Casey, the Christina L. Williams Professor of Neuroscience; and María Rivera Maulucci, the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Education.
“I nominated Professor Abu El-Haj because of her dedication to fostering a supportive and calming classroom environment,” said Sherlyn Rojas ’25.
The award is named for Emily Gregory, the first woman offered a full-time professorship at Columbia University and later Barnard College. In 1889, the year Barnard was founded, she joined the College as an instructor of botany, becoming its first female faculty member, and was later the first to lead the botany department at a time when women’s opportunities in academia were scarce. Beyond her scholarship and guidance — she established the Barnard Botanical Club, which attracted both students and alumnae — it was Gregory’s unwavering passion and commitment to her students that formed her legacy. The award is planned and produced by the McIntosh Activities Council (McAC).
“She left a legacy of intellectual rigor, compassion, and an unwavering belief in the power of education, especially for young women,” said Shannon Geraghty ’25, co-president of the McIntosh Activities Council (McAc).
Abu El-Haj teaches classes on the intersectionality between educational foundations and social changes. Her current research, “Disrupting Dispossession: Teaching Palestine in Exile, 1970-1990,” centers on the oral history of Palestinian teachers in Lebanon. The Emily Gregory Award is among the many honors recognizing Abu El-Haj’s global advocacy for education.
“It’s a huge honor to receive the Emily Gregory Award because this recognition comes from students,” said Abu El-Haj. “For me, teaching is a continual practice of learning in community with my amazing students.”
—TARA TERRANOVA ’25
