'Nakba'

This is the forty-eighth of Arab America’s series on American pathbreakers of Arab descent. The series includes personalities from entertainment, business, sports, science, academia, journalism, and politics, among other areas. Our forty-eighth pathbreaker is Elaine Hagopian, a retired Sociology professor at Simmons College in Boston and one of this country’s leading Arab American activists. Contributing writer, John Mason, reports how in 1967 Hagopian joined other Arab American intellectuals in founding the Association of Arab American University Graduates (AAUG), according to Elaine, “to change the way the Arab Israeli conflict is perceived in the United States.” Her father was an immigrant from Damascus.