Scholasticide in Palestine

This webinar features a panel of academics and right-to-education organizers who have experienced, documented, and challenged Israel’s ongoing and systematic destruction of the education system in Palestine—what scholars and human rights experts have termed “scholasticide.”

Israeli attacks against Palestinian education have been ongoing since the Nakba of 1948. After October 2023, these attacks have assumed exterminationist proportions. The Israeli military has destroyed every university in Gaza. It has bombed hundreds of schools, libraries, and heritage sites, and it has killed and injured thousands of students, faculty, and staff. In the West Bank, Israeli forces have routinely raided Palestinian universities, compelling higher education institutions to shift to remote learning. Moreover, they have consistently targeted, abducted, and incarcerated students and teachers. As for Palestinian citizens of the Israeli state, they have faced physical assaults, harassment, surveillance, imprisonment, and loss of academic jobs. Meanwhile, colleges and universities in the United States continue to restrict antigenocide speech and activity, punishing faculty, students, and staff who stand in solidarity with Palestinian rights. The US State has further threatened, at the highest levels, mass deportation against faculty and student activists who do not have citizenship.

Join us for a discussion about opposing scholasticide in Palestine, making our higher education institutions more inclusive and democratic, and protecting our colleagues and students.

Panelists:

• Dr. Ahmad Abu Shaban is dean of agriculture and veterinary medicine at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, Palestine. A prominent and respected voice in Palestinian higher education, he played a leading role in conceptualizing and implementing the resumption of university teaching in Gaza through the use of online platforms. He is also the official representative of Al-Azhar University-Gaza on the Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza.
• Sundos Hammad is the coordinator of the Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit University, Palestine. She has held that role for the past twelve years, leading major initiatives to defend the basic right to education across Occupied Palestine. A dedicated human rights advocate, she is deeply committed to social justice and academic freedom, particularly within the context of settler colonialism.
• Dr. Abdel Razzaq Takriti is a Palestinian historian. He is associate professor of history and Arab American Educational Foundation Chair in Arab Studies at Rice University. He is the North American representative on the Emergency Committee of Gaza Universities and a cofounder and a steering committee member of ISNAD, the official unified support program established by Gaza nonprofit universities. He is also one of the founders of Scholars Against the War on Palestine and is a coauthor of the scholasticide definition and toolkit.
• Dr. Chandni Desai is a scholar of Palestinian education and culture. She is assistant professor of critical studies in equity and solidarity at the University of Toronto. A longtime right to education advocate, she is one of the founders of Scholars Against the War on Palestine, a coauthor of the scholasticide definition and toolkit, and a faculty activist with Faculty for Palestine, with extensive experience in union organizing.
• Dr. Raz Segal is associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies and endowed professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University, where he also serves as the director of the master of arts in Holocaust and genocide studies and founding coordinator of the Refugee Studies Initiative. He is currently working on a book on the distortion, weaponization, and mobilization of Holocaust history in the reproduction of white supremacy and state violence, including a focus on Israel’s assault on Palestinians from the 1948 Nakba to the current genocidal assault on Gaza.
• Dr. Ahmad Shokr is associate professor of history at Swarthmore College. A scholar of modern Middle Eastern history, he has extensive organizing experience against campus repression in North America and scholasticide in Palestine. 

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