Since the beginning of the Zionist colonial enterprise in Palestine in the 1880s and 1890s, Palestinian education has been under sustained and systematic attack. In addition to the massacre of thousands of Palestinians and the ethnic cleansing of approximately 800,000, the Nakba of 1947-1948 witnessed the targeting and destruction of Palestinian schools, universities, libraries, archives, books, and documents in the beginning of a cyclical process of what Karma Nabulsi has called “scholasticide” in Palestine. As has been well-documented by Palestinian historians such as Nur Masalha, United Nations agencies such as UNRWA and UNOCHA, and international NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, these attacks have been ongoing at every level of education in Palestine since 1948. Since October 2023, the Israeli state has brought them to their culmination.
In this period, and only including statistics pertaining to higher education, the Israeli state has destroyed every university in Gaza, and has targeted and murdered at least 1,189 students and at least 221 scholars and other academic staff members there (as of 22 July, 2025). It has placed Palestinian universities in the West Bank under siege, arrested at least 412 students (including union leaders and activists) and 17 faculty and staff, and killed 35 students there (as of 22 July, 2025). It has terrorized Palestinian students in 1948 Palestine via intimidating displays of military force on university campuses, the strict surveillance of classes, the monitoring of social media accounts, and reprisals in the form of suspensions and expulsions against those who express dissent. What is it about education and those who seek to attain it that seem so dangerous to the colonial mind that it seeks to obliterate them?
In this special event, Palestinian scholars and activists working on the ground throughout Palestine and their international allies respond to this question by foregrounding the centrality of education to Palestinian life, identity, history, heritage, culture, and humanity. For Palestinians, education is not just specialization in a particular subject or a ladder towards a better future, but also moreover a link to the past and a promise of liberation. Education helps situate Palestinians in their history, and in so doing, to imagine and build a liberated future for themselves in their homeland. Education is a rejoinder to the lies and distortions purveyed by Zionism and its apologists, which–based on European colonial modernity and Orientalism as its ideological analogue–have propagated racist and dehumanizing mythologies about Palestine and Palestinians, and more broadly of Arabs and Muslims as well. Education is truth. Education is life. This event seeks to celebrate Palestinian education, to mourn the losses incurred by its attempted destruction, and to showcase efforts in Palestine and globally to support and sustain it.
The event is structured in two parts. In Part 1, “The University as a Repository of Life,” Palestinian scholars from Gaza, the West Bank, and the diaspora discuss the history of attacks on Palestinian higher education and the conditions they are currently experiencing at their institutions. Through the devastation they are witnessing and experiencing, they demonstrate the resilience of the Palestinian will to learn and the deep dedication of students and scholars to their vocations.
In Part 2, “How to Support, Sustain, and Rebuild Palestinian Education,” Palestinian educators and their international allies showcase some of the concrete initiatives that are helping support, sustain, and rebuild Palestinian education. Such initiatives include the Right to Education Campaign, the Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, CUNY Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, and the JVP Academic Advisory Council.
Education is a pathway towards liberation. By educating about the meaning and significance of Palestinian education and by showcasing concrete initiatives that support it, this event aims to contribute to a future of collective liberation.
- The University as a Repository of Life
Ahmad Abu Shaban (Al-Azhar University, Gaza)
Summer Abu Mughli (An-Najah University, Nablus)
Maryam Hmoudah (An-Najah University, Nablus)
Rania Jawad (Birzeit University, Birzeit)
Ahmed Junina (Al-Aqsa University, Gaza)
Rabab Abdulhadi (Teaching Palestine)
- How to Support, Sustain, and Rebuild Palestinian Education
Sundos Hammad (Right to Education Campaign)
Abdel Razzaq Takriti (The Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza)
Shahinaz Geneid (The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel)
Tony Alessandrini (CUNY Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine)
Jonah Rubin (JVP Academic Advisory Council)
This event is sponsored by: Coalition for Action in Higher Education; CUNY Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine; Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine Network; Jewish Voice for Peace; Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel; Right to Education Campaign; Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network; and Teaching Palestine.
Featured Speaker
