Radio Intifada by SWANA (South and West Asia and North Africa) Region Radio
Scholasticide in Gaza
On this week’s webcast of Radio Initfada, Rana Sharif and David Lloyd devote the full hour to a discussion of Israel’s practice of scholasticide in Gaza and its history across historic Palestine. We turn to a report recently published by the UK’s Friends of Palestinian Universities, entitled Scholasticide in Gaza . In Gaza, Israel has deliberately destroyed all 19 recognized institutions of higher education since October 2023. What does it mean to target and destroy Gaza’s intellectual and cultural institutions? Scholasticide is the systematic and targeted destruction of schooling that is intrinsic to the aims of genocide and its destruction of the intellectual and cultural life of a people. The destruction of Gaza’s schools and universities is so complete, and so deliberate, that it has spawned this neologism, scholasticide. To help us understand the practice and impact of scholasticide, we spoke with Professors Abdel Razzaq Takriti of Rice University and Chandni Desai, of the University of Toronto, who were among the co-editors of the report. Professors Takriti and Desai have jointly worked on developing the concept of scholasticide, as part of a broader collective effort to mobilize the international scholarly community in solidarity with Palestinian universities. They co-authored the widely disseminated Scholasticide Toolkit as well as key academic studies detailing the comprehensive assault on, and the resilient continuity of, the Palestinian higher education sector. Chandni Desai is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. She is an expert on emancipatory Palestinian and global anticolonial education and pedagogy and is currently completing a major book on the subject. She is a longtime organizer in the Palestine solidarity movement, and is one of the co-authors and co-editors of the International Scholasticide Report. Abdel Razzaq Takriti is a Palestinian historian and organizer. He is Associate Professor of History and Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair in Arab Studies at Rice University. He conceptualized and co-founded ISNAD https://www.taawon.org/en/isnad , the official program launched by Gaza's nonprofit universities through Palestine's largest NGO, Taawon. This $16 million initiative constitutes the largest collective effort to support the continuation of higher education in Gaza. He also serves on the Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza, the main structure established by Gaza’s non-profit universities for the purpose of representing them internationally. Most recently, he has co-authored and co-edited the international scholasticide report. The open letter by Gazan academics, expressing their determination to preserve the ongoing and surviving Gazan academic sector, can be found here: May 2024 Gaza Academic Open Letter https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2024/5/29/open-letter-by-gaza-academics-and-university-administrators-to-the-world The official Tawoon-US ISNAD program link for your donations can be found here (it is strongly advised to support Gazan institutions through Tawoon-US to avoid scams and also to support the colelctive work of Gazan academics and their students): https://taawonus.org/our-programs/isnad-education/
