Why Gaza Matters: Toward a Politics of Educational Repair

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Education has been at the center of the war on Gaza with the targeted destruction of the educational system. This assault in Gaza has been accompanied by attacks on academic freedom and democratic expression in the U.S. Drawing on three research projects that span spatial geographies and timeframes, this symposium theorizes the links between scholasticide in Gaza and the dissolving fabric of US democratic education. We ask: How can employing a transnational, anti-imperialist theoretical lens across space and time strengthen our analysis of these seemingly distinct educational phenomena? How does this kind of analysis support the development of projects of repair and renewal that are accountable to Palestinians and others living in the shadow of multiple colonialisms?

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 1: Education and Place, Space, Time

Chair

• Zeena Zakharia, University of Maryland

Papers

• Education and the Struggle for Palestinian Liberation: Palestinian Teachers in Lebanon - Thea Renda Abu El-Haj, Barnard College

• Campus Outpost: Israeli Universities and Palestinian Dispossession - Maya Wind, University of British Columbia

• Pedagogical Prefiguration: Reflections on the Student Movement for Palestine - Christopher Jadallah, University of California - Los Angeles; Shirin Vossoughi, Northwestern University

Discussant

• Mezna Qato, Cambridge Assessment