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Education and Palestine: Defying Imposed Boundaries, Resisting Erasure, & Charting Educational Praxis Across Spaces

Mon, March 24, 2:45 to 4:00pm, Palmer House, Floor: 7th Floor, Dearborn 2

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The world has failed to stop the Palestinian genocide. In response to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza killed, maimed, and facing starvation, there have been thousands of protests, ICJ and ICC court cases, over 180 encampments on university campuses, and yet, those with the power to stop the systematic starvation and killing have not acted (B’Tselem, 2024; Serino, 2023; https://students4gaza.directory/, 2024; WHO, 2023). According to UNICEF, “Gaza is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child,” and as of September 4th, 2024, there have been 10,627 children killed (OCHA, 2024).

Whether through seeing images of what has been happening to Palestinians on the news or social media, or by witnessing one of these protests, the unfolding genocide has grabbed the world’s attention. This understandably led to discussions in K-12 classrooms, college campuses, and school board meetings. Teachers, professors, and school and district leadership have responded in differing ways, which has led to arguments at school board meetings, bans on discussing the genocide in some schools, the reprimanding and dismissal of teachers, and repression of scholarship that counters the dominant imperial epistemology in the United States (Elsen-Rooney, 2023; Goodman, 2024; Karimi, 2023; Mai-Duc, 2023; Natanson, 2023).

The field of education plays a crucial role in supporting students, educators, and policymakers in contextualizing the genocide in Gaza with histories and the continuing impacts of occupation, apartheid, genocide, and political contestations. Given the repression of discourses and activism around Palestine in schools and universities, it is especially important to name and discuss knowledge about Palestine that is silenced under systems of colonial and imperial domination. Notably, students and educators in different parts of the world are contesting the systemic erasure of knowledge about Palestine by learning and teaching about occupation. Grounded in the ways in which educational processes reproduce imperial and settler-colonial violence but also create openings for resistance, this symposium asks: How do students, educators, and scholars enact educational and everyday practices of resistance amid times of repression and genocide?

Drawing on a forthcoming special issue about Education and Palestine in Harvard Educational Review, this symposium highlights three papers that offer perspectives from students and educators as they navigate and contest systems of occupation, genocide, and repression. Highlighting voices from education scholars and practitioners across different parts of the world, the papers build empirical and conceptual knowledge on the disruptive possibilities that students and educators create by defying structures of occupation and resisting the erasures of Palestine and Palestinians. The first paper sheds light on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement in South Africa, situating the movement in the history of inter-racist collaboration of South African and Israeli apartheid states and highlighting the solidarity between progressive South African and Palestinian academics. The second paper, a collaborative work that grew out of U.S.-based educators’ experiences and reflections, draws on de/post-colonial and abolitionist theories to address the possibilities of teaching Palestine in our current fraught times. Recounting two college counselors’ experiences as they support Palestinian students pursuing educational opportunities abroad, the third paper seeks to uplift the resiliency of Palestinian youth as they aspire to achieve their dreams amidst genocide and oppression.

Taken together, these papers offer insights into resilience and resistance that emerge amid refusals to reckon with systems of occupation and genocide. By engaging with these papers, the symposium seeks to chart out educational praxis across different spaces and educational settings that transgress imposed boundaries of what can be taught, learned, and discussed. The symposium sheds light on disruptive moves and solidarities built by scholars and educators across institutions and regions as they contest systems of power and occupation. In bringing together scholars and practitioners, the symposium seeks to speak at the intersections of theory and practice to highlight pedagogical and activist engagements with Palestine across various educational spaces. The papers importantly represent an epistemology that honors Palestinian history and identity during a time when they face existential threat. In highlighting efforts to support Palestinian students, teach about Palestine, and build solidarity with Palestinian scholars, the symposium highlights praxis that resists epistemological violence from dominant colonial and imperial systems and engages in knowledge production that contends with systemic violence against Palestine.

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