Scholasticide in Gaza and Palestine as a Portal: A Duoethnography on Silence, Silencing and the Struggle for a Better World

Abstract

The unprecedented destruction of the education sector in Gaza since October 2023, including the systematic destruction of all higher education institutions, is known as scholasticide. This has been part of the onslaught intended to impede the survival and existence of Palestinians as a people. The genocide and scholasticide in Gaza have been a global affair, from international support for Israel, on one side, to a growing global movement against the genocide, much of it spearheaded by university students, on the other. The repression and silencing of students, academics and staff who speak out against the genocide have, too, been a global affair, as has been the silence of many leaders, administrators and individuals in the global higher education sector. In this paper, we employ duoethnography as a research method and draw on our personal and professional experiences as researchers and practitioners in higher education and internationalization to critically engage with this moment and what it represents. We unpack how the events in Gaza and Palestine should influence global higher education to engage more critically with the struggles for social justice. We discuss the global responsibility during a genocide, and the responses to scholasticide in Gaza in the higher education sector. We explore what this moment means for higher education going forward, framing this around the need to organize more and better globally to challenge and dismantle coloniality, capitalism and neoliberalism which continue to wreck the lives of billions of people around the world.