Tuesday, 21 October 2025, 14:00-17:00
REGISTER HERE FOR ONLINE OR IN PERSON
Where: Online or MUSSI seminar room, Iontas, Ireland
As part of Maynooth Research Week 2025, the Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute (MUSSI) will host a discussion on scholasticide – the systematic destruction of education – in the context of Palestine. This event will bring together Maynooth researchers and international colleagues to examine the nature and extent of Israel’s attacks on Palestinian scholars, students and educational institutions, and to reflect on the role and responsibilities of western universities in response.
The Israeli state has systematically targeted and repressed Palestinian education since the 1948 Nakba. Over the past two years, Israel’s perpetration of ‘scholasticide’ against Palestinian scholars, students and sites of learning has escalated to unfathomable levels. This event will reflect on the nature and extent of this ongoing scholasticide, and will address the role and responsibilities of western universities in response to it.
Speakers:
- Wesam Amer (Gaza University & Cambridge University)
- Maya Wind (University of California, Riverside)
- Munir Nuseibah (Al-Quds University)
- Bana Abu Zuluf (Maynooth University)
- Rania Muhareb (Harvard University & University of Galway)
- John Reynolds (Maynooth University)
Palestinian political theorist Karma Nabulsi is credited for coining the term ‘scholasticide’ in the context of Israel’s 2008-09 assault on the Gaza Strip. Nabulsi’s formulation of scholasticide sought to capture Israel’s deliberate killing of Palestinian scholars and students and the systemic obliteration of education institutions during that particular assault and invasion, but also more generally going all the way back to the 1948 Nakba. Since October 2023, Israel’s perpetration of scholasticide against Palestinian educators, students and sites of learning has escalated to unfathomable levels. It has been documented and condemned as such by UN agencies and experts, and has been conceptualised by international lawyers as a mass atrocity violation of the human right to education, as part of a wider pattern of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine, and as an act of genocide itself.
This event will feature presentations from Maynooth researchers and Palestinian colleagues reflecting on this ongoing scholasticide, and will also address the role, responsibilities and failures to date of western universities in response to it.