Academia in a time of genocide: scholasticidal tendencies and continuities by Basma Hajir & Mezna Qato

This essay takes up Edward Said’s insistence on truth, justice, and tracing continuities of colonial violence to reflect on the university in a time of genocide. We set the stage with an outline of the university complicities; conditions continuous with, and connected to, the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We establish the legal resonance of ‘scholasticide’ and use the term as an explanatory tool to unpack four key ‘scholasticidal tendencies’ that extend to the USA, UK, and European academies: silence, the suppression of solidarity, ‘complex’ or ‘nuanced’ arguments, and the threat posed by certain theories. We critique these tendencies and highlight their deflections, obfuscations, contradictions, and moral failings. We gesture to possibilities beyond them and towards justice as an answer to the ‘question of Palestine’.