Genocide, neutrality and the university sector by Rafeef Ziadah

The ongoing destruction in Gaza demands urgent academic and ethical reckoning, exposing the complicity of universities and scholarly disciplines in sustaining settler-colonial violence. This essay interrogates the role of Sociology as a discipline and academic institutions in shaping, legitimising, or resisting systemic oppression, with a focus on institutional neutrality as a mechanism of erasure. Drawing on critical scholarship on settler colonialism, anti-Palestinian racism and neoliberal academia, the article examines how universities suppress Palestine advocacy through overt repression, bureaucratic silencing and material entanglements with the military-industrial complex. It critiques the discourse of neutrality and balance, demonstrating how these frameworks function to maintain dominant power structures. By tracing the complicity of Western academic institutions – from their partnerships with Israeli military research to their suppression of pro-Palestinian activism – the article argues that meaningful decolonisation requires a rejection of performative neutrality and an active dismantling of structures that sustain occupation and genocide.