The Right to Education

This article was written by CRAIG BIRCKHEAD-MORTON 9:57 PM, DEC 20, 2023 for Yale news.

On Dec. 20, the fall semester at Yale University will conclude. The date will also mark 75 days since the Israeli occupation began its genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, the Popular Cradle. Yale students will have enjoyed the privilege of pursuing their education in peace while more than two million Palestinians in Gaza will have been denied the mere right to exist on their land.

Currently, an estimated 19,667 Palestinians in Gaza have been martyred, more than the total number of Yale undergraduate and graduate students combined. Of course, students and faculty across the whole of historic Palestine are also represented in that number. An estimated 446 Palestinians affiliated with academic institutions — most, but not all, in Gaza — have been martyred.

This is not accidental. On the contrary — it is by design. Throughout history, the colonizer has always understood that education is a powerful weapon in the hands of the colonized. While writing this op-ed, I met with Sundos Hammad, the Coordinator of the Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit University. She told me, “The right to education is the fundamental pillar to reach the rest of our human rights as Palestinians, and it is a tool for resisting the Israeli occupation.”

The Israeli occupation’s murder of students and faculty, its bombing of university buildings and its criminalization of political organizing on campuses are all tactics of a broader strategy to completely obstruct the educational process in Palestine and to repress the student movement. This secures the Zionist settler-colonial project from the threat of an educated, revolutionary population.

This strategy is not unique to the current moment. The repression imposed on Palestinian universities dates back to the 1970s and ’80s when Palestinian students and faculty began organizing against military rule in Gaza and the West Bank. They organized against Military Order 854, which continues to dictate which students can be admitted, which faculty can be recruited and what educational curricula are permissible.

Historically, Birzeit University — Palestine’s most prestigious academic institution — has been the primary target of Israeli repression. According to Wael Hashlamoun, the Vice President for Academic Affairs at Birzeit, the university has been forcibly closed by the Israeli Occupation Forces — or IOF, a term Palestinians and co-strugglers use to more accurately define the Israeli military as an occupying force as opposed to a defensive one — 15 times since its establishment because of its role as a space for political organizing. During the First Palestinian Intifada, it was shut down by the IOF for almost four and a half years. It was in this context that the Right to Education Campaign formed as a movement to “document, research, and raise consciousness about the oppression of Palestinian students, teachers, and academic institutions.” Since then, Birzeit has been a particularly central site of struggle in Palestine.

According to Hammad, in the years since the beginning of the Second Palestinian Intifada, “more than 2,000 Birzeit students have been imprisoned” for their political activities, with more than 40 students imprisoned after Oct. 7. Following the temporary ceasefire agreement, which secured the release of three female students and ended on Dec. 1, “more than 110 Birzeit students continue to remain detained in occupation prisons.”

According to the Right to Education Campaign, Birzeit’s campus has also been raided by the IOF “over 20 times in the past 28 years,” with the second to last raid occurring 13 days prior to Oct. 7, a time of so-called peace. During the Sept. 24 raid, the IOF abducted and imprisoned eight Birzeit students, including the President of the Student Council.

For decades, it has been beyond apparent that the Israeli occupation is terrified of Palestinian academia. Thus, it should be no surprise that while the IOF is massacring people in the refugee camps of Jabalia and Nuseirat, it has also found the time to completely or partially destroy 11 universities across the whole of historic Palestine; shut down 19 universities in Gaza, disrupting the education of more than 88,000 students; and force all 34 universities in the West Bank into remote learning, disrupting the education of more than 138,000 students. These are all violations documented by the Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research.

If there is one thing we in the United States should have recognized over the past 75 days, it is that the aggression the Israeli occupation is waging is not only an aggression on Gaza, but an aggression on every Palestinian seeking liberation from the Zionist settler-colonial project. That is why Palestinian universities have demanded we fulfill our role in the struggle.

On Nov. 30, 15 of the most prestigious academic institutions in Palestine published a joint statement calling on us to seek truth, not be silent and take concrete action to end the genocide. At this moment, we have no right to center ourselves, worry about our jobs or protect our privileges. None of these things are worth more than Palestinian lives.

As students affiliated with this prestigious institution, we have extraordinary obligations to our fellow students in Palestine. In the spring semester, we must build connections with Palestinian universities such as Birzeit and organize against Yale’s complicity in colonial war crimes, whether it is through challenging its investments in the war industry or its partnerships with Israeli academic institutions. When we return on Jan. 16, we must be ready to meet the moment.

In the words of the martyr Refaat al-Areer, Professor of English at the Islamic University of Gaza, “We will win. And Gaza and Palestine will prevail.”

CRAIG BIRCKHEAD-MORTON is a senior in Silliman College majoring in History. He is a Youth Fellow with the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. Contact him at craig.birckhead-morton@yale.edu.