The Board of the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs strongly condemns scholasticide as an integral dimension of genocide in Gaza and calls for a rebuilding of Palestinian educational institutions under Palestinian authority as an immediate international obligation and as part of the rehabilitation of infrastructures of life throughout Gaza. We oppose any future plan that would further displace Palestinian inhabitants, deprive them of fundamental rights to the land and to infrastructures of life, and that would fail to return the right to education to the Palestinian people. The International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs seeks to promote critical thought in and outside of university settings and recognizes the necessity of cultural and educational infrastructures as conditions for shared life and critical reflection on its historical conditions as well as their transformation. In Gaza, the right to education has been denied in a genocidal war that has also targeted the educational and cultural life of Palestinians. We recognize and deplore that the State of Israel continues to commit scholasticide that entails the “systematic destruction, in whole or part,” of the educational life of “a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.”
The destruction of Palestinian educational institutions has a long history, but it has escalated in unprecedented ways during the most recent war. With financial and moral support of the United States, Germany, and other states, the Israeli state has destroyed at least 80 percent of schools and 100 percent of universities in Gaza. Israel has targeted and killed over 760 teachers and educational staff, 150 academic scholars and researchers, and more than 12,800 students, with another 8,691 reported as injured. As of January 2025, 494 schools and universities, including 137 institutions, have been physically destroyed. More than 650,000 Palestinian students have been unable to attend general education courses, including 30,000 children denied access to kindergartens, and 40,000 students unable to complete their secondary school exams. The right to education is destroyed as almost every library, archive, and cultural center in Gaza has been reduced to rubble or forced to close. The loss of extensive historical archives is irreversible.
We follow Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish jurist who first defined genocide to include efforts to undermine “the fundamental basis of the social order” that sustains the life of a specific national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The destruction of the educational life of any such group is included among the infrastructures of life and its reproduction covered by that definition of genocide. It includes the killing of teachers, systematically harming members of university communities, arrest, detention, and incarceration of those members, the destruction of educational buildings, the destruction or withholding of educational resources, and impeding the import of essential materials and resources, the closing of institutions, invading them for whatever reason, restricting access to institutions, denying the right to education on the part of prisoners, blocking access to the internet, blocking all hiring, revoking rights of residence, preventing scholarly exchange, and stopping all international and domestic funding of such institutions. Each of these acts have been committed by the Israeli State against the Palestinian people of Gaza. Indeed, Israeli forces have not only invaded still existing structures but redeployed them as military outposts and detention centers.
As the future of Gaza is again debated in ways that sideline and threaten to erase Palestinians themselves, we call for the end of scholasticide and the right of the Palestinian people of Gaza to rebuild their own lives, including their cultural and educational institutions, with the support of the international community. To deny the Palestinian people the exercise of that right in the wake of systemic destruction is to remain complicit with scholasticide, understood as a dimension of genocide, and to refuse them the fundamental right to rebuild the infrastructures that will allow them to thrive, study, research, teach, and reestablish and realize their right to education.
Sources:
https://www.gazauniversities.org/call
https://scholarsagainstwar.org/
https://www.silencedbyscholasticide.com/scholasticide
https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/international-day-education-al-mezan-condemns-israels-scholasticide-and-calls-urgent-action-rebuild-gazas-education-sector