Helping to reconstruct Palestinian HE could bring new ideas to the West

Since October 7 last year, all Gaza’s universities have been destroyed. Half a century of institutional development has been obliterated by a combination of ferocious Israeli bombardment and, according to Amnesty International’s headline-grabbing report on genocide published last week, controlled demolition.

Most Palestinian universities were established in the 1970s and early 1980s. They carried the promise of modernising Palestinian society and forming part of the foundations of the hoped-for Palestinian state. Their achievement is to have come into existence as a vital expression of Palestinian resistance, national values and aspirations.

Palestinians are among the most well-educated of Arab populations and have had very high expectations for the education of the young. A university education is highly valued, and enrolment rates in Palestinian universities demonstrate this, especially for women.

Five Palestinian universities were among the top 30 Arab universities in Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings of 2011 and remained so until 2023. Birzeit, An-Najah, Al Quds and the Islamic University of Gaza stand out. They have played an important role in educating a wide range of specialist graduates, in building collaborative scientific links with universities abroad, and in nurturing the cultural achievements and identity of Palestinian society.

They have done that despite many roadblocks, literal and metaphorical. Over many years, and especially since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967, Palestinian universities have been subjected to Israel military control and incursions. Closures, arrests and administrative detentions of staff and students during demonstrations have been regular events, as have orders banning overseas academic visitors to Palestinian campuses. University students have also suffered violence and imprisonment, and their studies have been badly interrupted.

But even all of that pales into insignificance compared with what has happened over the past 14 months.

According to the human rights organisation EuroMed, recent Israeli military action has killed hundreds of educators, including more than 100 university professors. And the Palestinian Ministry of Education records that more than 4,000 students have been killed and over 7,000 have been injured.

Commentary and further analysis of this devastation is difficult since the websites of all universities in Gaza have gone, and journalism has been severely curtailed. Internet connections are broken, so Palestinian voices are not being heard. Yet Palestinian memory will not be so easily silenced; this devastation will shape it for generations.

Palestinian universities will survive because the university is an idea, not a building. Moreover, Palestinians will remember the physical destruction of their campuses as educide, so their determination to rebuild will be irrepressible.

Moreover, they potentially have the opportunity to build back better. After all, Palestinians know the weaknesses, as well as the successes, of the system that has been destroyed: traditional teaching, rote learning, social inequalities of opportunity, intrusive politics, lack of resources and the constraints of occupation and siege. Lacking the radical edge they once had, Palestinian universities have recently functioned to reproduce a social order, rather than to transform it. Palestinians have not enjoyed the freedom to build their own authentic institutions.

In response to the destruction, students in Gaza have had some help from West Bank universities to continue their courses online – even as West Bank universities have themselves been unable to function normally due to military incursions. In the rubble, informal school groups have emerged to occupy children and keep their hopes alive.

There are also calls from Palestinian academic leaders for Western and Arab universities to support colleagues, students and institutions in Palestine to help them continue their work, and they have many ideas about what help is needed.

Admittedly, the hope that one day the educational infrastructure of Gaza will all be rebuilt seems remote. And it is true that, within the forever changed geopolitical architecture of the Middle East, reconstruction will only happen within a new political order to support it. But it is important not to wait to begin discussions about what reconstruction could and should look like.

It is clear that Palestine will need international help to rebuild, and that help should be extended – but it must be on terms that Palestinians determine and not just on what Israel might allow.

Leading Palestinian academics such as Sari Nusseibeh, Gabi Baramki, Hanan Ashwari and many others have worked for a higher education that valued critical thinking, community engagement and freedom. Students I have worked with share these ideals and, increasingly, such voices are being heard in the work of Palestinian thinktanks such as Al-Shabaka, Ziman and Save Youth Future Society. They are part of a new ecology of ideas for the future.

The fact is that, with Hamas in disarray, a political framework of freedom currently exists within which Palestinians can articulate and debate this new ecology. But that framework might be short-lived. We must move quickly to take advantage of it.

Nor would Western help with this endeavour merely be an act of charity. The fact is that both Palestinian and Western academics have much to gain. After all, the Western higher education model, with multiple crises of its own, does not even meet well the challenges Western societies themselves face. It is clear that they do not have all the answers.

Western academics keen to support Palestinian colleagues, then, should not ask them: “What can we teach you?” The key question is: “How can we share ideas, learn and change together?”

Bill Williamson is emeritus professor of continuing education at Durham University. His book Lifeworlds and Change in Palestinian Education: Liberating Learning (2024) is published by Routledge.