Unresponsive academics (i.e., unresponsive to genocide, scholasticide and settler colonialism): Nicola Pratt, ‘Scholasticide in Gaza: Settler Colonial Elimination, Genocide, and the Crisis of Academic Responsibility’, e-International Relations, 24/11/25 | settler colonial studies blog

Unresponsive academics (i.e., unresponsive to genocide, scholasticide and settler colonialism): Nicola Pratt, ‘Scholasticide in Gaza: Settler Colonial Elimination, Genocide, and the Crisis of Academic Responsibility’, e-International Relations, 24/11/25

05Dec25

Abstract: In early October 2025, a fragile ceasefire allowed some semblance of education to resume in the Gaza Strip. At Al-Aqsa University, students celebrated becoming the first cohort to graduate since October 2023, a moment of joy amidst devastation. Across Gaza, children returned to learning in buildings with shattered walls, missing desks and chairs, and classrooms still crowded with families displaced by Israel’s two-year-long assault. Amid these scenes of improvisation and resilience, the enormity of what has been lost for Palestinian education is impossible to ignore. The widescale destruction of Gaza’s educational system during Israel’s recent war is not an unfortunate by-product of conflict. It is the latest and most extreme manifestation of what Palestinian scholar Karma Nabulsi termed scholasticide in 2009: the systematic, multi-faceted destruction of Palestinian education. Scholasticide is a central mechanism of settler-colonial elimination and meets the definitional criteria of genocide by targeting the social, cultural, and intellectual reproduction of a people. Understanding this destruction as structural rather than incidental is essential for recognising not only Israel’s longstanding policies toward Palestinian education and knowledge, but also the responsibilities and complicities of universities far beyond Palestine.

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