Introducing the Symposium “Knowledge Under Occupation: Academic Freedom and Palestine on the Global Stage”

This contribution is cross-posted with the Völkerrechtsblog. The entire symposium will be published on the Völkerrechtsblog, with Verfassungsblog cross-posting three selected contributions.

Earlier this year, in the Call for Contributions announcing the arrival of the present symposium, we highlighted numerous measures taken globally evincing an increasing attempt to silence or censor (academic) voices that criticize Israel for the “unfolding Genocide” in Gaza and the egregious violations of international law committed against the Palestinian people. Since then, this alarming trend of repressing academic freedom has shown no sign of abating. On the contrary, pressures on universities and scholars to conform to prevailing political orthodoxies appear to be intensifying, often under the guise of safeguarding neutrality or combating alleged bias. Against this backdrop, the present symposium is not merely timely but constitutes a necessary intervention.

Indeed, since March we witnessed the revocation of signed publication contracts and the cancellation of a special issue on Palestine and Education in the Harvard Educational Review, following the publisher’s extraordinary decision to subject the issue’s contributions to a “legal review” by Harvard University’s Office of General Counsel, which was met with criticism and resistance by the authors. In this light, the room that is left in the academic sphere seems to be continuously shrinking, as more and more contributions focusing on the genocide in Gaza are excluded from collective publications. Meanwhile, the persistence of universities to conflate criticism against Israel with “antisemitism”, as well as a sense of university surveillance over scholarly writings and teachings have caused academics to feel that universities are no longer places of open inquiry and that they may not be able to perform their academic duties in such environments (see here, here, here and here). On some occasions, this surveillance has expanded to posts on personal social media accounts, which have led to the termination of contracts or – more recently – the revocation of fellowships. As has been rightly noted, these new developments can only be seen as pieces of “a mounting list of examples of censorship of pro-Palestinian speech”.

With this symposium we intend to make a small contribution to re-opening the ever more restricted space for academic freedom and seek to continue to push against closing channels. By bringing a variety of different voices in conversation with each other we created a space that shows that there is still a community of scholars who believe that defending academic freedom is an ongoing collective task. This symposium also illustrates that curation is an important aspect in creating such spaces as it leaves room for different kinds of compositions and arrangements and does remind us of the fact that academic debate should not be confused with preaching to a certain school of thought while rejecting others. It is (or rather should be) anything but binary. There may be an immediate sense of self-empowerment and the sentiment of being on the right side, when denying an award, cancelling voices or deciding not to continue a book contract because of the fear of being caught between a rock and a hard place. The recent case of Eva Illouz, who wrote a stinging and controversial piece on Anti-Zionism, and the response of the Greek publisher Oposito Books to no longer publish a translation of one of her books, has been fittingly described as “more than a Greek tragedy” by one German newspaper. Oposito Books justified their decision as an act of solidarity with the Palestinians and concern that Illouz’s analysis was distracting from important issues and responsibilities. At the same time, they conceded that some of her arguments were “analytically relevant and could give rise to serious debate”. Considering that Illouz had specifically addressed Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Masha Gessen (see for their sharp interventions on Gaza, here, here and here) in her critique, one may wonder whether it would have been more productive if Oposito Books had curated a response of these scholars to Illouz’s critique, so as to create space for a meaningful exchange between them. Perhaps, there is un-excavated potential for meaningful exchange in curation. Reflecting about curation offers the opportunity to render visible decisions about compositions and arrangements without subscribing to some elusive idea of balance – or worse, neutrality. However, “cur(e)-ation” literally requires “care” and “attention” (see etymology of the word “curation”), which seems to have gone more and more out of fashion.

Overview of symposium contributions

In light of the above, throughout the course of this and the following week the symposium will bring to you a series of contributions engaging with the erosion of academic freedom amidst the increasing restrictions and constraints imposed upon Palestinian advocacy, as well as contributions reflecting on the impact of these restrictions.

This symposium’s contributions will take variable forms. An artwork, contributed by Marina Veličković, will accompany us throughout the symposium as its illustration. Ben Saul will kick off the symposium focusing on academic freedom and freedom of expression in Germany. More specifically, he will explore the influences behind the classification of the “Boycott, Divestment, Sanction” movement as a “suspected extremist threat” against Germany’s free democratic order and will warn against the human rights concerns posed by this classification.

On Tuesday, Felix Hartmann will comment on the creeping of international politics and the “Staatsräson” into domestic labour law and Labour Court decisions. Next, Adi Mansour will analyse how Israeli universities specifically discipline and silence Palestinian students and scholars, reproducing apartheid structures within academia. In this contribution, the author argues that these institutions not only suppress Palestinian voices but also actively construct an “apartheid of knowledge” that delegitimizes Palestinian epistemic presence and enforces racialized exclusion.

On Wednesday the focus will then shift to the state of academic freedom in the Netherlands. Otto Spijkers, Jeff Handmaker and Renee Kolpa will take us through the double standards in Dutch academia’s responses to Russia’s aggression on Ukraine on the one hand and to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza on the other. It explores how this selective approach, alongside the securitization of campuses and suppression of pro-Palestine protests, undermines academic freedom and calls on students and academics to embrace critical praxis. Then, Alessandra Spadaro and Fabio Cristiano will build on Sari Hanafi’s concept of “spacio-cide”, applying to academic spaces to stress that Dutch universities replicate practices of colonization, separation, and states of exception when restricting debate and protest around Palestine. This way, as they will show, Palestine becomes both hyper-visible as a source of institutional anxiety and invisible as a legitimate field of academic inquiry.

On Thursday, Vasuki Nesiah will then centre on AAUP v. Rubio, a lawsuit filed by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and other organizations questioning the legality of the Trump administration’s “ideological deportation” policy, whereby international students and faculty could be deported on the basis of their pro-Palestinian or “anti-Israel” speech. The symposium will proceed with us sharing our personal experience with attempted academic freedom restrictions. Precisely, we will highlight the silencing attempts that we faced while organising the present symposium and will stress the importance of academic solidarity during such trying times.

On Friday, the symposium will delve further into ways in which international law and its institutions reinforce the silencing Palestinian perspectives, and the implications of this silencing. In this vein, Ntina Tzouvala will zoom in on the definition of “antisemitism”, as adopted by some states and academic institutes, the dangers of conflating antisemitism with criticism of Israel and/or anti-Zionism, and the potential chilling effect that such a conflation can have on teaching and critique. As the author notes, this legitimizes ethno-nationalist projects, and further marginalizes Palestinian scholars, thereby undermining both academic freedom and the struggle for universal human freedom. M. Harb will subsequently examine how Palestinians are silenced in media, law, and international institutions through testimonial quieting and smothering, using as a basis Kristie Dotson’s framework of epistemic violence. This blogpost shows how denying Palestinians epistemic agency – through mistranslation, censorship, or selective recognition – reinforces colonial power and undermines accountability. Itamar Mann will next continue in a slightly different direction, focussing on Israeli Universities, he investigates the involvement of privileges, personal ethics but also structural discrimination as determining who gets to speak.

Sabrina Seikh will open the second week of the symposium. She will argue that international law’s refusal to acknowledge the Nakba as a legal concept leads to a continuation of the fragmentation of the structural violence into other terms (i.e. “occupation” or “apartheid”). She shows how international law is thereby complicit in “the erasure of settler colonialism from legal recognition.” Against this background, she calls for centring the Nakba as an ongoing structure of dispossession to expose the discipline’s complicity and demand new legal frameworks for justice. Stewart Manley will then examine whether publishing controversial pieces in international law blogs and journals legitimizes their authors, institutions, or content, drawing on recent debates around EJIL, EJIL:Talk! and LJIL publications. The author further suggests ways editors and readers should navigate controversial material without reinforcing self-censorship.

On Tuesday, the symposium will address the pressing question of why international legal academia, unrestricted and capable of articulating alternative futures, is indispensable in the current moment. Central to this inquiry is how academic spaces can be constituted in times of crisis in ways that move beyond the narrow binaries of neutrality and ideologization. Both concepts risk reinforcing predominant orthodoxies: neutrality by legitimizing dominant perspectives under the guise of detachment, and ideologization by delegitimizing dissenting or peripheral positions as inherently suspect. Seyla Benhabib will examine three nodal developments that have fundamentally reshaped the coordinates of international institutions established in the aftermath of World War II. These shifts simultaneously restrict the discursive space available for the invocation of universal rights and expose scholars who defend them to intensified political pressures. Her intervention underscores that any political reorientation of international law requires defending the intellectual and normative conditions that render such reorientation imaginable. Subsequently, Souheir Edelbi will reflect on how academic cultures of critical discourse and decolonial knowledge production can be fostered under these conditions. She will outline the importance of building inclusive and solidaristic spaces that sustain not only intellectual engagement but also well-being and mutual support, thereby enabling the re-imagination of international law beyond inherited epistemic and political constraints.

The symposium’s curtains will eventually close with a creative contribution by Marina Veličković, which speaks to the illustration of the symposium that accompanied us throughout the two weeks.

Highlighting again that we believe that defending academic freedom is a collective effort we invite readers to engage with the contributions, either in the comment section or by submitting pieces to Völkerrechtsblog in the future.

With this brief introduction and preview, we hope you will all enjoy this symposium! We hope the discussions will not only deepen our understanding of the current situation in Gaza, in international law, and within academia itself, but also invite us to reflect critically on how knowledge is produced, defended, and mobilized in moments of crisis. At the same time, the symposium is also a call for solidarity and imagination, a reminder that academic freedom, rigorous inquiry, and critical debate are indispensable resources for envisioning more just futures. By bringing together this symposium despite considerable pressure and backlash, we affirm that scholarship retains the power to resist silencing, to expand the horizons of possibility, and to contribute to the conditions of peace and dignity.