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Palestinian Education
Sadanand Nanjundiah
To the Editor:I read with great interest John Akker's article "Protecting Academic Freedom Worldwide " in the May-June issue of Academe. I am deeply disturbed, concerned, and angered by the appalling situation for all levels of education and research in the occupied territories of Palestine. Students, staff, and faculty of the schools and colleges in Gaza and the West Bank have been shut out of learning and conducting research by the oppressive Israeli military siege. They have been confined to their homes by endless curfews and have lived in great fear, and with tremendous pain, since September 2000. Israel has completely reoccupied the West Bank and Gaza and has effected a vice-like closure that makes it impossible for any Palestinian to move from one town or village to another. Israel has wantonly destroyed homes, educational institutions, hospitals, farms, television and radio stations, workplaces, shops, vehicles (including ambulances), and other Palestinian property.
Palestinian children, students, and staff have been unable to attend nurseries, schools, and colleges for weeks. Teachers have been prevented from performing their tasks-imparting skills, guidance, and healing to younger minds who have been exposed only to death, injury, hate, and destruction. Israel has converted the West Bank and Gaza into vast jails and inflicted terrible suffering on the entire Palestinian people. This is collective punishment at its worst.
Akker states that "the Network for Education and Academic Rights mobilizes transglobal academic communities to exert pressure on repressive regimes," and notes that, "[i]n many parts of the world, being a college or university academic or student is not a safe thing to be. The same holds true for elementary and secondary school teachers and, increasingly, for students." Nowhere is this truer today than in the West Bank and in Gaza.
The physical and psychological damage caused by Israeli action on the Palestinian people is incalculable. That Israel is able to inflict such pain, suffering, and humiliation openly, in contemptuous defiance of the world at large, speaks poorly of all of us, especially in the community of educators. We have the moral obligation to expose the truth and defend our calling, and that of our fellow scholars and students in Palestine, in the face of the repression of Palestinians by Israel in flagrant contravention of the Geneva Conventions that legally require an occupying force to ensure the protection and safety of the occupied people.
I call upon the AAUP to mobilize the academic community in the U.S and around the world in support of the fundamental human rights of the Palestinian people, including the right to free and open access to their educational institutions without the fear—or the reality—of facing Israeli attack helicopters, war planes, tanks, bulldozers, guns, barricaded roads, and endless checkpoints.
Sadanand Nanjundiah
(Physics)
Central Connecticut State University
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