To the IUAES General Assembly and the World Anthropological Union AGM

Johannesburg, 14 November 2024

Motion concerning the genocide in Palestine, and war of aggression in Lebanon committed by Israel; and towards supporting scholars affected by repression; and commitment towards the reconstruction of the destroyed intellectual infrastructure in Palestine

Considering that, 

– Palestine is a critical and urgent matter for us as members of the World Anthropological Union and a global community of scholars. The Israeli assaults include what the Palestinian Professor Karma Nabulsi defined as “scholasticide”: the systematic and wilful destruction of Palestinian education and knowledge systems, including universities, schools, libraries and archives.

The effects of scholasticide extend far beyond immediate and material destruction. By targeting schools, universities, libraries, and archives, Israel is dismantling the intellectual and cultural foundations of the Palestinian community and thus committing epistemicide. Yet even as Palestine is singular, we recognise in its predicament many elements of our own unresolved (neo)colonial and imperial struggles. The contemporary rise of ethno-nationalist fascism and militaristic responses to political problems is being normalized. The academy, mainstream media, political establishment and other sites of knowledge production are deeply implicated; 

– the ongoing genocidal aggression has systematically targeted and destroyed an intellectual infrastructure by killing Palestinian scholars in a calculated and unprecedented manner along with humanitarians, medical professionals, journalists and activists who acted as witnesses;  

– repression of Palestinian solidarity and rights activism is intensifying at universities across the world, threatening academic freedom. Scholars criticizing the violence perpetrated by Israel or calling for Palestinian rights are harassed, intimidated and silenced. Careers have been destroyed, public statements and job offers withdrawn, and critical debates and events on Palestine canceled or interrupted by the police. Palestinian students and scholars are particularly targeted, as are people of colour and anti-Zionist Jews accused of betraying their heritage. Critical theoretical frameworks used to understand Palestinian dispossession – including settler colonialism and Apartheid, even comparisons and contextualisation– are censored;

– it is the duty of the World Anthropological Union to nurture and offer active protection to scholars who take risks to speak, write and teach against oppressive regimes and systems of power. The repression of academic freedom around Palestine is an extreme expression of the denial of academic freedom that is occurring globally, to maintain unequal power relations;

– it is the duty of anthropologists, as an ethical commitment to the profession and given our history of working during, and in the aftermath of social and cultural destruction due to settler colonialism, to engage actively and deliberately against all processes of violence, aggression, ethnic cleansing and genocide; be it

Resolved, that the IUAES and WAU will:

Call for the immediate and unconditional cessation of Israel’s genocide, violence and occupation of Palestine, and war of aggression in Lebanon committed by Israel;

Work actively to offer support to Palestinian scholars and students and thus for the re-construction of the destroyed academic system in Palestine;

Establish, immediately, a working group to monitor and define guidelines to protect engaged scholarship against genocide, violence and repression;

Promote active solidarity with, and protection of, scholars facing censure for anti-war and anti-genocide engagement.

Submitted to the General Assembly by:

Juliana Caruso

Susan Chand

André Augusto da Fonseca

Antonio De Lauri

Nadia Farage

Malay Firoz

Kelly Gillespie

Carolina Giordano Bergmann

Susan Levine

Bobby Luthra Sinha

Kharnita Mohamed

Heidi Mogstad

Paulo Santilli