Daphna Golan Opinion Destroying Palestinian Universities
haaretz.com
As Israeli students are finishing their final
exams, Palestinian students in the occupied territories don’t know
whether their institutions will be opening for the coming academic year
or if their lecturers will continue to teach, as dozens of lecturers
with European and American citizenship are being expelled.
Around half the foreign lecturers at Palestinian universities
started receiving letters last November, saying their requests to have
their residency visas extended had been refused because they’ve been
“living in the area for more than five years.”
In
addition, the foreign spouses of these lecturers are being asked to
sign declarations that they do not intend to work. To assure that they
keep this promise, they are asked to pay guarantees of between 20,000
shekels and 80,000 shekels (about $5,500 to $22,000), which will be
forfeited if it is discovered that they’d been working despite the ban.
We are not talking about universities in Gaza,
where both the lecturers and students are under siege and cannot leave
at all, and foreign lecturers cannot enter, but universities in the West
Bank.
This year, at Hebrew University in Jerusalem,
I had the privilege of teaching both Israeli and Palestinian students,
as well as students from Peru, Kenya, Cyprus, Canada and Greece. During
this academic year, as every year, there were international conferences
held at the university attended by foreign researchers. By contrast,
dozens of students and lecturers from abroad who want to study or teach
at Palestinian universities are being arrested at the border and
expelled.
Laura Wick and her
husband, Prof. Roger Hickok, are among those who are being forced to
leave after 35 years of teaching and research at Birzeit University,
because their visas have not been extended. Wick specializes in
pediatric medical research and Hickok is a professor of European
history, one of the founders of the university’s Institute of
International Studies.
In
a public letter that was circulated on international academic networks,
Hickok described how he and his wife had become “illegal” residents. It
happened when they returned from a home visit to the United States. At
Ben-Gurion Airport they were given a tourist visa for two weeks, and
told they would have to ask the military authorities to extend it. The
description of their Kafkaesque efforts to enter the military camp in
Beit El to deal with their visas, and of the phone calls and faxes that
weren’t answered for months, is sad and depressing.
The presence of
international researchers for lengthy periods is an international
criterion for ranking institutions of higher education. Without such a
presence, the university suffers from what’s referred to as
“ghettoization of knowledge.” What’s more, a significant number of the
lecturers being expelled are Palestinians who studied in the United
States and Europe; some were born in the occupied territories and went
to study abroad.
>> What I saw at a Shin Bet lecture at Jerusalem's Hebrew University || Opinion >>
While Israel makes
great efforts and invests millions to bring back Israeli academics who
are teaching abroad, it makes life very difficult for Palestinian
lecturers who studied and taught abroad, allowing them to teach in
Palestinian universities for five years at most. The expulsion of
Palestinian lecturers, which prevents them from getting tenure and
developing an academic career in the territories will only lead to the
slow destruction of Palestinian universities.
At
Birzeit University, all students are required to study European
philosophy and history. It was also the first university in the Middle
East to establish a women’s studies program. However, the male and
female students – women account for more than half of the student body –
have almost no option to study abroad, and the lecturers who teach
English, European or American history, cultural studies and foreign
literature, are being expelled.
During the first
intifada, the Israeli army closed the universities for years, and closed
schools and kindergartens for many months, creating the so-called “lost
generation.” This is the generation whose education suffered a serious
setback and from which the lecturers of today could have sprung.
Does Israel want to
create more lost generations of Palestinians who won’t get higher
education and are not exposed to foreign ideas and knowledge? Does the
destruction of higher education in the territories benefit Israel? Will
Israel’s bureaucratic violence lead to similar restrictions being
imposed on Israeli students and academics?
Prof. Golan
teaches in the Hebrew University Law Faculty. Her book “Hope on the
Campus Margins – Israeli and Palestinian Students in Jerusalem,” was
recently published by Resling.
Commenti
Posta un commento