Cairo Papers Talk Series | Palestine: Confronting Genocide — On the University

There are many ways to destroy a university. Israel has tried them all. But why? What is it that a university does that primes it for spectacular destruction? How did Palestinians build these sanctuaries of learning, and how do they defend these citadels for social and political regeneration? Charting the long Palestinian struggle for a self-determined education, Mezna Qato, University of Cambridge, considers what education was for a people, and what we may yet learn.
 

About the series: 
Palestine: Confronting Genocide
Cairo Papers in Social Science, The American University in Cairo

More than two years since the onset of the most recent genocide in Palestine, suffering, destruction, starvation and massive displacement have remained an everyday reality in Palestine. The vast numbers of the dead, the wounded and the missing continue to rise, along with the ruination of all aspects of living, from buildings, infrastructure, to food, water, health, educational and religious institutions. What does it mean to live and to witness a genocide? What does it mean to describe an everyday of genocide? How can the current genocide be situated in the global political cartography of power? Have previously recognized categories and paradigms, such as international law, humanitarian law, democratic rule, morality and ethical responsibility, among others, been emptied out of meaning? How do we read the current moment in the long durée of settler colonialism in Palestine, imperial desires and resistance? Is this genocidal moment unprecedented or an intensification of a long process of extermination and subjugation that has been unfolding for decades? How to understand what is happening in Palestine next to what is happening in Syria, in Sudan, in Yemen, in Libya, in Lebanon and Iraq, and so on? What have been new registers of resistance, as they have been unfolding throughout the years? How do the social sciences and humanities confront the possibilities and limits of knowledge in the face of the horrible and the unfathomable of genocide?

Make sure to catch our upcoming talks on the following dates:

• Saturday, November 22, 2025 | 7–9 PM – By: Yasmeen Qadan

• Saturday, November 29, 2025 | 7–9 PM – By: Raef Zreik

• Saturday, December 6, 2025 | 7–9 PM – By: Sherene Seikaly