Faculty at the University of Texas at Austin protested scholasticide last May.
Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images
Last week members of the American Historical Association voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution condemning scholasticide in Gaza amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
The resolution noted that attacks by the Israel Defense Forces have “effectively obliterated Gaza’s education system,” destroying the majority of schools and all 12 university campuses in the territory.
Now the AHA’s elected council will consider whether or not to accept the resolution.
The resolution—which passed on a 428-to-88 vote—follows a wave of protests on U.S. college campuses last spring, during which pro-Palestinian demonstrators leveled charges of scholasticide, among other things, at Israel. A group of 1,600 academics also signed on to an open letter in April that accused Israel of scholasticide and “indiscriminate killing of educators and students.” The Israeli government denies the charge, arguing that Gaza’s educational institutions have been taken over by Hamas.
But what is scholasticide? Here’s a look at the origin of the term and why Israel stands accused of it.
Scholasticide Defined
Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian scholar and an emeritus fellow in politics and international relations at the University of Oxford, is credited with coining the term in 2009. Nabulsi has described scholasticide as the systematic destruction of educational institutions.
“We knew before, and see more clearly now than ever, that Israel is seeking to annihilate an educated Palestine,” Nabulsi told The Guardian during the 2009 war between Israel and Hamas.
(Nabulsi did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.)
While her immediate remarks at the time were in reference to that particular conflict, she argued that Israel had a long pattern of attacking educational institutions dating back to 1948.
The transnational organization Scholars Against War has since built on Nabulsi’s definition, listing 18 acts as scholasticide. Those actions include killing students, teachers and other school-related personnel; destroying educational institutions; blocking the construction of new schools; and broadly “preventing scholarly exchange in all of its forms.”
A Revival of the Phrase
The term “scholasticide” first appeared in Inside Higher Ed in 2009, shortly after Nabulsi coined it, connected to debates over boycotting Israeli institutions during its conflict with Hamas at that time. That boycott effort largely failed and the term “scholasticide” shrank from the academic lexicon before re-emerging in 2024 amid the current war between Israel and Hamas, which is now in its 16th month and has led to the deaths of tens of thousands Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip. More than 1,200 civilians, both Israelis and foreign nationals, were killed by Hamas in the October 2023 terror attack that prompted the war; another 254 were taken hostage, many of whom were later killed or still have not returned home.
Google Scholar indicates the word “scholasticide” appeared in only a few articles before 2024. Now the search engine fetches more than 150 results for the term, many originating last year.
According to Google Trends, searches for the term “scholasticide” jumped last spring, coinciding with pro-Palestinian student protests that popped up on campuses across the U.S. Protesters at some institutions, including the University of Oregon and the University of Texas, also held scholasticide vigils to remember and mourn the lives of scholars lost in war.
Some scholars have also used the term “educide” to describe what is happening in Gaza. That phrase emerged from the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which heavily damaged educational infrastructure in the country. However, according to Google Scholar and Google Trends, the term “scholasticide” appears to be used more broadly than “educide” since last year.
Accusations of Scholasticide
Beyond the attacks on students and faculty, United Nations experts have also expressed concern about the destruction of educational institutions in Gaza and raised the question of scholasticide last year.
“With more than 80% of schools in Gaza damaged or destroyed, it may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide,’” a group of more than 20 U.N. experts said in an April news release from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The group alleged “a systematic pattern of violence aimed at dismantling the very foundation of Palestinian society.”
The Israeli military subsequently issued a statement in May emphasizing that the IDF has no “doctrine that aims at causing maximal damage to civilian infrastructure.” Officials accused Hamas of exploiting “civilian structures for terror purposes” by using such spaces to launch rocket attacks, store weapons and carry out various other purposes, according to The New York Times.
A Failed Resolution
In addition to the AHA resolution condemning scholasticide, the term also appeared in a proposed Modern Language Association resolution to endorse the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. The resolution cited the April statement from the U.N. and alleged that “Israel’s campaign of scholasticide has destroyed every university in Gaza and killed at least 5,479 students and 356 educators.”
However, the MLA’s elected Executive Council refused to let members vote on the resolution, prompting protests at last weekend’s Modern Language Association Annual Convention.