We write this piece as a group of education researchers working in the fields of international education and development, including with respect to conflict studies, forced migration and comparative studies, witnessing the in Palestine. At the time of writing, between 7 October and 13 December 2023, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),. As the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres,: “Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children.”

This has developed after the on 7^th of October following Hamas’s attacks, and against the backdrop of the violent occupation of Palestine with the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.Based on current information, out of 17 higher education institutions and have been destroyed or partially destroyed in Gaza, affecting the infrastructure intended for securing educational and cultural futures for Palestinians. Over203 teachers have been killed by Israeli forces. In addition, UNRWA has reported that have been killed.

As academics, we see it as our responsibility to educate and advocate for justice. According to Angela Davis, this crisis is’. This recognises that while the intensity of humanitarian catastrophe and injustice escalated recently, it began 75 years ago with the occupation of Palestine. Yet, many networks and professional associations serving our communities have failed to engage with this history of injustice and the current humanitarian crisis faced by Palestinian people, whether through public statements, organised academic dialogue, and/or engaging in solidarity actions with other groups and actors including teachers and civil society organisaitons. This lack of explicit engagement, despite the clear political urgency of the situation, amounts to an active and deafening silence.

Implications of academic and scholarly silence and inaction

The silence or inaction of professional associations is striking in a context where the heads of 18 UN agencies and non-governmental organisations – often partners for research in our field – have released a calling for an urgent ceasefire and for all parties to respect their “obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law”, including to protect civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals and schools. Yet, our community – which advocates for social justice, equity and decolonisation– has failed to use this collective expertise to sufficiently engage with and educate each other, as well as with policymakers and institutions, to make a difference to the lived reality of the marginalised and oppressed.

What does this silence and inaction mean for our field and how does it reveal a fundamental disregard for the education and lives of women, children, young people, refugees and displaced populations who are on the frontlines?  These are the very people who are supposed to be at the centre of our professional existence. We reflect on how this silence is often justified through an unproductive notion of ‘hierarchies of injustice’, the false idea that speaking up for one oppressed group implies the dismissal of others’ oppression. We urge the international education community of researchers, educators and practitioners to recognise the interconnectedness of injustice.

In doing so, it is crucial to remember, as Martin Luther King, Jr. astutely , “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” This principle of interconnectedness should form the basis of ethical solidarity and committed scholarship.

Recommendations for international academic solidarity

Since our freedom is so intertwined with that of others, we call on our networks to foster new forms of international solidarity with the following recommendations in mind:

First, professional associations must protect academic freedom and freedom of speech as a collective right. We note with concern how legitimate, evidence-informed scholarship which critiques the occupation, the killing of civilians (including scholars and students), and the destruction of educational infrastructure has been met with a barrage . In some cases, it has even resulted in the suspension and dismissal of academics from employment, as highlighted. highlights the reality of the threats to those speaking out against the unfolding genocide. Concrete steps for action to redress these developments include:

• Establishing academic freedom committees within networks to safeguard and protect academic freedom and freedom of speech. These committees should support scholars facing harassment or intimidation due to their critical perspectives.

Second, knowledge and understanding thrive and are nurtured in and through professional associations that can promote and create conducive and safe spaces for engaging in challenging and complex dialogues. We believe that such debate should be at the heart of the upcoming Comparative International Education Society (CIES) conference on the theme of ‘’, which has been identified in recognition of ‘the fact that education is, by definition, a public act’. However, this is not evident from any statement thus far issued by CIES. More just dialogue within professional associations can be engendered by:

• Initiating a process of critical self-reflection and unlearning regarding the    role and obligations of networks, especially those networks whose research is concerned with both human rights and the Global South. This reflection process should emphasise networks’ responsibilities toward the communities they collaborate with.   

Thirdly, no ‘hierarchy of injustice’ exists. Where professional associations claim neutrality and impartiality as principles for non-engagement on this issue, it can be construed as abdicating responsibility for justice. The old adage of who will speak out for the academic community and scholarship when all voices are silenced reminds us of Desmond Tutu’s statement: “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”. As such, academic associations and institutions should be:

• Engaging with conflicts in various parts of the world in historicised, politicised and contextually nuanced ways, without erasing the language of critique produced by historically marginalised and violated populations.  
• Addressing the silencing of academics who might face cancellation or punitive actions, particularly emerging scholars from marginalised and underrepresented groups, scholars of colour and scholars who themselves are directly affected.

Fourth, professional associations whose membership includes scholars, practitioners and funders associated with conflict studies carry an ethical responsibility to speak out against injustice in different ways, and to act in solidarity with communities facing conflict and oppression. Remaining silent whilst benefiting from grants and research is unjustifiable as a form of engagement. This reflects an extractive model of knowledge production, reminiscent of the colonisation these networks are striving to confront. Going forward, these injustices can be remedied in part by:

• Addressing power imbalances within international organisations, particularly the dominance of entities from the Global North, and ensuring redistribution, reparations, epistemic justice, critical ‘Southern-led’ approaches and learning and unlearning from critical voices of Global South scholars in these networks.
• Rethinking and redefining research ethics codes to embody the principles of ethical and committed scholarship, extending to protecting and respecting the well-being of marginalised communities.

Fifth and finally, the very least we can all ask for is a permanent ceasefire.

We urge the chairs, trustees and executive committees of our professional communities to circulate these recommendations among their members, formally consider these recommendations, and to take action. Where their professional associations remain silent and fail to take action, we call on members of their committees to consider their positions.

We hope that this blog will encourage further reflection, debate and actions. Through this process, we hope we can stand in ethical solidarity with those who are central to our professional careers in times of genocide(s). By doing so, we echo calls from colleagues at:

“Birzeit University calls upon the international academic community, unions, and students to fulfill their intellectual and academic duty of seeking truth, maintaining a critical distance from state-sponsored propaganda, and to hold the perpetrators of genocide and those complicit with them accountable.”

Written by Laila Kadiwal, Mario Novelli, Pauline Rose, Jee Rubin, Yusuf Sayed, Maha Shuayb and Arathi Sriprakash.

Image Source: “” by is licensed under .

Decolonising international and comparative education: privilege, power, and partnership allyship coalition

In this interactive Café, we use theatre, stories, and games to examine the mechanisms of colonial reproduction in the international and comparative education sector and identify ways to collectively transform them. This is a safe, brave and open space to have ‘both challenging and supportive’ conversations (Racial Justice Network, 2019) in relatively privileged locations about how the field reproduces coloniality and what we can do to challenge it with a touch of humour.

Following the recent Black Lives Matters protests, there is an increased interest among a large section of the international and comparative education sector in decolonising. This increased interest is evident in the surge in the production of solidarity statements, talks, blogs, articles, and events on the theme of decolonisation. However, as Tuck and Yang (2012, p. 1) highlight, “the easy adoption of decolonizing discourse… turns decolonizing into a metaphor”. There is a heightened danger of decolonisation turning into a tick box exercise and a slogan that reinscribes racial, epistemic, political, and socio-economic domination and that may even disguise neo-colonial agendas.  

In trying to ensure that our own decolonising efforts do not turn into this type of tick box exercise, we have developed the Theatre of the Privileged (ToP). The ToP is influenced by the Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal, 1985), and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1972). However, unlike Boal and Freire we do not focus on assisting oppressed people to recognise their oppression. Instead, the ToP is about people located in relatively privileged intersectional locations recognising their complicity in maintaining systems of domination.

Rooted in critical anti-racist standpoints, especially, bell hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy the ToP involves ‘reversing the gaze’ on research elites, identifying assumptions, silences, methods, epistemologies, and practices. The questions of ‘internalised colonialism’ as researchers (Smith, 1999, p. xvi) and ‘white gaze’ (Pailey, 2020), and how these shapes research, funding, collaborations and knowledge production are explored. In doing so, we will unpack how inherited discriminatory conditions, policies and procedures sustained by us as ĚÇĐÄ´ŤĂ˝ community lead to ‘symbolic erasure’ of our colleagues and partners such as Maha and Mai from the Centre for Lebanese Studies.

The ToP is decolonial. We collapse the distinction between speakers and audience and engage everyone in exploring, showing, analysing and transforming everyday practices in our field that sustain colonisation. It breaks the binary between experts and non-experts, dominator and dominated and makes everyone responsible for challenging and transforming unjust structures. 

Central to the ToP is the concept of ‘unlearning’: “an effort to forget your usual way of doing something so that you can learn a new and sometimes better way” (Cambridge, 2022). In seeking to advance ‘epistemic disobedience’ (Mignolo, 2009), we also recognise that these conversations are messy and require going beyond ‘partnership’ and ‘allyship’ to building coalition. As part of our commitment to anti-racist praxis, coalition is vital to reimagining transformative practices in the field of international and comparative education. 

The problem-posing cafe hopes to enable us to explore and co-construct practical tips and strategies to decolonise our ways of collaborating grounded in the ethical principles of ‘relationships, connections, reciprocity and accountability’ (Smith, 2021, p. xiv).

Please come and collaborate in reimagining transformative justice with us!

References 

Boal, A., 1985. Theatre of the Oppressed. Theatre Communications Group, New York. 

Cambridge, 2022. UNLEARN | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary [WWW Document]. URL (accessed 2.22.22). 

Freire, P., 1972. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Sheed and Ward, London. 

hooks,  bell, 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge, New York. 

Mignolo, W.D., 2009. Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom. Theory Cult. Soc. 26, 8. 

Pailey, R.N., 2020. De‐centring the ‘white gaze’of development. Dev. Change 51, 729–745. 

Racial Justice Network, 2019. Unlearning Racism Course: anti-racist learning and practice from a position of racial privilege. 

Tuck, E., Yang, K.W., 2012. Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization Indig. Educ. Soc. 1. 

Tuhiwahi Smith, L., 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books Ltd., London. 

Laila Kadiwal

Mai Abu Moghli

Mai Abu Moghli holds a PhD in human rights education from UCL Institute of Education and an MA in human rights from the University of Essex. Mai’s work focuses on critical approaches to human rights education, teacher professional development (TPD) in crisis and emergencies, refugee education and decolonising research and higher education. Mai is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Lebanese Studies and has a teaching experience in a number of academic institutions both in the UK and Palestine. She has published on topics related to the status of Palestinian refugees, Palestinian Teachers’ Activism, and Teacher Professional Development in Contexts of Mass Displacement.

Lynsey Robinson

Lynsey Robinson is a PhD candidate in the Department of Education, Practice and Society at the IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society where she is researching the effects of private sector engagement on inequalities in the Nigerian education system. She holds an MSc in Research for International Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and an MA in Education, Gender and International Development from UCL. Previously she worked on the Equalities in Public Private Partnerships (EQUIPPPS) network.

Maha shuayb

Professor Maha Shuayb is the British Academy Bilateral Chair of Education in Conflict at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge and the Centre for Lebanese Studies. Prof Shuayb is also the Director of the Centre for Lebanese Studies since 2012. Before that, she was a Senior Fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Maha has a Ph.D. in education from the University of Cambridge. She is a founding member and the former president of the Lebanese Association for History. She is also a co-founding member of the Disability Hub, a collective initiative that aims to promote research and advocacy around disability in the Arab World.

Maha’s research focuses on the sociology and politics of education, particularly equity and equality in education, and the implications of inequalities on marginalized groups such as refugee children and persons with disabilities. Her research interests also focus on curriculum and educational reform in Lebanon. Maha has numerous publications on education.

Andrew Armstrong

Andrew supports Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) communications and a variety of network activities and projects, including the Teachers in Crisis Contexts (TiCC) Collaborative and the update of the INEE Minimum Standards for Education. He recently received his Master’s degree in International Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. As an Education Fellow, his research focused on teacher identity and wellbeing in settings of fragility, education as a means for restorative justice and transformation, and how power, identity, and politics operate within the space of the classroom.