Fobzu & UCU present the Friends of Birzeit University 40th Anniversary Programme

EDUCATION, OCCUPATION & LIBERATION

Traditions of Liberation Education

with

Professor Karma Nabulsi, Oxford University

and

Chair: Professor Hugh Starkey, Institute of Education (UCL)

In discussions on decolonising education, we hope to identify common aims and strategies, and then to engage universities in that process, while safeguarding against their tendency to adopt safer, more comfortable, more distant imperial pasts. Which principles can apply to the selection of subjects, events, and geographic locations, in order to avoid a competing among sufferings; a focus on colonial practices and imperial evils which render those who fought them invisible; or producing ceaseless ‘stories’ from the global south that are entirely deracinated from their temporal and spatial histories of struggle, and their collective nature?

Answers can be found in the vast repository of anti-colonial struggles: the words and practices of those who fought for liberation and equality, and against imperialism and colonialism. They succeeded by relying on common principles, building an internationalist solidarity with all who faced a common predicament, and possessing a language and a form of struggle that was remarkably creative in dealing with empire. Karma will explore just one of these remarkable struggles – the Palestinian revolution.

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Professor Karma Nabulsi is Fellow in Politics at St Edmund Hall, and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Department of Politics and IR (DPIR) at the University of Oxford. Her research and publications cover 18th and 19th C political thought, the laws of war, and the politics of Palestinian refugees and representation. Last year Karma won the Guardian Higher Education Network’s ‘Inspiring Leader’ Award and she is UCU Equality Officer at the university.

Professor Hugh Starkey is Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, University College London (UCL). His research and publications cover education for democratic citizenship and human rights education developed in an intercultural perspective. In 2006 he co-founded the International Centre for Education and Democratic Citizenship (ICEDC) and since 2014 has edited the London Review of Education.