Epistemicide is the wilful and systematic erasure and devaluation of knowledge systems of a people which serves as a mechanism of genocide, slavery and settler colonialism.

If scholasticide entails the annihilation of educational infrastructures and killing of educators and learners, epistemicide creates the conditions where the existence of a people and their ways of knowing and sharing knowledge is structurally impeded and rendered invisible or unworthy of consideration.

This teach-in introduces the concept in relation to genocide and apartheid, and traces the legal, ethical and intellectual obligations of universities today.

We will have a break between 18.45-1915. There will be drinks, Palestinian dates and cookies offered by ASCA. From 19.15 – 20.00 there will be time for an informal Q&A with the panel. 

Programme

Sruti Bala interviewing student Lily George (former chair of ASVA, student union in Amsterdam): how students represented in ASVA see their own and the university’s responsibility towards Palestinians, and how they see the responsibility of the university towards their own students. 

Pepijn Brandon (Professor of Global Economic and Social History at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam): What Palestine teaches us about global politics and social justice today. 

Kanad Bagchi (Postdoc in International Law, University of Amsterdam): The ICJ Advisory Opinion on the OPT, with a focus on apartheid.

Gamze Erdem Türkelli (Associate Research Professor at the Law & Development Research Group, University of Antwerp): The Legal brief on the 'Breaches of obligations arising from peremptory norms of general international law and consequences for institutional cooperation with universities in Israel', of which prof. Erdem Türkelli was one of the co-authors.

Omar Barghouti (PhD candidate in Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, co-founder of BDS movement); epistemicide in relation to the ethical obligation of ending complicity in occupation, apartheid and genocide. 

Where: Oudemanhuispoort (OMHP), Room D.009, University of Amsterdam

Organised by ASCA Teach-in group, UvA Staff for Palestine and Dutch Scholars for Palestine marking Israeli Apartheid Week