Upholding the Thawabet (الثوابت): Staying Principled in Education, Solidarity, and Resistance

A Special Issue of Theory, Research, and Action in Urban Education (TRAUE) 

Abstracts Due February 7th, 2025

Education is a tool; it is the tool with which constructed knowledge is perpetuated and passed from person to person (Dotson, 2014). This tool shapes the narratives pervading popular discourse. For three-quarters of a century in the West, this tool has erased Palestinians and the Palestinian experience in service of Western settler imperialism. The Palestinian cause (or القضية الفلسطينية as it is referred to in the Arab world) has long been the political and moral compass for anti-imperialists outside of the West. The recent escalation of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians and the proliferation of unconventional avenues for knowledge production and education has seeded, sharpened, and refocused commitments to fight imperial and settler violence by the West. Despite the destruction of 378 schools and all 12 universities, and the murder of over 12,000 children, education remains; students still yearn to learn, and teachers still teach (AJLabs, 2024; Beaule, 2024; Dader et al., 2024; Desai, 2024; Euro-Med Monitor, 2024; Zhang, 2024). 

Amid ongoing occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of Palestinians, this special issue of Theory, Research, and Action in Urban Education (TRAUE) seeks to trouble our understanding of the role of education in local and global struggles for liberation. 

Drawing from the words of Ruth Wilson Gilmore: struggles too have ancestors (Gilmore et al., 2017); the fight for a free Palestine did not begin this year and draws from lineages of liberation struggles across geographies of settler colonial violence and resistance, from working class, youth, and indigenous ways of knowing (Franjieh, 1972; Mokadi & Yousef, 2024; Salamanca, 2012). The Palestinian Thawabet (الثوابت), translated as “constants,” refers to the red lines demarcating what can not be compromised in the struggle for Palestinian liberation (Youssef & Mekleh, 2022). To remain principled is to honor and uphold these constants – the right to resistance, the rejection of colonialism, and the right to return. Grounded in a commitment to these principles and the lineages of struggle they belong to, we offer the following questions to guide this issue: 

We ask educators, scholars, and those working on the ground with young people what it means to be principled in anti-imperialist, anti-colonial struggles where you are. How does the struggle for a free Palestine signify broader fights and commitments to a Third World, Global South, and Global Majority Liberation? With Palestine as our moral compass, how might we reclaim the tool of education as a tool of epistemological liberation rather than as a tool of oppression? Situated in the West, how can we build solidarity with Palestine in the context of schools and schooling? In other words, how do we, as people who commit to the care of children, remain principled and steadfast in our resistance against colonization, imperialism, and violence in all of its manifestations? 

For this special issue of TRAUE, we invite educators, practitioners, scholars, students, artists, activists, and beyond to submit papers and other offerings (such as zines, paintings, oral storytelling, etc.) that advance our understanding of principled struggles through the lens of education. Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Anti-colonial and anti-imperialist pedagogical practice 
• Popular university movements, encampments, and university counter-movements  
• K-12 student movements and solidarity walk-outs 
• Trans-racial/pacific/national/etc- solidarities
• Genealogies of principled decolonial struggles 
• Otherwise sites of knowledge production (Crawley, 2020)
• The role of social media and digital third space 
• Teaching Palestine in and out of the classroom
• World-building, speculative, and abolitionist pedagogies 

To submit to this special issue, please take a look at our submission guidelines here and send abstracts to [email protected] by February 7th, 2025. Abstracts should be no more than 500 words excluding references. Please note that TRAUE is a peer-reviewed journal and that this special edition features work by graduate students as well as educators, practitioners, scholars, students, artists, activists, and beyond. If you have questions about the submission process, please reach out!

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References

AJLabs. (2024, August 14). Israel’s intensifying attacks on Gaza schools. Al Jazeera. Retrieved November 26, 2024, from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/14/israels-intensifying-attacks-on-gaza-schools.

Beaule, V. (2024, September 11). 70% of schools in Gaza destroyed or damaged during israel-hamas war, ABC News analysis finds. Abc News. Retrieved November 26, 2024, from https://abcnews.go.com/International/70-schools-gaza-destroyed-damaged-israel-hamas-war/story?id=113412283.

Crawley, A. (2020). Stayed | Freedom | Hallelujah. In Otherwise Worlds: Against Settler Colonialism and Anti-Blackness (pp. 27–37). essay, Duke University Press.

Dader, K., Ghantous, W., Masad, D., Joronen, M., Kallio, K. P., Riding, J., & Vainikka, J. (2024). Topologies of scholasticide in Gaza: Education in spaces of elimination. Fennia – International Journal of Geography, 202(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.147002 

Desai, C. (2024, June 8). Israel has destroyed or damaged 80% of schools in Gaza. This is scholasticide. The Guardian. Retrieved November 26, 2024, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/08/israel-destroying-schools-scholasticide.

Dotson, K. (2014). Conceptualizing epistemic oppression. Social Epistemology, 28(2), 115–138.

Franjieh, S. (1972). How revolutionary is the Palestinian resistance? A Marxist interpretation. Journal of Palestine Studies, 1(2), 52–60.

Gilmore, R. W., Johnson, G. T., & Lubin, A. (2017). Futures of Black Radicalism. Futures of Black Radicalism, pp. 225–240.

Israeli Army’s destruction of more schools, health centres in Gaza is additional manifestation of genocide. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. (2024a, May 16). https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6330/Israeli-army 

Mokadi, T., & Yousef, A. (2024). Beyond the Occupation: Palestinian Youth and the Struggle for Political Change. An-Najah University Journal for Research-B (Humanities), 38(11), 2189-2228.

Salamanca, O. J., Qato, M., Rabie, K., & Samour, S. (2012). Past is present: Settler colonialism in Palestine. Settler colonial studies, 2(1), 1-8.

Youssef, K., & Mekleh, M. (2022, November 10). Oslo is long dead. time to revive the plo. Electronic Intifada. Retrieved from https://electronicintifada.net/content/oslo-long-dead-time-revive-plo/36656. 

Zhang, S. (2024, August 2). Israel has damaged or destroyed 85 percent of schools in Gaza. Truthout. Retrieved November 26, 2024, from https://truthout.org/articles/israel-has-damaged-or-destroyed-85-percent-of-schools-in-gaza/.

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Editorial Board

Mohammad Jehad Ahmad, Cohort 23

Rachel Duff, Cohort 23

Gabrielle Figueroa, Cohort 23

Anisa Yudawanti, Stanford University

Special thanks to contributions from Shreya Sunderram

 

Abstracts Due February 7th, 2025