We are a group of academics and students throughout Swedish universities, campaigning for our institutions to cut ties with Israel and begin collaborations with Palestine.
Background
Since October 2023, we have been organising in numerous ways to make meaningful links with Palestinian scholars and students whose universities have been destroyed in Israel’s genocide. We have set up encampments at universities, held teach-ins and online courses, and written a report that details the extent of Swedish collaborations with Israeli universities.
Collaborating with Palestine
We are working to set up collaborations with Palestinian universities, at departmental/faculty levels and independently.
Since Swedish universities have so far refused to officially establish any links with Palestine and provide support to the tens of thousands of displaced academics and students whose universities have been destroyed, we are setting up unofficial collaborations. For now, these take the form of extracurricular courses, but our aim is that they will develop into broader, funded collaborations.
Petitioning in Sweden
We are working to petition SUHF (the Swedish University and College Association, the para-institutional group that makes recommendations for universities) to change its policies towards being more critical of the government’s position on the ongoing genocide, and to encourage them to put their dedication to academic freedom into action by taking a stand against scholasticide, which is being committed by Israel in Palestine.
We are also petitioning Sweden’s academic unions to support a boycott of Israeli universities, which so far they have been reluctant to do. Without the support of unions, we cannot take organised action against universities that continue to support an ongoing genocide.
Resources
We are working to set up collaborations with students and scholars in Palestine. The first of these is a seminar series on Palestinian traditions and histories of storytelling, which runs from 3rd December 2024 to 22nd April 2025. It is a collaboration between four universities in the West Bank (Al-Quds, Birzeit, Hebron, and An-Naja), the Tamer Institute for Community Education, and scholars at many Swedish universities. It is aimed at Swedish and Palestinian students in the humanities, and delivered by international teachers. More information is available on the course page: Country of Words: Storytelling Between Palestine and Sweden. For broader information on collaborations and ways of building solidarity, here are some organisations that provide learning resources in and about Palestine:
Campus in Camps provides classes to displaced students in Palestinian refugee camps; Tamer Institution for Community Education in Ramallah has a wide range of training and educational programs; Sakiya develops agrarian traditions by hosting artists, cultural workers, and local volunteers in Ramallah; Librarians and Archivists with Palestine has a toolkit for establishing collaborations with Palestinians and reading groups for Palestine; Decolonize Palestine has archived an indispensable list of myths about Palestine, each of which it brilliantly debunks; All 4 Palestine contains an archive of important Palestinian cultural, academic, and public figures and groups; Scholars at Risk helps over 300 scholars per year find refuge from violence and censorship; the Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza has issued a call from the midst of genocide in Gaza for international support and solidarity; Decolonizing Architecture Art Research (DAAR) hosts many programs and exhibitions; Scientists for Palestine provides funding for Palestinian students to be hosted at universities around the world; scholars at the University of Antwerp have composed a document (available below) that details the many ways in which Israel is breaking international law through plausible apartheid, genocide, and occupation, and the legal duty of European universities to actively distance themselves from complicit institutions.
“Do not describe what the camera can see
Mahmoud Darwish, ‘Edward Said: A Contrapuntal Reading’
of your wounds. And scream that you may hear yourself,
and scream that you may know you’re still alive,
and alive, and that life on this earth is
possible. Invent a hope for speech…”
Get in touch!
We have meetings every other Monday, on Zoom at 4pm! Email us to join: phdsforpalestine@gmail.com
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