[News] An open letter from the presidents of Gaza universities

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 An open letter from the presidents of Gaza universities

*Our campuses may have been razed, but our universities continue to exist.*
By Ayman Sobh <https://www.aljazeera.com/author/ayman-sobh>, Omar Milad
<https://www.aljazeera.com/author/omar-milad> and Asad Asaad
<https://www.aljazeera.com/author/asad-asaad>
Published On 14 Jul 2025 -
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/7/14/an-open-letter-from-the-presidents-of-gaza-universities
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[image: Destroyed Gaza university]
Displaced Palestinian amputee Mervat al-Bassiouny shelters inside a
building at the Islamic University of Gaza, from which she graduated and
which was destroyed by the Israeli army in Gaza City on April 11, 2025
[File: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters]

We, the presidents of Gaza’s three non-profit universities— Al-Aqsa
University, Al-Azhar University-Gaza, and the Islamic University of Gaza —
together accounting for the vast majority of Gaza’s students and faculty
members, issue this unified statement to the international academic
community at a time of unprecedented devastation of higher education in
Gaza.

Israel’s ongoing genocidal war has brought about scholasticide—a systematic
and deliberate attempt to eliminate our universities, their infrastructure,
faculty, and students. This destruction is not collateral; it is part of a
targeted effort to eradicate the foundations of higher education in
Gaza—foundations that have long stood as pillars of resilience, hope, and
intellectual freedom under conditions of occupation and siege. While
academic institutions across Palestine have faced attacks for decades, what
we are witnessing today is an escalation: a shift from repeated acts of
destruction to an attempt at total annihilation.

Yet, we remain resolute. For more than a year, we have mobilised and taken
steps to resist this assault and ensure that our universities endure.

Despite the physical obliteration of campuses, laboratories, libraries, and
other facilities, and the assassination of our students and colleagues, our
universities continue to exist. We are more than buildings — we are
academic communities, comprised of students, faculty, and staff, still
alive and determined to carry forward our mission.

As articulated in the Unified Emergency Statement
<https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/5/29/open-letter-by-gaza-academics-and-university-administrators-to-the-world>
from Palestinian Academics and Administrators issued on May 29, 2024,
“Israeli occupation forces have demolished our buildings, but our
universities live on.”

For over a year, our faculty, staff and students have persisted in our core
mission — teaching — under unimaginably harsh conditions. Constant
bombardment, starvation, restrictions on internet access, unstable
electricity, and the ongoing horrors of genocide have not broken our will.
We are still here, still teaching, and still committed to the future of
education in Gaza.

We urgently call on our colleagues around the world to work for:

   - A sustainable and lasting ceasefire, without which no education system
   can thrive, and an end to all complicity with this genocide.
   - Immediate international mobilisation to support and protect Gaza’s
   higher education institutions as vital to the survival and long-term future
   of the Palestinian people.
   - Recognition of scholasticide as a systematic war on education, and the
   necessity of coordinated and strategic international support in partnership
   with our universities for the resilience and rebuilding of our academic
   infrastructure and communities.

We appeal to the international academic community — our colleagues,
institutions, and friends — to:

   - Support our efforts to continue teaching and conducting research,
   under siege and amidst loss.
   - Commit to the long-term rebuilding of Gaza’s universities in
   partnership with us, respecting our institutional autonomy and academic
   agency.
   - Work in partnership with us. Engage directly with and support the very
   institutions that continue to embody academic life and collective
   intellectual resistance in Gaza.

Last year, we formally established the Emergency Committee of the
Universities in Gaza, representing our three institutions and affiliated
colleges — together enrolling between 80 and 85 percent of Gaza
universities’ students. The committee exists to resist the erasure of our
universities and offer a unified voice for Gaza’s academic community. It
has since established subject-focused subcommittees to serve as trusted and
coordinated channels for support.

We call upon academic communities around the world to coordinate themselves
in response to this call. The time for symbolic solidarity has passed. We
now ask for practical, structured, and enduring partnership.

Work alongside us to ensure that Gaza’s universities live on and remain a
vital part of our collective future.
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