(UN)SILENCED: What doesn't kill us makes us louder: A Visual Ethnography of Academic Censorship and Palestinian Resistance

Academic freedom is a core value of Western higher education, with freedom of speech and research being its main pillars. When it comes to Palestinian rights, however, these principles are often applied selectively or fail to materialize at all. By conducting qualitative ethnographic research on and in collaboration with Palestinian advocacy groups in the Netherlands, I was able to gain a deeper understanding of how and why anti-Zionist dissent is often silenced in the context of Dutch academia. This multimodal research focuses on one particular event of academic censorship that resulted in the cancelation of a panel discussion organized by “Students for Palestine” (SfP). The visual output shows my main interlocutors gradually reconstructing what happened through a decolonial lens; they bear upon colonial and orientalist practices in order to deconstruct this specific incident. I then elaborate on these practices in this article, in order to provide a deeper understanding of what...Show moreAcademic freedom is a core value of Western higher education, with freedom of speech and research being its main pillars. When it comes to Palestinian rights, however, these principles are often applied selectively or fail to materialize at all. By conducting qualitative ethnographic research on and in collaboration with Palestinian advocacy groups in the Netherlands, I was able to gain a deeper understanding of how and why anti-Zionist dissent is often silenced in the context of Dutch academia. This multimodal research focuses on one particular event of academic censorship that resulted in the cancelation of a panel discussion organized by “Students for Palestine” (SfP). The visual output shows my main interlocutors gradually reconstructing what happened through a decolonial lens; they bear upon colonial and orientalist practices in order to deconstruct this specific incident. I then elaborate on these practices in this article, in order to provide a deeper understanding of what laid the foundation of this censorship case. I do this by looking at the impact that orientalist and neoliberalist practices have on the institutional censorship of Palestine. The written output also more accurately discusses the aftermath of this event, that is the way the student group resisted this discrimination case by means of an academic boycott. Moreover, both the visual and text portions of this thesis offer a thorough analysis of what it means for minoritized and racialized voices to be silenced and delegitimized, and how censoring attempts affect Palestinian identity. Finally, the article provides a reflexive analysis that is meant to gauge the extent to which internalized sentiments of fear and paranoia within the movement at large influenced my own ability to gain access and trust throughout the realization of this study.Show less

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(UN)SILENCED: What doesn't kill us makes us louder: A Visual Ethnography of Academic Censorship and Palestinian Resistance