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Scholars stand for Palestine: 42 ISS MA Graduates (2022-2023) call for mobilization in support of Palestine

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On the 20th of December 2023, the MA students of ISS (cohort 2022-2023) celebrated their graduation. For them, the day of joy and pride was overshadowed by world events and a number of students made a statement in support of the Palestinian cause in relation to the current conflict in the region. As the statement was made on behalf of a large number of students, the editorial board of BLISS decided, at the students’ specific request, to publish their statement. We congratulate the students on their graduation and wish them well as they take the next step in their careers. This is the statement the students made:

MA-Graduation 2022-2023

Dear graduates, dear family and friends, dear ISS community,

We are gathered here today to celebrate our success in finishing our degree within the field of development studies. Besides celebrating all we have achieved and the futures that lay before us, we want to use this time and space to share our fears. We feel apprehensive to step out into the world in a hopeful manner. Rather, we feel conflicted.

Above all, at this institute, we have been taught to be critical and use our voices. Given the platform we have been granted here today, and as academics, through our degree, we feel responsible to speak up and no longer remain silent or neutral.

MA-Graduation 2022-2023

As we gather here today, an eliminatory assault is being waged by the state of Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza. This is not hyperbole. After two months of shelling the strip indiscriminately, including the use of white phosphorus, the bombing of hospitals and schools, calling for millions to evacuate in active war zones, and cutting all access to food, electricity, water and medical supplies, Israel is now in the middle of a ground assault. This is both cynical and brazen. Its 18-year long siege has and continues to strangle the 2.2 million people stuck in 365km². This situation is not just confined to Gaza. Since the start of the war, over 250 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by the Israeli military and settler militias. Israel has bombed Syria and Lebanon, and the Middle East region now stands on the edge of war.

At the same time, western governments are beating the drum of war, while pretending not to see what is unfolding in front of our eyes. For decades, these western powers have blindly supported Israel – militarily, diplomatically, and economically and suppressed any actions of solidarity with Palestinians. The current crisis, the death, the destruction, and oppression is as much on their hands as it is on those of the Israeli state.

The first response by universities across the Netherlands, instead of encouraging discussion, debate, and informed analysis, was to call on people to refrain from doing so within their communities. It leaves us feeling confused and hurt if we think back to the response given by universities after the invasion of Ukraine. Mere days after the war had started, universities raised Ukrainian flags and published solidarity statements in support of Ukraine. In the current situation, those same institutes remain silent, or worse, actively suppress protest and concerns by students and staff, hiding behind claims of ‘neutrality’ and ‘careful assessment of the situation’. As Desmond Tutu remarked; ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.’

Right now, we must act. The priority of every single concerned university worker, student, and others is to mobilize in support of Palestine. We can’t watch this genocidal war happen in front of our eyes in silence. We must pressure our governments to withdraw all support for Israel’s massacre in Gaza and call an end to their complicity. Our actions matter in whether or not Israel is allowed to continue to flatten Gaza, expel and murder its inhabitants. 

MA-Graduation 2022-2023

As ISS students who were trained and shaped in a critical manner, it becomes an imperative to demonstrate our solidarity with Palestine. Our education empowers us not only to critique historical injustices but to actively engage in dismantling oppressive structures. Through our solidarity, we contribute to a collective effort that transcends borders, demonstrating that our commitment to justice extends beyond the classroom. There can be no justice under apartheid, no justice under colonial rule, no justice behind the barbed wire of an open air prison. We follow Dutch Scholars for Palestine’s lead in calling everyone to redouble our collective efforts to end the violent realities that Palestinians face, to increase the pressure on our institutions and governments, in order to hold Israel accountable for its crimes, and to end its colonial regime. We call on all of you to join us, and organize.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

  1. Cecilia Begal
  2. Carlie Kinnear
  3. Margaret Arney (Maggie)
  4. Muhammad Azka Fahriza
  5. Sydney Cohee
  6. Roos Saat
  7. Joelle Vetter
  8. Carlos Adams
  9. Dedy Susanto
  10. Marialuisa Borja L
  11. Smriti
  12. Rassela Malinda
  13. Madeleine Walker
  14. Eliana Melhem
  15. Salma Annisa
  16. Yusnita Silsilia Warda
  17. Patience Atanga
  18. María Fernanda Cossío Calderón
  19. Ismi Nabila
  20. Loke Wan-Kit
  21. Harjas Kaur
  22. Maria Caracciolo
  23. Rupankar Dey
  24. Melisa Try Hatmanti
  25. Ejiroghene Andrew Oruarume
  26. Mainak Bhattacarya
  27. Lok Yee Liona Li
  28. Marie Boscher
  29. Laura Mercedes Caicedo Valencia
  30. Ianira Pereira Cipriano
  31. Ting Yi Wu
  32. Haliza Lubis
  33. Catalina Mora Baquero
  34. Johanne Degenhardt
  35. Radha Sivasankaran
  36. Vrinda Poojari
  37. Eman Shaukat
  38. Andrea Catalina Medina Garzón
  39. Sara Asmar Salazar
  40. Hang Nguyen
  41. Catalina González Sarmiento
  42. Syeda Sayema Mayesha

 

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A highly educating and pleasant experience” – IHSA Satellite Conference in Tripoli provides a chance to reflect and consider research-in-practice

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The bi-annual IHSA Conference featured a satellite conference  in Tripoli, Libya. Some 55 practitioners from local CSOs shared their insights on humanitarian and development challenges they face in daily life. They spoke about possible solutions and cherished the recognition of the work of people from around the world. Sharing perspectives enriched discussions and provided new insights to participants. Participants were also able to share their insights with participants at the ‘main’ IHSA conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Image by Author

The 7th IHSA Conference took place in Dhaka, Bangladesh in November 2023, and this year for the first time, a satellite conference was held concurrently in Tripoli, Libya. I had the pleasure of working alongside the dedicated team in Libya to organize this event. The team in Libya consist of 5 Libyan nationals  working out of Tripoli.  The team is currently working on a larger project designing, organizing and facilitating a growing network of civil society activists in the country. The network consists of 55 members, some individual activists, others community groups and CSOs. All are working on advancing equitable governance and the rule of law in an EU-funded programme.

In Libya, the event planning followed the IHSA agenda with a three-day event. Due to the time zones, the IHSA afternoon sessions in Dhaka would be open to participants in Libya. With a locally-designed and convened programme for the afternoon and evening sessions. The satellite conference was the first large-scale international event that civil society groups participated and co-organized in recent years. Being able to take part in an international event was a welcome boost for participating people and organizations, following several years of work strengthening civil society in the country

Ten Libyans proposed papers of which 7 were accepted.. The acceptance of papers defined the planning for the different panels that could be attended. In two rooms in a hotel in Tripoli, 55 participants listened, presented and contributed to the (virtual) discussion in the different sessions.

 

Topics including the role of local CSO’s, Women’s Empowerment, and the WPS agenda

The papers addressed highly relevant topics. Saleh Ehtitah, a CSO leader from Sebha in Southern Libya, spoke on the role of local CSOs in bringing about democratic orientation, community awareness, and development in Libya since 2011. It highlighted the contributions to conflict resolution, promoting peace, and addressing human rights violations. On the second day, during  a panel titled “Women’s Engagement & Protection in Conflict: Examining Displacement, Peace-making, and Empowerment.” Two female CSO leaders presented their papers. The first paper, by Hanin Bushosha from Benghazi, analyzed the active roles of Libyan women in peace and security issues, emphasizing their participation in preparatory meetings for national reconciliation and the importance of their inclusion in peace processes. The second paper by Awatef Alawine from Tripoli, explored women’s participation during the conflict in Libya, focusing on their involvement in resolving conflicts between cities and their participation in political dialogue forums. Meanwhile an activist from Sirte, In Room 2, Hanibal Alsagheer presented a paper on “Deforestation and weak urbanization as catalysts to flooding and fires In the Sirte Gulf”. The paper examined the effects of climate change on cities in the Gulf of Sirte region in Libya, highlighting issues such as desertification, population migration, and poor urban planning. It emphasized the need for government intervention, urban planning, and sustainable policies to mitigate climate change impacts. On the third day, both Rooms 1 and 2 hosted the same panel. Which included a paper from Mohamed Celini, leader of a CSO working to advance the rights of people with disabilities in Benghazi. He spoke on “Inclusion of persons with disabilities in humanitarian work, between the convention and reality.” The paper discussed the challenges faced by people with disabilities in the humanitarian field and focused on their integration into society during emergencies and crises, with a specific emphasis on the impact of recent floods in Derna.

 

Roundtables on everyday challenges and local organization

Next to the panel discussions, the Libyan team leader Fahmi Abusahmain facilitated a roundtable. The focus was on the gaps in the rule of law in daily Libyan life with special attention to the challenges encountered during the Derna flood. Malak Hanouchi, a CSO leader from Derna reported on her efforts made during the immediate rescue and recovery operations in her home town. She told how the people in Derna and the neighbouring areas had to face the challenges. This was further emphasized in the paper of Mousa Algunaidi from Misrata which could not be presented due to the time difference. His submitted paper analyzed the impact of the lack of rule of law during the Derna flood. His analysis shows that many lives could have been saved if Libya had basic systems in place, like weather warnings, effective and trusted government communication and data collection. The positive outcome of the flood was the undivided attention of Libyans and political adversaries to lenient the immediate needs.

I have noticed the huge impact the IHSA Conference and side event have had and this will be felt in Libya for some time. As Mohamed from Zeltin mentioned, he was pleased and honoured to be part of the conference. Most participants noted that the topics covered mattered to them, the discussion was highly appreciated and they gained new insights.

Participants were particularly impressed by the presence of the many organizations, which provided networking and collaboration opportunities. The event’s organizing team received praise for their responsiveness and efficiency. Suggestions for improvement included mainly technical and practical issues such as the quality of the virtual connection, translation and planning. Participants indicated the event has shown how they can change some of their ways of working, how important (project) preparation is, and most importantly, how networking and collaboration can fuel continuous learning. Libyans are enthusiastic about future events and committed to using new insights they gained to achieve positive changes. They have felt their work and presence matter. This strengthened confidence in the next steps they can take to advance their country. In that regard, Libyan communities deserve further support to expand their work as main contributors to peace and justice in their country. Including them in future programmes and conference will help them do this. Meanwhile international partners thus get the chance to develop their approach to partnerships and working together.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Anne  Brinkman (Amsterdam 1967) is a practitioner in (inter)national development and change, a lawyer and organizational scientist by training. Her work is shaped in practice in connection to people’s daily experiences, grounded in theory and informed by (innovative) empirical efforts. Anne designs and coordinates an EU-funded programme in Libya on Libyan-led dialogue and action. She combines her work with pursuing her PhD degree at the ISS in The Hague. Her research aims to develop insights into alternative human development efforts with a focus on the use of different perspectives to advance civic logic in conflict-affected societies.

 

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When genocide is reduced to a war of emotions: Personal reflections on academic debates and the war in Palestine by Dina Zbeidy

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Recently, universities and other institutions in the Netherlands have put a lot of focus on emotions of people in Europe when discussing the ongoing war on the Palestinians in Gaza. In this blog, Lecturer and Researcher Dina Zbeidy points out that while it is important to create space for emotions, this focus has the danger of shifting attention away from the actual atrocities happening on the ground, the topic these institutions should mainly talk about.

Photo by Mohammed Abubakr on Pexels

In a meeting about organizing events on the current war on Gaza, I noticed how I flinched and had an almost allergic reaction to the (over)use of the word ‘emotions.’ I have been reflecting on my reaction for the last few days to try and understand what exactly bothered me so much, as it was pointed out to me during that meeting that I myself have been very emotional these last three months.

And that is true. I have been an emotional wreck. How can you not be, when you wake up to the images of grey body parts sticking out of concrete rubble and go to bed with images of screaming burnt children and a more families wiped off the face of the earth.  I have felt it all: anger, sadness, frustration, powerlessness, exhaustion.

 

Reducing talking about war crimes to just emotive discussions

Recently, the Dutch minister of education sat with students and staff of academic institutions to discuss how best to organize and talk about what is happening. He urges academic institutions to keep the discussions open, as “you provide many students with an outlet to express their feelings and emotions”. He continues to say: “keep sharing knowledge, have discussions, and create understanding for each other’s perspective.”

From the first sentence, one can deduce that these events, whether panels, teach-ins, sit-ins or other activities, are mainly important as an outlet for emotions – more so than talking about facts on the ground and educating students in the Netherlands on grave ongoing violations of human rights and international law.

(Another thing one can deduce, that I will not address further here, is that talking about the war is framed as a ‘difference in perspective’).

During our meeting, we all agreed that there should be space for emotions. What I think is harmful, however, is reducing the war to a war of emotions (of some) rather than a war on Palestinians.

One example is the following argument that has been repeated in front of me several times these last months: we should refrain from using the term genocide because it might be hurtful to some people.

The assumption usually being that ‘some people’ refers to Israelis in the Netherlands or Dutch people of Jewish background or with family in Israel.

In other words: talking about an ongoing genocide can be hurtful to the feelings of others. That we should be very careful how we talk about the actual loss of life of children, families, parents, and grandparent, and refrain from naming it by what it is, as the feelings of others might be hurt.

My frustration came largely by realizing that civilians being killed in the thousands have to compete with other people’s emotions, and that in educational and academic institutions, these emotions seem to have the upper hand.

Nevertheless, more than 800 genocide scholars have already warned of the possibility of genocide, and the International Court of Justice will deliver its ruling tomorrow (26 January) on  whether in the legal sense, we can speak of genocide.

 

There is a big difference between creating space for expressing and letting out emotions, and reducing the talk about an unfolding genocide to emotions. 

One great place for me to let out and share my emotions have been protests and demonstrations. How powerful it is to know that what you feel is shared by thousands of others. The aim of such events is to show the public, including politicians, that we, in the thousands and globally in the millions, want this war, and the ongoing colonization and oppression, to stop.

When I participate at events, mainly organized by students and staff at academic institutions, I have found myself several times in tears, unable to finish a sentence because of these overwhelming emotions. And I decided early on during this war that I will not force myself to hide and suppress these emotions, not anymore. I loved that people told me that they understood my emotions, and that I should not apologize for having and showing them.

Nevertheless, the content of my talks and my contributions is not on what the war does to my emotions, or anybody else’s emotions for that matter. The topic at hand is not that of (our – we here, safe in Europe) emotions, but about Palestine and the genocide of a people.

I hope that academics, journalists, researchers, teachers, and students, remain vigilant to this distinction. Don’t let the talk about emotions distract us from what we, as part of society, can and should contribute to: facts, analysis, studies, and academic debates.  And yes, there should always be space for emotions – but they should never be (mis)used to oppose, or be silent on, genocide.

Photo Credit: Mohammed Abubakr: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-with-palestinian-flags-protesting-on-the-street-19028556/

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

 

Dr. Dina Zbeidy is a Dutch-Palestinian anthropologist. She is a social science lecturer and researcher at the Leiden University of Applied Sciences. Having conducted research on various topics including  Zionism, settler colonialism, displacement, human rights and development work, mainly in the Middle East, her current research focuses on human rights education in the Netherlands.

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Fallout from Gaza: An academic community’s responses to the situation in Palestine

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Few regional conflicts have had as much of a global impact as the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Outbursts of violence, like the terrorist Hamas attacks and taking of hostages of October 7 and Israel’s massive retaliatory attacks since then, have sparked strong responses everywhere, including in our academic community at the International Institute of Social Studies. Having experienced those dynamics for two months now, it is time for some reflections. I offer mine, as rector of ISS, but obviously also as one human being among all.

Feeling

The first layer of responses in our academic community post-October 7 were emotional in nature. A number of students, PhD-candidates, and staff were not simply shocked or “uncomfortable” about what they saw. They were enraged by the sheer magnitude of the Israeli military response and the enormous humanitarian consequences for the Gazan population, including for so many children. This sense of rage stays on until today, fueled by what they regard as a lack of responsibility by other countries, by international organizations, and also by universities, including the ISS. ‘Why’, they asked, ‘do universities not explicitly condemn Israel’s actions that punish the whole Palestinian population in response to a terrorist act, speak out against genocide and apartheid, join the BDS-movement (boycott, disinvest, sanction Israël), and choose the side of the Palestinian victims of oppression?’

For me, this emotional layer is an important one, because it deals with our gut feelings, our moral intuitions, our fundamental stance when human dignity is trampled upon. It cannot be dismissed as ‘mere feelings’. It is also important because it signifies that we are all affected as human beings. To a degree we are experiencing a form of indirect and collective traumatization, which means that we don’t respond only rationally, but also from our fundamental instincts. Just like we cannot expect people in Gaza and Israel to respond in a purely rational manner to a life-threatening situation, we cannot expect those within our academic community to be fully rational when the foundations of morality and security are shocked.

Hence, the first thing we needed at the outset, to process this rage, was care and safety, not debates and fights. This holds true for those who have been personally affected because they have family and friends who have been living in Israel and Palestine. As university leaders, we immediately reached out to our staff, PhD candidates and students who we knew had a direct connection with the region. For example, we learned that one member of our academic community has lost more than 45 members of their family in Gaza in the past two months. We obviously missed a few people, because we didn’t always know each other’s connections, and this is something for us to reflect on for the future.

 

Thinking

Offering care for these feelings is not enough. As an academic institution, we are called to bring our knowledge and insight to a troubled and complex world. We have supported our scholars who have engaged in public appearances, for example on humanitarian issues and international rights and who have published opinion pieces. We organized a Teach-In just two weeks after 7 October at both our Hague (ISS) and Rotterdam (Woudestein) campuses, in which lecturers shared their insights on trauma, human rights, the position of children, the political economy and also the role of media in filtering information. These Teach-Ins, held at Erasmus University and other academic institutions, in which our faculty members also participated, helped not only to share knowledge. They also helped to transform a primarily emotion-driven response into one that also incorporated an academic and analytical attitude. By engaging with psychological, legal, humanitarian, historical, developmental and economic insights, we moved to a second layer of responses in which we asked ourselves how academics can contribute to thinking about a meaningful way of coping with the tragedies and cruelties we witness in the world.

The Teach-Ins were valuable, but not easy. The process of challenging each other to reflect, academically was not self-evident. Emotions still played a major role in framing peoples’ responses within our community, but also triggered a plea for institutional action. Here we faced a dilemma in that many of those participating in these and similar events shared a particular perspective on the situation in Gaza; this made the opportunities for dialogue less diverse and inclusive than they could have been. Students and staff who might be inclined to sympathize with Israeli population or to critique Palestine leadership were less visible. Some students approached me at different moments asking why we showed less interest in other conflicts, oppressions, and human rights violations in the world. They felt excluded that events focused only on Gaza, especially when accompanied by strong moral messaging. This remains a dilemma: how to accommodate and support, on the one hand, our community members who feel that we should speak out and act, and on the other hand, respond to members who feel that attention should also be given to Yemen, Sudan, Azerbaijan, Ethiopia or Myanmar.

 

Acting

That brings me to a third layer of responses: action. This took shape already in the early days of the post-October 7 surge of violence when students protested on our doorstep and remained visible in posters and messages distributed among our community. It was presented to the ISS leadership in the form of a request to issue explicit statements and break ties with Israeli institutions. Anything less than that would be understood by a substantial part of our community as neglecting our moral responsibility as an institution devoted to social justice. At the same time, we had to look critically at the role of academics and institutions in the midst of massive disinformation that sometimes also limits our potential to reach conclusions about what is happening.

Navigating these demands, it was clear for me and colleagues  in university leadership positions that we indeed needed to act. Neutrality in the face of violence is not an option. But we were also very clear that our role had to be knowledge-based and that our primary task was and remains to preserve academic freedom and to facilitate our scholars – from students to professors – to contribute their academic insights to society. We are grateful for the courage of all our scholars to do so and for the wisdom they bring to the world. We have witnessed how they have condemned the Hamas atrocities and also addressed Israeli atrocities, including violations of humanitarian law, and especially the cruelty of punishing an entire population with – as they argued – genocidal intent.

As an academic institute, we exercise restraint in speaking out by way of performative statements, especially because the protection of academic freedom is necessary to safeguard the space for our scholars to speak the truth. When the university itself defines what counts as true, just, and right, that immediately restricts the freedom of other academics. We do not remain neutral because we are afraid to take a stand. It is absolutely clear that as an institution committed to researching Global Development and Social Justice, we stand for the protection of human rights, for the assertion of humanitarian responsibilities, and for the need to ensure peace, justice and accountability. However, the Institute refrains from speaking out beyond these general principles. This will always remain a balancing act between saying too much and saying too little.

The fallout from the present tragedy in Gaza will continue to affect us. It leaves us with dilemmas on how to act. We will continue to organize care for the members of our community who are suffering. We will facilitate learning and nurture critical thinking. We will build our networks internationally and stimulate joint academic contributions towards a just world. We will not be unaffected. Indeed, we feel there should be more done than what we are capable of doing as academics. And when we operate as an institution with this kind of restraint, we are aware it will not be enough in the eyes of a substantial part of our community. But, we may be most effective if we contribute what suits our role: universities protecting academic freedom, so that scholars can share their knowledge and insights with the world, and scholar-activists take the firmer stand. The dialogue between those roles can hold us together in working toward a peaceful future.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Prof. dr. (Ruard) RR Ganzevoort is the rector of the International Institute of Social Studies in Den Haag (part of Erasmus University Rotterdam) as well as professor of Lived Religion and Development.

 

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Why are we blocking a highway as scientists? It is a justified response to the violence of climate change

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How can scientists help engender societal change, and when is it effective to take the road of activism? This question has become increasingly relevant in the face of the urgent need to  address the implications of climate change. In this blog (that first appeared on 1 June 2023 as an op-ed in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant), Professors Thea Hilhorst and Klaas Landsman – both recipients of the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands in 2022 – gave a speech during the occupation of the A12 by Extinction Rebellion. Why did they choose to participate in this action as scientists?

On 27 May, an estimated 8,500 activists blocked the A12 highway in The Hague. There was no misunderstanding about the illegal nature of the action. Right from the start, the police shouted through megaphones to demonstrators that there was no legal permission for this demonstration and that those who stayed ran the risk of being arrested. Water cannons were already spraying large quantities of water over the crowd from four military vehicles placed at the head and the rear of the mass of people. Indeed, the demonstration took place without a permit, and blocking a highway is against the law. Nevertheless, we then considered and still consider the action to be legitimate.

The effects of climate change are already being felt all over the world. Rich countries emit most of the greenhouse gases inducing climate change. Poor countries, and in turn the poorest and most vulnerable people in these countries, bear most of the consequences – those people who can hardly afford to eat meat or to buy new clothes at every turn of fashion, who don’t own a car, let alone ever take a plane. They pay the highest price for climate change. They pay with their health, their residence, their livelihoods, their safety, and increasingly with their lives.

Heat waves make places in India reach temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius. People with fragile health in an urban poor area living under a corrugated iron roof may not survive. The shepherd in Kenya who loses his goats due to drought has lost everything; he has no savings to buy new goats. Last summer, large parts of Pakistan flooded, destroying 8,000 kilometers of roads and 105 bridges. Even before these can be repaired, there is likely to be another flood. Increasingly, people lose their land to the river, the sea, or excessive drought. We – residents of rich countries- owe a debt of honor to these vulnerable people in poor countries.

A basic principle of civilization is to take responsibility for harm inflicted on one another. The polluter pays. Rich countries must compensate poor countries. But that is not happening. There are no concrete agreements on compensation yet. The USD 100 billion per year that rich countries have pledged for climate adaptation has not been fully delivered. What is paid partly flows back as profit to Western companies that offer technologies for climate adaptation to poor countries.

Even the most immediate humanitarian aid to mitigate the worst consequences of climate change falls short. On 24 May, a UN summit on the drought in the Sahel failed. Rich countries pledged only USD 2,4 billion of the USD 7 billion needed to address starvation. That is a stark contrast to the estimated USD 30 billion with which Netherlands subsidizes the fossil industry annually, mainly through tax benefits.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres equates climate change to ecocide. This is his statement on Twitter of 5 April 2022: “Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.” The occupation of the A12 was aimed at protesting fossil fuel subsidies.

Extinction Rebellion stands for nonviolent civil disobedience in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Bertrand Russell. A non-violent blockade of a highway, with a demand consistent with UN appeals, represents in our eyes a legitimate response to the violence of climate change exerted on defenseless people, animals, and ecosystems. Politicians linger, listen to the lobbying of the fossil industry, and hope for innovation to solve all our problems. But there’s no time to waste anymore.

Listen to science. Listen to the IPCC, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change . More and more scientists are joining Scientist Rebellion – a group of academics linked to Extinction Rebellion. We, too, will join again next time.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

 

Klaas Landsman is the Chair of Mathematical Physics, Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics, and Particle Physics at Radboud University Nijmegen.

 

 

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Gender Studies is yet to make its mark among university students in Pakistan: Findings from a study on perceptions and attitudes towards gender studies among students in Quaid-i-Azam University, Pakistan.

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Since 2010 I have been working as a lecturer at the Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies at  the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan. I am also pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Sociology, with my research focusing on understanding the challenges and opportunities related to offering gender studies as an academic discipline in universities in Pakistan.  Moreover, I will also be joining the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) as external Ph.D. candidate beginning in May 2022.

Main Entrance Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Credit: Ghulam Mustafa GMG, November 2021

 

Quaid-i-Azam University is a public university, established in July 1967 under the Act of National Assembly, and offers research programs for PhD and MPhil degrees across several disciplines. The university is renowned internationally, and attracts many foreign students, although gaining an admission is fairly competitive. However, the student body is quite diverse, with students from across Pakistan enrolled at the university.

The master’s program in Gender Studies was first started in 2008 at the Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies[i]. The data show that between 2008-2020, more women (252) applied to study gender studies than men (220). Moreover, overall, the total number of students who applied for gender studies increased after 2008, although there was also a decline observed in the number of students who enrolled in the program in 2015.

Myths and misconceptions associated with Gender Studies among students

The data to examine perceptions towards the discipline of gender studies has been gathered from  show that between 2008-2020, only 37% students outlined gender studies as their first choice for field of study in university application. While it is unsettling to see such low interest among young people towards this discipline, these findings not only reflect the low awareness and commitment in Pakistan toward gender justice, but also illuminate how factors such as merit, affirmative action, and broader socio-cultural dynamic in Pakistan contributes towards certain academic disciplines being perceived as less important or prestigious than others.

One possible reason for this interesting enrolment trend could be that new study programs usually garner a lot of attention initially from students, but gradually the numbers decline as students begin to question the market utility of the degree, particularly if there is a sizeable number of past students who remain unemployed post-graduation, with bleak prospects for employment. Another reason could be the considerable reduction in the higher education budget in Pakistan in the past few years, leading to limited financial aid and scholarship support for new students.  There is also the additional factor of master’s degree programs all over Pakistan, since 2020, being replaced by four-year bachelor’s degree programs, thereby translating into additional cost of pursuing higher education for students across Pakistan.

As part of this study, I also conducted in-depth interviews with students to further unpack the enrolment trend and perceptions held by students towards gender studies as a discipline. I have categorised these perceptions into the following themes:

 

  1. Assuming that studying gender studies makes one a feminist

The foremost assumption among the new students is that gender studies, as a field, is limited to studying about patriarchy and social construction of gender, and hence focusing on these issues makes one a feminist.  Feminism and feminist activism are some of the most controversial terms in the context of Pakistan, viewed as being against the Pakistani society and harming its social fabric. Moreover, feminist activism, soon after the emergence of Pakistan as an independent state, has remained confined largely within the bounds of bourgeois respectability, thereby misunderstood, and sometimes even despised, by the masses. As a result, students are often oblivious or unaware about the richness of this discipline and its diversity. In this sense then, teaching gender studies has become a deconstructive project (Bari 1996).

  1. Misplaced focus on jargon rather than lived experiences by the students and teachers

In term papers, students are often more concerned about using terminology and jargon, instead of grasping a deeper understanding of concepts such as social constructionism, feminism, and patriarchy. In other words, pedagogy in our context involves unpacking these assumptions. Adding to Dr. Bari reflections, I point out that at times teachers’ in terms of assignments, reflection papers, and critical essays from students are unrealistic as they come with a specific cultural baggage and presuppositions. It is true that students feel burdened to use certain type of language and jargons, hence feeling burdened by the discipline rather than enjoying it.

  1. Low market utility of a degree in gender studies

Concerns related to employability of a gender studies degree in the job market are highlighted in the lived experiences of students pursuing gender studies. For example, one of the respondents from the study shared:

“Where we will go for a job after this degree. The development sector has already shrunk in Pakistan, and gender studies is not being offered at college level. What is its scope after college?”   Our concern is a job after all our parent’s will not feed us throughout the life and we have seen that most of our seniors in gender studies are not doing any job, they have no work.

  1. Gender studies perceived as not relevant to daily life

Another important perception related to gender studies was the belief that the discipline doesn’t relate to their lived experiences. As one student noted:

“If the research and theory is not produced in our own local context, then this whole exercise is detached from our society, and it is less relevant for us.’’

In fact, some students also claimed that gender studies, as a discipline, was a form of western propaganda, with little relevance to their daily life. Moreover, it is also important to note that such misconceptions persist event among students pursuing other degree programs at the university. They question the relevance of gender studies as an academic discipline, given that they are unaware of what it entails, as it is not a subject that is offered during undergraduate studies in Pakistan.

  1. Perceived judgment from fellow students

Most students reported feeling judged by fellow students from other socials sciences departments because of the course content, with a common assumption being that the focus of the discipline is primarily on teaching about sexuality. As one student shared: “He considered it [gender studies]  to be useless.”

 

Increasing awareness about Gender Studies key to making it more accessible

It can be concluded that discernments, disillusions, and self-transformation struggles are important for a newly emerged discipline. However, we have now had gender studies at the graduate level in Pakistan for 30 years, and there is an urgent need to devise and implement strategies to address these myths and misperceptions about the discipline. For instance, introduction of gender studies at the undergraduate level across Pakistani universities can help increase awareness about the discipline and address the associated stigma and misbeliefs. In this context, in-depth interviews with educators and policymakers can also help identify ways to incorporate ownership and state patronage to this discipline.

Moreover, to increase awareness about gender studies within the university, organising engaging events and session, such as reading groups or movie screenings can help students from across disciplines not only learn more about gender studies, but also encourage them to see and understand, in a relatable way, its relevance to their own life, and to that of their communities. Lastly, valuing students with this degree in the job market, by increasing access to job opportunities for gender studies graduates across different sectors – non-profits, policy jobs, education, healthcare, etc. – can encourage current and future students to build a stable and inspiring career with a gender studies degree.

 

Bibliography

Ahmed, A. (2019, December 17). DAWN. Retrieved from dawn.com/news.

Bari, D. (1996, April). Women’s Studies: a Cause betrayed? Islamabad, ICT, Pakistan.

Khan, R. A. (2021). From Antagonism to Acknowledgment: Development of Gender and Women’s Studies as Academic Discipline in Pakistan. Progressive Research Journal of Arts and Humanities, 3(1), 171-185.

[i] Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

Rabbia Aslam is currently working as a lecturer at the Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies at the Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan for more than ten years. She is enrolled in Ph.D. Sociology at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. With an Academic background in Sociology and Gender, her research and teaching areas include Violence, Sociology of Knowledge, Sociology of Gender, bifurcation in the Education system, Post and Decolonial thinking in Pakistan. She writes for newspapers and blogs as well. She has been a speaker for national and international forums, also has been part of international projects. She will be joining ISS as an external Ph.D. candidate in May 2022.

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Epistemic Diversity| Understanding epistemic diversity: decoloniality as research strategy by Olivia U. Rutazibwa

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How do we make sure that our efforts to diversify knowledge production go beyond a window-dressing/Benetton operation? How can we move beyond merely adding some colour and other markers of ‘diversity’ to existing structures—a move that too neatly serves the neoliberal project embedded in our institutions, and their related unquenchable thirst for all that looks new, ‘shiny’ and exciting? I propose that an explicit decolonial engagement with epistemic diversity is one of the ways to productively address and navigate these challenges of co-optation and commodification.

A decolonial engagement[1] draws our attention to the need to foreground at least two important concerns. First, that epistemic diversification needs to explicitly speak to the issue of coloniality. Second, that we need to address the practical and institutional implications of anticolonial epistemic diversity.

The first concern invites us to understand that the (little) everyday institutional progress when it comes to more diversity in colour, gender, faith, ability, and sexuality, is merely the absolute minimal condition for a more just society. Hence, we should not mistake them for sufficient accomplishment. More importantly, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the ‘plussing-up’ exercise of the visible diversification is more damaging than simply not enough. We need to keep in mind that it is also a way through which coloniality can continue with a nicer face; and that that is the real and often most depressing danger.

The second concern points at the importance of moving beyond mere discursive deconstructions on what is wrong with our actual knowledge systems; the aim is to invest our efforts in material and immaterial (re)constructions of what and who has been erased or silenced.

In this regard, we could conceive of decoloniality as a research strategy consisting of three related sub-strategies: (1) the need to de-mythologize, pertaining to issues of ontology; (2) the need to de-silence, which more explicitly relates to epistemology; and (3) the need to anticolonially de-colonize, addressing both the tangible, material and the normative of knowledge production/cultivation.

De-mythologizing: where do we start the story?

In relation to the need de-mythologize, in International Relations and International Development Studies, this invites us to consider how we understand the world. A first question that arises is: where do we start the story? What is our point of departure? For example: many international development courses start with American President, Harry Truman, who in his inaugural address of 1949 declares that the USA will help the world and embark on a new program for the improvement and growth of the ‘underdeveloped areas’. It is a point of departure that systematically sustains the logic of development. If we instead start the story with how these areas became ‘underdeveloped’ to begin with, it becomes impossible to sidestep or minimise the constitutive force of transatlantic enslavement and colonialism in both International Development and International Relations thinking and practices. It becomes even more difficult to sustain the epistemic, technological and moral superiority of the West – the myth par excellence on which much of International Relations and International Development Studies is built.

A second consideration of de-mythology is that of Eurocentrism, be it geographic, imaginary or methodological. The question that arises from this is: what would our research questions or teaching look like if Europe, or the European experiences and knowledges were not the centre of our story? What would it look like when other places and experiences are centred? More importantly maybe, what if the European experiences were no longer cast as universal? It would again jeopardise the natural North-South capacity-building logic that is so central in much of our global knowledge systems and relations.

The third de-mythology consideration has to do with fragmentation. Much of colonial knowledge production is built on chopping up parts of the story that fundamentally belong together. Modernity (with the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, i.e. epistemic and technological (re)discoveries) and Coloniality (with Enslavement and Colonialism, i.e. genocide, epistemicide and ecocide) are hardly ever brought to us as sides of the same coin. So is our understanding and study of the origins of wealth and poverty, which are institutionally fragmented into different departments and disciplines. This allows us to study poverty without systematically engaging with the fact that the wealth in the global North has literally been sourced from the poverty in global South. Consequently, when we seek to explain poverty in, let’s say ‘Africa’, our students and many of our colleagues turn to the issue of corruption; a locally contained phenomenon which becomes the lead character in a tale from which we – the global North – can mythologically write ourselves out.

De-silencing: who are the experts? What is expertise?

If we look at de-silencing, the two main questions that arise are: who are the experts, and what do we consider expertise? Who has the microphone, who has the megaphone, and why? Who/what type of knowledge is (not) around the table and why?

When it comes to types of knowledges, we see that in the hegemonic global Northern canon, rationality is put forward as the one legitimate (i.e. ‘objective’) way to know and understand the world. Both feminist and decolonial scholarship have challenged this, yet the empiricist, linearly incremental, competitive, zero-sum, logic of colonial knowledge production continues to dominate the field – be it in our classroom, what we value and mark, how we teach, or in our own research designs.

When it comes to the ‘who are the experts’ question, we can see the literal silencing of peoples that are supposed to be the protagonists; take for example the systematic absence as experts of Muslim women in debates on the headscarf in continental Europe. Silencing can also manifest itself in binary representation, hierarchized difference, whitewashing or overexposure; think for instance of how whenever crime or terrorism comes up, there is an almost automatic invocation of Muslim men. Silencing also bears on our use of languages, on how some of them (like English) are overrepresented in our systems of knowledge and more importantly, how we forget to remember how little we can actually know about a place when we do not know its languages. So, as a first and minimal step, de-silencing invites us revisit the implications of the incredibly limited pool from which we source our knowledges in our quest to understand the world. In practical terms, but in the classroom and in our own research, it invites us to revisit not only what we include or exclude, but also what we foreground, start with, where we theorize from.

De-colonizing: fighting coloniality through knowledge cultivation

The third and last strategy, to anticolonially de-colonize, invites us to be explicit about the purpose of our knowledge production endeavours and connect it to the material consequences of coloniality. Why am I researching this? Who does it empower? How does this serve or work against the colonial status quo? One way to look at this is by asking ourselves the extent to which our knowledges contribute to, or fight processes of epistemicide, ecocide and genocide. Put differently, we can ask ourselves whether we cultivate knowledges to address the quality or possibility of life (of those denied by coloniality) or feed the colonial status quo; knowledges at the service of the will to power or the will to life?

As such, a decolonial research strategy pushed to its logical implications, invites us to re-consider the purpose and contents of our syllabi, disciplines and departments. In the case of International Development Studies for instance, once we have discursively addressed the myth of white western superiority, colonial amnesia and re-/de-centred/pluralised the logic and voices of knowledges, the decolonial invitation is to revisit the institutions in which we do this. When the logic of ‘aid’ and linear development reveals itself as highly problematic, its will-to-life alternative would rather propose something like a Department of Global Justice and Reparations instead; for instance. It is in our embracing or resistance of such drastic engagements with the implications of diversification that our commitment to dismantling coloniality reveals itself. Maybe we should start the conversation of epistemic justice here.

[1] The ideas in this blog entry are further elaborated on in Rutazibwa, O. U. (forthcoming, September 2018), “On Babies and Bathwater: Decolonsing Development Studies”. In: de Jong, S., Icaza, R. and Rutazibwa, O.U. (eds.). Decolonization and Feminisms in Global Teaching and Learning, London: Routledge.
With special thanks to Umbreen Salim for voluntarily transcribing this presentation that was recently presented at the ISS.
This poem forms part of a series on Epistemic Diversity. You can read the other articles here and here and here and here

IMG_2442.JPGAbout the author: 

Olivia Umurerwa Rutazibwa is senior lecturer in European and International Development Studies at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. Her research centres on ways to decolonise thinking and practices of International Solidarity by recovering and reconnecting philosophies and enactments of dignity and self-determination in the postcolony: autonomous recovery in Somaliland, Agaciro in Rwanda and Black Power in the US. She is the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Politics (2018) and is associate editor of International Feminist Journal of Politics.

 

Epistemic Diversity | From ‘do no harm’ to making research useful: a conversation on ethics in development research by Karin Astrid Siegmann

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Ethical dilemmas are part and parcel of the research processes that researchers are engaged in. This article details a recent conversation between ISS students and staff in which they tried to make sense of some of the ethical issues that researchers face. While the ‘do no harm’ principle was emphasised as an overall yardstick, the discussion went beyond that, raising broader questions about epistemic and social justice.

With thanks to Andrea Tauta Hurtado, Zhiren Ye, Kristen Cheney, Roy Huijsmans and Andrew Fischer.

Scholars in Development Studies are quick to brag about how relevant their research is for the underdogs of society. The reality is that representatives of marginalised groups rarely knock at our office doors to ask for scholarly support. In fact, development research often does harm by justifying economic and social inequalities, reproducing stereotypes and stigma, and misrepresenting or even erasing knowledge about the lives of marginalised people.

How can scholars prevent such harm from being done through their research? This question was discussed by ISS students majoring in Social Policy for Development and staff members in a workshop on “ethical, integrity, and security challenges”. The discussion aimed to prepare ISS students for their fieldwork. While in our conversation the ‘do no harm’ principle was emphasised as an overall yardstick for our research, the discussion went beyond that, raising broader questions about epistemic and social justice.

Challenges to informed consent and ensuring anonymity

Roy Huijsmans’ example from his masters’ research on Dutch school-going children’s employment experiences illustrated that research participants’ informed consent is crucial, but also complicated by the power relations structuring the research arena. Teachers in his former school had facilitated meetings with their students. Several of these students, in turn, had expressed interest in and consented to participating in Roy’s study. When conducting telephone interviews with these children, however, in some cases parents became suspicious: who is that adult male calling their child? Roy’s experience raises the issue of whether it is adequate to understand informed consent individually. If not, what role do we give to the—in this case generational—power relations wherein consent is embedded? Can ethics protocols that require consent from parents or other gatekeepers alongside children’s own answer these questions?

In my own research, class-based power relations motivate special attention to research participants’ anonymity. Referring to a recent study on working conditions in South Asian tea plantations, I flagged that if workers’ and unionists’ statements could be identified, this could lead to their dismissal or worse outcomes. Our research team addressed this concern by not providing names—neither of people, nor of research locations. Andrew Fischer challenged me: would that really prevent identification? It is likely that few people are probably willing to stick their necks out as labour leaders, making those that do more easily recognisable.

One student followed up and asked how she could protect the identity of chemsex users— people having sex while using hard drugs—whose experiences she plans to investigate. Referring to the do no harm principle, Roy encouraged her to reflect on the consequences of research participants’ names leaking out: the Dutch government tolerates illegal drug consumption. Hence, in the current scenario, enforcement agencies are unlikely to arrest users. However, such political priorities can easily change over time. Andrew therefore recommended the anonymisation of transcripts, with their key to be stored outside the computer.

The quest for epistemic justice and diversity

In recent years, I have become increasingly concerned with the responsible representation of the lives, concerns and demands of the people who participate in my research, or, put differently, with epistemic justice. For instance, how will I represent the plantation workers who generously shared their experiences in our tea study? In a way that responds to the academic pressure to publish in highly-ranked journals with specific theoretical fancies? Or do research participants’ concerns guide my writing? This relates to questions that Marina Cadaval and Rosalba Icaza raise in their earlier post on this blog: ‘who generates and distributes knowledge, for which purposes, and how?’

Other participants in the discussion shared this concern for a fair representation. The student who engages with chemsex users’ experiences was acutely aware of the role of race in her research. In exploratory interviews, she learned how race shapes the exercise of power in chemsex users’ sexual relationships and how it either enables them to get support from or bars their access to the healthcare system. How to do justice to participants’ narratives without simultaneously repeating and reinforcing the underlying stereotypes?

For me, one way to deal with this quest for epistemic justice has been to engage in processes of activist scholarship, i.e. in collaboration and joint knowledge production with people who struggle for recognition and redistribution. Activist scholarship involves moves towards epistemic diversity, challenging the widely assumed supremacy of scientific knowledge heavily produced in Northern academic institutions. For instance, I have been involved in the campaign of a Florida-based farmworker organisation for making the Dutch retailer Ahold sign on to their programme for better working conditions in US agriculture. In dialogue with that organisation, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), I have written about lessons from that campaign for how precarious workers can effectively organise. Sruti Bala points out that this implies ‘to listen to articulations radically different from the frameworks that I may be trained in, but more than good listening is required in order for those articulations and insights to translate themselves into what we might call knowledge’. These processes of listening, dialoguing and learning didn’t lead to “consensus-based writing”, though. We had disagreements and I tried to make them visible in my writing.

Besides, there may be internal power hierarchies within the movements with which we collaborate. My colleague Silke Heumann earlier warned that through our decision of who participates in our research and who doesn’t, we run the risk of reinforcing existing power relations and of legitimising an elite’s perspective of a movement.

This approach may not be feasible for a masters’ thesis. What is possible in most cases, though, is to get research participants’ feedback on, critique and validation of how they understood our conversations or my wider observations about their lives. Time is a key resource in this effort to respect their knowledge as experts on their own lives. Taking time for research participants—rather than racing from one respondent to the next—enables us to conduct research in a more responsible manner. I want to integrate this principle more and more in my research due to the belief that this not only helps to prevent harm. Over and above that, it enables me to treat my research participants and their concerns with care. The more time I plan and spend for engagement with those who participate in my research, the greater the likelihood that it will embody epistemic justice.

 

This article forms part of a series on Epistemic Diversity. You can read the other articles here and here

csm_5abd70057687ec5e3741252630d8cc66-karin-siegmann_60d4db99baAbout the author: 

Holding a PhD in Agricultural Economics, Dr Karin Astrid Siegmann works as a Senior Lecturer in Labour and Gender Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague, the Netherlands. She is the convenor of the ISS Major in Social Policy for Development (SPD).

Epistemic Diversity | The challenge of epistemic poverty and how to think beyond what we know by Sruti Bala

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Researchers face the challenge of engaging with the topic of epistemic diversity. We know that we should consider diverse knowledges in our research, but how can this be operationalised? This blog post engages with this question and shows us that it first of all means calling into question what we hold dear—the very ground on which we stand as researchers and the means by which we distinguish knowledge from non-knowledge.

I am not sure if I can claim with any certainty that I practice epistemic diversity in my research. At first glance, following from epistêmê, the Greek word for knowledge, one could assume epistemic diversity to mean a diversity of knowledge. Sounds straightforward, for who would not seek a diversity of knowledge? Yet following Michel Foucault, the brilliant innovator of method, an episteme is not literally knowledge (connaissance)—something that is out there waiting to be known—but a historical set of relations or founding assumptions that unite, formalise, and systematise what comes to be regarded as knowledge.

An episteme tends to consist of unspoken, tacit modes of sensemaking that allow us to recognise something as knowledge, i.e. scientific, and therefore distinguish it from what is not knowledge, and call this by other names, like belief, ritual, gossip, superstition, crime. Epistemic diversity, in this Foucauldian sense, implies a diversity of ways of recognising knowledge and distinguishing it from non-knowledge. This is anything but straightforward!

What if my system of knowledge formation has taught me that knowledge must have a name, a language? Then I will try to acquire knowledge by naming the things I encounter, by making them enter an episteme through nomenclature, typology, or categorisation. If it cannot be named or ordered, then it must not be knowledge, but belonging to another realm—that of dreams or fantasies, for instance. What if my system of knowledge conceives of knowledge as something to be acquired, possessed, or accumulated? Then knowledge to which no ownership is attached will not count as knowledge. It may come to be regarded as folklore or rumour. What if the episteme I have been inserted into by way of education gives great importance to empirical verifiability or to linear progression? Then something that defies the rules of empirical verifiability and does not move in a straight line from simple to complex may come to be regarded as superstition or ritual or magic, but not as knowledge.

One might argue that epistemic diversity tends to come to our notice primarily when certain forms of knowledge production are in danger. Foucault’s conception of the episteme in The Order of Things (English translation 1970) points to such moments of rupture, and theorisations following from his, such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s notion of “epistemic violence” in her essay ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ (1988), reveal how certain types of practices and ways of life are criminalised and destroyed, not necessarily through physical violence, but through modes of knowledge production. The extinction of a language or of an art form are instances of epistemic violence. The silencing of certain aspects of history in public memory, such as the history of colonialism and resistance to slavery, is another. To some extent it feels simpler to say that we have to strive to preserve subjugated knowledge forms, because that is a charitable task, undertaken elsewhere, as it were. It is far more difficult to know how we should practice epistemic diversity within the four walls of our own edifices of research and study. It means calling into question what we hold dear, the very ground on which we stand as researchers and the means by which we distinguish knowledge from non-knowledge.

Where Spivak emphasises the issue of epistemic violence done to subjugated knowledges, the challenge I face in my research is better described as epistemic poverty, the loss that accompanies my set of epistemic assumptions and privileges. As a researcher I realise that it is important to listen to articulations radically different from the frameworks that I may be trained in, but more than good listening is required in order for those articulations and insights to translate themselves into what we might call knowledge. Just by desiring epistemic diversity, or proclaiming it, doesn’t mean it will have been accomplished.

Placing ourselves in others’ shoes

The task of epistemic diversity could perhaps begin with persistently training ourselves to recognise how certain epistemic privileges are ingrained in our disciplinary histories, and train ourselves to challenge and revise them. It is about learning to imagine the conditions of knowledge formation differently. One must be able to first imagine that something might be valuable, even if it does not appear valuable to oneself at all. One must be able to break the habitual rejection of something because it appears distant and irrelevant at face value. The absent potential of what one does not yet know can only be recognised when its possible presence can be imagined.

There is a specifically gendered and sexual politics at play when epistemic diversity becomes a matter of accumulation and possession of difference. I regularly encounter public declarations of the idea that the intimate encounter with difference, especially with minoritised, primitivised others, is full of pleasure and has the capacity to transform and redeem the dominant self. Authoritative claims, for instance, of intimacy with a certain culture on the grounds of one’s spouse or sexual partner being from that culture, are indicative of this stance. Bell Hooks brilliantly reflects the underlying desire for pleasure and their erotic connotations in popular cultural expressions and fantasies in Black Looks (1992). Under which conditions is the longing for and affective appreciation of otherness a move of acknowledgement, when is it a form of ‘imperialist nostalgia’ or primitivism, or fantasy of possessing and claiming the other?

It is my strong belief that the quest for epistemic diversity must be accompanied and guided by what Rolando Vazquez and Rosalba Icaza, following Maria Lugones, call a ‘politics of coalition building’ (Pilgrimages/peregrinajes: Theorizing coalition against multiple oppressions, 2003). I am acutely aware that appropriation, theft, erasure, blind spots, equivocation and over-simplification are real problems in research in the humanities and social sciences. The relationships between researcher and researched or between disciplinary formations continue to remain painfully asymmetrical when it comes to the life worlds of the Global South or of those marked as minorities. Yet we cannot overcome these asymmetries without reaching out and learning from and with each other. Epistemic diversity calls upon us to engage critically with all kinds of bodies of knowledge, even and especially if we don’t (fully) agree with them.

This article forms part of a series on Epistemic Diversity. You can read the other article in this series here

About the author: 

Sruti BalaDr Sruti Bala is Associate Professor at the Theatre Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam and Research Affiliate with the Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies and Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis. Her research interests are at the crossroads of theatre and performance studies, cultural analysis, post- and decolonial thinking and feminist theory.

Epistemic Diversity | “I am where I think”: research and the task of epistemic diversity by Marina Cadaval and Rosalba Icaza

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Epistemic diversity in research is sorely needed in the academia. But what is epistemic diversity and why is it so important? This post—the first of a series on epistemic diversity— introduces the topic and illustrates the importance of discussions on the political economy of knowledge production taking place in our universities. 

On Monday 7 May, the ISS Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Team organised the first of four Research Seminars taking place at the ISS that will focus on epistemic diversity in research. The main objective of these seminars is to provide a different angle to ongoing discussions about the appalling state of diversity at universities. Often these have remained focused on demographic diversity and the absence of women in higher ranks of academia. [1] To redress this absence we have seen the implementation of individually-based ‘solutions’ in universities (e.g. bias trainings).

But these interventions rarely consider structural and institutional elements behind the lack of demographic diversity in positions of leadership in universities. On the other hand, these interventions remain silent about the intersectional conditions of knowledge production in universities along axes of differentiation based on race, class and gender.[2]

Unfortunately, the emphasis on demographic diversity—who is at the university—also tends to render invisible the political economy of knowledge production at universities: who generates and distributes knowledge, for which purposes, and how?[3] Bringing epistemic diversity to the discussion means opening critical conversations on the geo-politics and body-politics of knowledge at universities. This angle emerges from an understanding of knowledge as contextual and situated: “I am where I think”, as decolonial feminist thinkers insist.

But, of course, we are aware that across time and place, the different models of knowledge generation at universities have responded to a diversity of social, cultural and ecological contexts, and to diverse aspirations. For example, let’s think about the foundation of the first universities in the Americas in the 16th Century. These institutions were founded—literally—over conquered First Nations people’s lands and with the exploitation of the labour of enslaved African peoples.[4] What kinds of aspirations were driving these violent interventions and who has benefited from this?

Another example that we can think of is the 1910 creation of the journal Foreign Affairs—which has a higher impact index in the field of international relations (IR)—under the name Journal of Race Development. Despite this, IR has been considered a “colourblind” discipline due to the neglect of “race” as a critical theoretical lens and research agenda and the absence of women and people of colour in IR curricula.[5] This neglect has been widely documented[6] in current efforts to decolonise IR canons. We wonder in which ways the present context that pushes universities’ regulation and normalisation through international ranking systems produces and reproduces neglect and silencing in our disciplines?

Between epistemic poverty and the decolonisation of knowledge

 In our first D&I research seminar, we ask to our keynote speakers—Dr Olivia Rutazibwa (University of Porthsmouth, UK) and Dr Sruti Bala (University of Amsterdam, NL)—to engage with the following questions:

What does academic research in the social sciences and humanities look like when epistemic diversity is considered? 

Which kinds of questions emerge? 

Which kinds of ethical and methodological challenges are opened?

Dr Bala started her presentation by sharing what epistemic diversity has meant for her in research and teaching. She shared a powerful reflection regarding academia as characterised by epistemic violence, injustice, and epistemic poverty when a translation of embodied experiences and their exposure in academic languages occurs. Bala invited us to think about practices in knowledge production that are critically attentive to the translations we carried on and that encourages coalitional ethics.

Meanwhile, Dr Rutazibwa spoke about the absence(s) and silence(s) in academic research in international development and its articulations with eurocentrism and colonialism. She introduced a decolonial-anticolonial methodology centred on integrity, dignity, intellectual curiosity, and generosity. Their arguments will be presented in future blog entries on Bliss.

For us, one of the most interesting quotes was the statement by Olivia Rutazibwa: “Being in the academy, not of the academy’. Rutazibwa mentioned this when one ISS student asked her how to navigate universities as institutions that do not welcome black women and people of colour in general.

“I am where I think”

 Our title is not accidental, but is rather an invitation to think critically about the implications of positioning our thinking when addressing epistemic diversity in research. This means for us not to suppress the epistemic, political and body locations from where we generate knowledge, but, on the contrary, to consider this as a possibility for enriching our learning experiences. This also means to locate—historically, epistemically and politically—this discussion in the Netherlands, where the ISS is based.

So, how is Dutch society rethought throughout its transatlantic kingdom?

How do decolonial efforts in the academia, the streets, in theory, and anti-colonial consciousness contribute to this rethinking?

Why does this rethinking matter for the study and practice of International Development?

In our next D&I Seminar on June 26th, we will have the opportunity to address these questions with Dr Melissa F. Weiner, Associate Professor of Sociology at The College of the Holy Cross, and Dr Antonio Carmona , President of the University of St. Martin, at Philipsburg, Sint Maarten. They are the editors of the book “Smash the Pillars: Decoloniality and the Imaginary of Colour in the Dutch Kingdom” (Rowman and Littlefield), which will be launched at the ISS on this date.

About the book, Professor Nelson Maldonado Torres (Rutgers University) has commented the following:

“For too long the Netherlands has been considered an innocent and benevolent country, without apparently a significant colonial past or a racist present. This volume not only completely shatters this illusion, but also demonstrates the significance of multiple contemporary efforts to critically engage and decolonize Dutch society, culture, and political life.”

At the book launch Dr Carmona and Dr Weiner will be joined by two contributors to the book: Dr Patricia Schor from Amsterdam University College and an ISS alumnus, and Egbert Alejandro Martina, Queer Activist and Anti-Racist Intellectual and creator of the blog “Processed Life”.

 The event is open to the public and we warmly invite you to attend.

This article forms part of a series on Epistemic Diversity. You can read the other article in this series here
[1] Read, for example, the Bliss article ‘The university of paleness’ by Willem Schinkel, which discusses the author’s discontent following the Erasmus University’s decision not to appoint women professors despite possessing adequate funds to do so.
[2] See: Icaza, Rosalba and Rolando Vazquez “Diversity or Decolonization? Researching Diversity at the University of Amsterdam” Decolonising the University. Pluto Press, 2018 with Rolando Vazquez
[3] “Let’s do Diversity”. University of Amsterdam Diversity Commission Report. Wekker, Gloria; Marieke Slootman; Rosalba Icaza, Hans Jansen, Rolando Vazquez, UvA: Amsterdam, October 2016.
[4] http://www.harvardandslavery.com/
[5] Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line Edited by Alexander Anievas, Nivi Manchanda and Robbie Shilliam, London and New York: Routledge, 2015.
[6] ibid

About the authors: 

MarinaMarina Cadaval is currently a PhD student at the ISS, where she also completed her Masters’ in Development Studies in the major of Social Policies for Development (2015-2017). She works on topics of inclusion of indigenous women in graduate education in Mexico, analysing the processes of formation of educational policies that have taken place in the last twenty years. Before returning to the academia, she worked for more than 10 years in the implementation of the first policy to promote graduate education for Mexican indigenous peoples.Rosalba2.jpg

Dr Rosalba Icaza is Associate Professor in Global Politics, Gender and Diversity at the ISS and Chair of the ISS Diversity and Inclusion Team. Her publications can be accessed at https://ricaza.academia.edu/research

Trump’s ‘doublespeak’—why academics should speak out by Jeff Handmaker

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U.S. President Donald Trump in January 2018 delivered his first State of the Union Address (SOTU). At first glance, he sounded more presidential than ever following his tumultuous first year in office. However, his careful words hid an agenda that is hostile to most of us, and to academics in particular. As scholars, we have a responsibility to take notice, and to speak out. 

The SOTU Address – Trump’s doublespeak

During much of his SOTU address, Trump made an effort to reach Americans, beyond his more familiar, albeit dwindling ‘base’ of support, composed of evangelicals, the elderly and whites without a university degree. His presentation was peppered by American proverbs and even managed to come across as compassionate.

But gaps and contradictions blatantly revealed Trump’s doublespeak. While Trump refrained from referring to countries as “shitholes” as he had done a few weeks earlier, his contempt for foreign nations was evident. He praised the Iranian peoples’ “struggle for freedom”, while failing to mention the travel ban in place against all Iranians.

Trump also praised his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a decision condemned by most nations in the United Nations General Assembly. Trump said that “friends” of the US would receive support, while “enemies” would not. While these were not explicitly specified, there was a clear reference to how nations voted at the UN concerning Jerusalem.

Capping off a dizzying array of international law violations, Trump insisted that the notorious detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, associated with torture and indefinite detention without trial, would remain open. He affirmed that the US military would continue its operations in Afghanistan, ominously, under unspecified “new rules of engagement”.

So how is this all relevant for scholars?

The overall response from media commentators to Trump’s SOTU address was disappointing. Most focused on its tone rather than its content. In the Netherlands, some even referred to Trump’s address as “brilliant” and “politically, very clever”. The NRC Handelsblad offered perhaps the best commentary, emphasising its ‘polarising’ content, but this was an exception.

The fact remains that a significant majority of Americans have consistently disapproved of Trump’s job as president. There has been a public outcry in countries around the world, particularly after Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. So why have there been so few critical analysts, particularly in the mainstream media?

In my own observations at academic gatherings in the US and abroad, since Trump first came to office in January 2017, it appears that most academics tend to dismiss Trump, rolling their eyes, ignoring his statements, mocking him, or even suggesting that he doesn’t really have all that much power. A handful of academics have even openly supported him.

There are, of course, notable exceptions. Those in the immigration law field have written persistently on the Trump administration’s persecution of immigrants. Apart from the alternative media, such as Mondoweiss, Democracy Now and MSNBC, The Conversation has produced in-depth articles by scholars condemning the Trump administration’s policies. But even critical media outlets, such as De Correspondent in The Netherlands have acknowledged that, while news outlets have tended to reflect daily indignation, they have rarely produced sustained resistance to the policies of the Trump administration.

A position of ambivalence in these circumstances is not tenable. As Professor Harris Beider has poignantly observed: “we live in an age of volatility and scepticism … As academics we find ourselves in the dock of public opinion too … we as universities and academics can also be part of the problem”.

Accordingly, with the rise of ethno-nationalist administrations in the USA and the United Kingdom, Beider has issued an appeal to academics to be less self-absorbed and “to question received wisdom and follow the people rather than expect them to follow us”.

What Trump says publicly should matter a great deal to us, if only in view of the vast military and nuclear arsenal at his disposal and the message to other world leaders that Trump’s behavior should in any way be regarded as acceptable.

Trump’s specific threats to academics

Alongside general concerns around Trump’s policies, there are at least three specific examples that are pertinent to academics worldwide.

First, Trump’s travel ban on nationals from specific countries has made it impossible, and even dangerous for academics from these countries, some of whom are regarded as scholars at risk, to share their knowledge and in extreme cases obtain safe refuge in the United States. Several vice chancellors (rectors magnificus) of Australian universities have protested Trump’s travel ban, joining thousands of other scholars worldwide.

Second, while Congress has so far pushed back on Trump’s proposals to slash health research, Trump’s refusal to accept the scientific consensus concerning a link between carbon emissions and climate change is having a devastating global impact in restricting access to crucial research funding. Research funding cuts in other areas are also likely.

Third, the harassment of scholars by right-wing groups has been steadily rising against scholars, particularly following the election of Donald Trump. Such harassment is even described as “becoming normal” by the American Association of University Professors, which has set up an on-line platform for reporting incidents of harassment.

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Picture Credit: Newtown grafitti

This would not be the first time scholars have stood up in protest against regimes whose policies have threatened society at large, and academics specifically. This includes South Africa’s persecution of non-whites and critical scholars in the 1980s, the persecution of scholars by the government in Turkey and Israel’s persecution of Palestinian scholars.

Whether as scholars of climate change, international law, race relations or many other related areas, we should all be shocked. Alarmed. Indeed, appalled at Trump’s SOTU speech. And we should speak out at every opportunity, particularly outside our close-knit community that largely holds the same views we do.

Also see: Scholars at risk: precarity in the academe by Rod Mena and Kees Biekart

Picture credit: DonkeyHotey

JeffHandmakerISS_smallAbout the author:

Jeff Handmaker teaches law, human rights, development and governance and conducts research on legal mobilisation at the ISS. He is also an associate member of the Faculty of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Editor-in-Chief of the South African Journal on Human Rights and a member of the EUR INFAR Project.