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Producing Rooted Knowledge: Predicaments of Palestinians Positioned in Israeli Universities
Abstract
Studying in Israeli universities is the sole choice for most Palestinians living in Israel. While the bulk of critical research on Israeli academia has been written about these institutions' built-in discrimination against Palestinian students, the daily experiences and process of training and knowledge production by Palestinians within Israeli universities and colleges are rarely addressed. Yet the implications of these discriminatory practices for Palestinian students and staff with regard to psychological well-being, experiences of acquiring and producing knowledge, and the ethics of the research in which they participate as assistants, those carrying out surveys, or local informants have received little attention. Israeli universities are anxious spaces and intellectual milieus in which Palestinians study and teach. They are sites for reflecting on positionality and the relationship between ethics and politics in knowledge production. While some collective initiatives by Palestinian students and faculty seek to create separate spheres that allow for agency, more recently, Palestinian lecturers in Israeli universities have been advocating for individuals to become responsible and ethical researchers, examining the conditions under which knowledge is produced, challenging the power dynamics that the structural factors produce in the research process, protecting their Palestinian research subjects, clarifying the motivations and objectives of the research, and identifying plausible benefits of research for Palestinian society.
Discipline
Geography
Geographic Area
Palestine
Sub Area
None