Abstract: Submission #198

Abstract To combat the targeted epistemicide intentionally created with the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a network of international tutors stepped in to support displaced university students. Academics4Gaza is an initiative which exists to resist the erasure of Palestinian academics and to refuse to allow their knowledge and dreams to be destroyed. This presentation will discuss the process of creating a unique training program designed to acclimate a group of global academics from a variety of countries and disciplines to the role of education in Palestinian culture. Through a culturally attuned, liberatory frame with historical and trauma aware lens, this training program prepares global tutors to teach and connect in situations unlike any other classroom in existence.

Research shows that maintaining educational trajectories during times of crisis, war, and forced displacement is a key protective factor in later outcomes. As both social workers and academics, a radical reimagining of the university setting to include a transnational, cross-cultural, digital space that is responsive to unbearable conditions is more than solidarity and resistance to oppression – it is a refusal to allow a world to exist where learning is weaponized, and a promise to co-create a legacy that persists beyond the boundaries of human devastation. Indeed, this experience has shaped both the tutors and students in profound and lasting ways.

Attendees will gain insight into necessary skills to provide educational and relational exchange under these conditions, techniques used to scaffold the tutors’ vicarious trauma experiences with psychosocial support, and key takeaways for the future of academic ventures as genuine beacons of hopeful peacekeeping initiatives.