What is Scholasticide?

The term scholasticide has recently gained currency in the media though it is not new. Apparently, it was coined in 2009 by Oxford Professor Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian affairs scholar, in reaction to events in Gaza back then. The term has been used widely once again since January of this year on online platforms such as The Conversation (“The War in Gaza is Wiping out Palestine’s Education and Knowledge Systems”), The Star (“How Israel’s Scholasticide Denies Palestinians their Past, Present, and Future”), and McGill Daily (“Scholasticide in Gaza”). More than one Turkish news source has used it (“‘Scholasticide’: How Israel is Systematically Destroying Palestinian Education in Gaza”), and a university student from Toronto, Magdalee Brunache, writing about the current situation in Haiti, borrowed the term in “A “Scholasticide” has been Happening in Haiti”.

There have been international calls against the phenomenon as in Scholars for Palestine UK and Scholars Against the War in Palestine: “International Call to Action Against Scholasticide”. The UN has expressed concern over it as seen on the website of the Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner: “UN Experts Deeply Concerned over ‘Scholasticide’ in Gaza”. Most recently, Al Jazeera published an open letter about it by Palestinian academics and administrators: “Open Letter by Gaza Academics and University Administrators to the World”.

Wikipedia has no entry for scholasticide though it mentions it under the entry “Attacks on Schools during the Israeli Invasion of Gaza” . Contrarily, one would expect to see such a term on the list of Words of the Year for 2024, if not as a winner, at least as a runner up. Interestingly though, as the BBC’s Bitesize section rightly comments, dictionaries don’t write themselves. Lexicographers identify the new words for the dictionaries after reflecting on popular terms and using software for statistics and analysis. They then select the words of the year based on their perceptions. For example, Oxford identifies a word of the year if it is “…judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year and to have lasting potential as a word of cultural significance.” Strangely, the term has not entered any known dictionary yet - not Webster, Oxford, or Cambridge - not even Urban Dictionary. Will lexicographers ever recognize scholasticide? Only time will tell.