Palestinian voice and epistemic exclusion in higher education

Universities frequently present themselves as places of inclusion, care and critical thought, with commitments to decolonisation and historically marginalised knowledge. For Palestinian students and scholars witnessing the genocide in Gaza, these commitments concern how universities receive their grief, experiences and political interpretations. Australian scholarship has documented campaigns against Palestinian solidarity and efforts to restrict Palestine related scholarship, teaching and activism (Bayeh and Riemer 2024;Tatour 2024). These accounts reveal a tension between institutional commitments and academic practice. That is, whether Palestinian students and scholars can discuss the violence affecting their lives while remaining recognised as credible contributors to knowledge. These questions arise amid the destruction of education in Gaza has been described by United Nations experts as "scholasticide", encompassing attacks on educational institutions and academic communities (OHCHR 2024). Late 2025, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza (OHCHR 2025). Palestinian students abroad also witness this violence through livestreamed images, news and social media. Khalili et al. (2025), found that engagement with news of the assault on Gaza was associated with higher depression and anxiety scores and lower academic motivation. Earlier research in Gaza associated prolonged siege with psychological distress and weakened social support (Veronese et al. 2022). These findings show why student wellbeing needs to be understood within the political and relational conditions of students' lives.In this Opinion article, I argue that student wellbeing is tied to epistemic justice and that meaningful inclusion and mental health support must take students' political realities into account. Epistemic justice concerns recognition of people as knowers and their ability to contribute to shared understandings of their experiences (Boni and Velasco 2020;Fricker 2007). For Palestinian students and scholars, this includes acknowledging grief and engaging seriously with political analysis and situated knowledge. I draw on relevant scholarship and my experience as a Palestinian Australian academic completing a doctorate in Education during the genocide in Gaza. This experience illustrates the scholarly argument underpinning three proposed institutional responsibilities: recognising students as knowers, protecting academic expression and supporting continued participation.The recognition of Palestinian grief in universities depends partly on how institutions receive Palestinian political expression. . Briskman and Poynting (2019) document how advocacy for Palestinian rights in Australia has prompted demands to discipline academics and restrict their work. Bayeh and Riemer (2024) document campaigns against Palestinian advocacy in Australia, including efforts to discipline academics and restrict their work. Tatour (2024) examines how accusations of antisemitism directed at Palestine related scholarship and activism can constrain academic freedom. This literature identifies a political context in which speaking about Palestinian loss may carry professional and social risks. Research centred on lived experiences illustrate similar patterns. For example, Jebril's (2025) reflective account of studying in Gaza, Oxford and Cambridge describes how occupation and her Palestinian refugee history continued to shape her education across these settings. Her account illustrates why physical distance from Palestine does not necessarily separate students' academic lives from its political realities Following 7 October 2023, prominent Australian public buildings were illuminated in solidarity with Israel (Sweaney 2023;Timms 2023). For me, this public symbolism marked a dividing moment. It communicated whose suffering received immediate recognition in public life, while Palestinian suffering remained largely outside the dominant frame. As a Palestinian Muslim woman, academic, doctoral student and mother, I became cautious about how my grief and political views might be received. My grief was inseparable from the history of Palestinian displacement and the violence unfolding in Gaza. I felt I had to consider which words were acceptable and how speaking might affect me professionally. These concerns shaped the conversations I entered and what I felt able to say.Yuval-Davis's (2006) politics of belonging connects people's social positions and emotional attachments with the values through which membership is judged. In a different institutional setting, Mansour's (2025) research with Palestinian Arab students in Israeli higher education found that participants described feeling a sense of alienation when their histories and identities were disregarded. They also valued lecturers' efforts to encourage participation and make them feel welcome. These accounts illustrate how belonging is negotiated through everyday academic interactions and institutional practices.For Palestinian students, such recognition should include opportunities to discuss grief and its political circumstances within academic life. Educators should take their accounts seriously, engage with their arguments and evidence, and explain points of disagreement. Universities should provide confidential advice, clear procedures for reporting racism or challenging restrictions on scholarly expression. They should also be protected from retaliation if they raise concerns.The treatment of Palestinian grief and scholarly expression also tests whether universities' decolonial commitments extend to contemporary colonial violence and the knowledge of those affected. In her analysis of UK higher education, Sian (2025) argues that universities can reduce decolonisation to changes in reading lists and institutional branding while leaving colonial relations of power intact. She identifies three connected practices through which universities silence Palestine: suppressing Palestinian solidarity, invoking neutrality and complexity to justify limited engagement, and failing to address the destruction of education in Gaza. Sian illustrates this contradiction through Fúnez-Flores's (2024: 465) words:"Academia loves to decolonize everything besides occupied land. Its silence on Palestine is enough to know how decolonization has become a metaphor signifying everything besides material change and collective resistance." Baak et al. (2024) similarly examine how concerns about controversy and public scrutiny can restrict discussion of Palestine in educational institutions. They warn that excluding Palestinian histories and perspectives risks curricular erasure, even as young people continue encountering the violence through social media.These institutional practices raise questions of epistemic justice. Fricker (2007) describes testimonial injustice as occurring when identity-based prejudice leads a listener to give a speaker less credibility than their testimony warrants. Boni and Velasco (2020) examine how higher education can privilege disciplinary and codified knowledge over experiential understanding. I use epistemic exclusion here to describe practices that discount students' and scholars' accounts and interpretations without substantive engagement. The concern extends beyond permission to speak to whether universities take Palestinian knowledge seriously.I studied and worked in educational spaces committed to social justice, where the continuing effects of colonialism on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples were regularly discussed. When beginning classes with Acknowledgements of Country, I reflected on my history as a third-generation Palestinian refugee. Naming connections with Palestine sometimes opened meaningful conversations; at other times, I sensed apprehension. Discussing decolonisation as established scholarship felt more acceptable than naming occupation or the destruction of Palestinian education in the present. This distinction echoes Sian's (2025) critique of decolonisation that avoids engagement with contemporary colonial violence.Universities must oppose antisemitism and protect Jewish students and staff while safeguarding Palestinian scholarly expression. Tatour (2024) argues that the IHRA definition can conflate criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism, restricting Palestine related scholarship and expression. Universities Australia's (2025) related working definition states that criticism of Israeli policies is not inherently antisemitic. However, Láníček and Balint (2025) question whether it's wording sufficiently protects scholarly proposals for alternative state arrangements.Universities should explain how they assess contested speech in context, protect evidence-based discussion of Zionism, occupation and Palestinian rights, and provide clear procedures for challenging restrictions on scholarly expression.Changes in academic participation during political violence require attention to students' circumstances. Khalili et al. (2025) found associations between engagement with news of the assault on Gaza, higher depression and anxiety scores and lower academic motivation among students at two West Bank universities. Veronese et al. (2022) likewise associated siege conditions with psychological distress and weakened social support among students in Gaza. These findings support examining the circumstances surrounding reduced participation before interpreting it as a lack of commitment. Pervez (2025) examines how institutional silence compounds the distress of witnessing the Palestinian genocide. In her account of UK higher education, she writes: "The pressure to stay neutral felt like a slow erasure of my voice" (p. 8). Her analysis connects self-censorship, isolation and emotional exhaustion with institutional restrictions on academic expression. Dader et al. (2025) identify a further problem in how academic institutions interpret Palestinian endurance. Drawing on their experiences as Gazan scholars in Western academic institutions, they argue that celebrating resilience can conceal grief and exhaustion and obscure the violence that continually demands endurance. Their critique also challenges expectations that Palestinians must appear emotionally detached to retain credibility as contributors to knowledge. During my doctorate, grief affected my concentration, sleep and writing. I withdrew from some activities and conversations to avoid misunderstanding and professional judgement. That distance offered some protection but also weakened my sense of belonging.Universities should combine counselling and wellbeing services with academic flexibility and responses to racism or exclusion. Educators should ask students privately about barriers to participation and agree on adjustments, such as revised deadlines or workloads, while respecting their choices about personal disclosure (Carello and Butler 2015). These responses recognise students' distress and the political and institutional conditions affecting their participation.Doctoral supervision can support students affected by political violence by addressing barriers to academic work and recognising the intellectual value of their lived experience. Sverdlik et al. (2018) research reviewed 163 empirical studies and identify supervisory relationships as important to wellbeing, persistence and achievement. Their synthesis links responsive guidance and clear expectations with students' satisfaction and progress. Carello and Butler (2015) provide a complementary basis for practice through their emphasis on safety, collaboration and student choice in trauma informed higher education. Applying these principles to supervision means discussing how distress affects academic work while respecting students' decisions about personal disclosure. Supervisors can also help students examine how their histories and political circumstances inform their research questions, interpretations and positionality.My doctoral supervisors encouraged me to write through grief and examine how my Palestinian history shaped my understanding of forced displacement. They helped me develop these connections within my thesis while maintaining scholarly discipline (Yousef 2025).I use relational academic care to describe supervision that recognises students' circumstances and supports their intellectual agency. Laurie and Grealy (2025) analyse doctoral supervision meetings and describe how supervisors' curiosity about students' ideas can support intellectual self-trust. Similarly, Inouye and McAlpine (2017) connect students' critical engagement with writing feedback to growing confidence and scholarly independence. These studies provide an illustration for understanding care as attention to students' intellectual development as well as their circumstances. Supervisors can discuss difficulties with writing or participation, agree on manageable tasks and deadlines, and schedule a review of that plan. Universities should specify available academic adjustments and approval routes and provide clear referral contacts for specialist support.Meaningful inclusion and mental health support must address the political realities of students' lives. Drawing on the scholarship discussed here, I propose three connected institutional responsibilities: recognising students as knowers, protecting academic expression and supporting continued participation.First, universities should take students' accounts and interpretations seriously. Fricker (2007) identifies how prejudice undermines credibility, while research with refugee background girls illustrates the importance of educators' listening and responses for recognition and belonging (Yousef 2026). Universities should involve Palestinian students and scholars in designing support and reviewing responses to exclusion, without expecting individuals to represent an entire community.Second, universities should make protections for academic expression usable. Tatour's (2024) supports reviewing how institutions distinguish criticism of Israeli state policies from antisemitism. Universities should explain this distinction in staff guidance, protect Palestinian and Jewish students from discrimination, designate a contact for confidential advice and provide clear procedures for challenging restrictions on scholarly expression without fear of retaliation.Third, universities should connect wellbeing services with academic adjustments. Research on distress among students in Gaza highlights political circumstances (Veronese et al. 2022). Supervision research identifies the importance of responsive guidance (Sverdlik et al. 2018). Departments should specify adjustments to deadlines or workloads, explain approval routes and assign a staff contact to review agreed support alongside access to specialist mental health services.This Opinion article draws on selected scholarship and one situated account. Its contribution is to connect epistemic justice with practical institutional responsibilities, and it does not claim the effectiveness of these proposals. Universities should develop and evaluate them with affected students and scholars. Palestinian students need academic communities where they can grieve, analyse the violence affecting their lives and continue their education.