Resisting the “Empirical” Empire: Reclaiming Palestinian Knowing in a Time of Scholasticide

Reclaiming Palestinian Knowing in a Time of Scholasticide

Abstract

Scholasticide is a term that was first used over a decade ago to connote the systematic assault on Palestinian educational institutions. Over the past year, this scholasticide has intensified to an unimaginable degree in relation to the genocide in Gaza and increase in settler colonial violence waged against Palestinians in the West Bank. I write this piece as part of a record of resistance to scholasticide, and to the coloniality of knowledge production in my field of clinical community psychology. I scrutinize the construct of “empiricism” and how it is conceptualized towards continuing colonial hierarchies. I share insights into my experience in my ongoing tenure process in the Fall of 2024. I share my process and response as a multiracial, diaspora Palestinian scholar of Clinical Community Psychology working within a USA academic context while seeking to engage a decolonial lens that challenges dominant United Statesian and Eurocentric epistemologies rooted in Global South critical traditions, from Palestinian to South African psychologies and beyond.  More specifically, I share a statement that I wrote in response to an attempt to delegitimize my Palestinian community-engaged scholarship. I share the actual document I wrote as my response and critique to the commonplace academic practice of defending “empiricism” while masking efforts geared toward delegitimizing Indigenous scholarship in Palestine and across knowledges that challenge coloniality worldwide. I offer critical questions, poetry, and analysis as I seek to defend Palestinian knowing in this time of scholasticide and recurring genocide.