We are pleased to announce that Stephanie Westbrook will be with us next week, both in Zagreb and Rijeka.
Stephanie is academic boycott campaigns coordinator for the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel – PACBI, a founding member of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Public talks will take place on Thursday, May 14 at 6 pm at Club Mama in Zagreb & on Friday, May 15 at 6 pm at ExLibris in Rijeka. No previous registration is needed, everyone is welcome to attend.
Building on the report centering collaboration between Israeli and Croatian universities and research institutions, as well as the recent student protests – late March protest organized as part of the broader European student protests against Israel’s participation in EU’s Horizon Network, and the most recent one, which took place just two weeks ago at the Faculty of Political Science as a response to Iddo Netanyahu’s unannounced guest speaking – this public conversation will open questions of academic responsibility, ethical scholarship, and the role of universities and cultural institutions in times of the ongoing genocide, occupation, and racialized violence.
Together, we will reflect on the ways institutions of knowledge production become entangled in systems of militarization, colonial domination, and dispossession, as well as on the possibilities of building accountable, socially responsible, and politically engaged academic communities.
The discussion will particularly engage with practices of cutting institutional complicity in Israeli crimes through academic and cultural boycott, solidarity organizing, and collective action. It will also address broader questions of epistemic justice: whose knowledge is recognized, protected, and institutionalized, and whose lives and struggles remain systematically erased or marginalized within dominant academic and political frameworks.
The conversation will be held in English.
We are kindly asking you to support this talk with your presence and by contributing to the collective practice of challenging academic complicity in the Israeli crimes, and building spaces of solidarity, justice, and accountability.
We are looking forward to seeing you at the event(s)!
Initiative for Academia of Solidarity and Epistemic Justice & Students for Palestine & Student Club of the Faculty of Political Science & Free Palestine Initiative – BDS
*Stephanie Westbrook’s visit has been partially sponsored by the European Research Council group REVENANT: Revivals of Empire–Nostalgia, Amnesia, Tribulation (ERC Consolidator Grant # 101002908 https://revenant.uniri.hr) based at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Rijeka.
