INSURRECTION, NOT INCLUSION: EDUCATION AND THE RIGHT TO THE CITY IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE
LAURA JORDAN JAFFEE, DEREK R. FORDABSTRACT. Critical educational theorists have recently begun to take up the notion of the ‘right to the city’ to understand and resist neoliberal attacks on education in the U.S. This process, however, has thus far not attended to the important debates taking place around what the right to the city actually is. In this paper we tease out the complexities that arise from these debates by turning to the colonization of Palestine and Palestinian resistance to colonization. We ultimately argue that the right to the city has to be conceived of in internationalist and anti-imperialist terms, lest movements for the city – particularly in the global North – result in reinforcing international relations of exploitation, oppression, and settler colonialism. We pay particular attention to the ways in which education has been central to both the occupation of and resistance in Palestine. pp. 122–140
Keywords: critical education; right to the city; settler colonialism; imperialism; Palestine