I was at the First Minister's summit and Palestinian education summit
'The script of therapeutic, technological, consumerist militarism permeates every dimension of our common life' said Brueggemann. 'That script has failed. It cannot make us safe. It cannot make us happy.'
These are weighty words from a philosopher and scholar of rhetoric and theology. To gloss these differently, we might say that the dominant faith in a fix for every ache, trouble or conflict that can just be swallowed, plugged in, bought without consequence or outsourced to a strong man with a weapon, is failing everywhere. And we know it, viscerally.
(Image: Jeff J Mitchell/PA)Twenty years on, as I sit in the room with the First Minister at his anti-far-right summit, thinking with a group of good, committed leaders and people with deep lived experience of considerable social ills, these words come back to mind.
By being in the room, I am, of course, one of those subject to a barrage of cynicism and criticism for even accepting an invitation to think (my day job) and to commit (my life job) to living in a world without hate, or inequity, or genocide, but where we cleave to common good purpose.
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I think I was there because we've recently refreshed the New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy, which I convene, with people who have known the worst of crimes human beings can do to one another, and upon reaching safety have been met with riots and the burning down of their hotel accommodation. The principles of trauma sensitivity, intercultural inclusion, human rights, restorative purpose, integration from day one and partnership and collaboration are at the core. Principles, in short, of love for neighbours and for ourselves. The work of integration is everyone's work across society. It is the work of steady change.
Whenever I am anywhere these days, I'm also there with Gaza, Sudan and Tigray in my head, my heart and body daily absorbing news of more violence. I am always trying to commit to more work and wiser, thoughtful, practical counter-measures. The people with whom I work in Gaza have lived under the most atrocious, anti-democratic, xenophobic violence and settler colonial siege for 17 years. This is now evidenceable as a genocide and the International Court of Justice will rule on this when the cases for and against have been heard and the evidence weighed. Gaza is redefining our world of rights and love. It is necessary to hold it as context in a Scotland searching again for how to address the always common task of love and justice, and a sustaining social peace, too.
The International Court of Justice in The HagueAt the First Minister's summit, I'm also carrying another summit I've just come from, in Qatar, by way of comparison.
Last week, the second Summit on Rebuilding Higher Education in Gaza took place in Qatar at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) University in Education City. I was on the organising committee and co-convening several panels and plenaries, as I had been for the first summit, hosted by the University of Glasgow, in response, in part, to the student protests and staff calls, in December 2024. The Universities of Fort Hare and of Johannesburg in South Africa joined the organisers for the Qatar summit, as did UN ambassadors, ministers of education from Palestine and Jordan, Qatar Foundation, Education Above All, SwissPeace and all of the presidents and leaders of universities in Palestine.
Contributions from speakers – researchers and operational managers – were given by those who could travel, including Palestinians who were able to go to Qatar and for whom, sadly, the UK is not presently granting visas. We listened for two long days to the detailed forensic research on the full extent of the devastation. Led by the Emergency Committee of the universities in Gaza's own call to action, we heard of what is happening, what is still possible.
A remarkable number of the concrete projects which are providing the lifeline of education to students in higher education in Gaza are of course coming from Palestinian universities themselves and individual initiatives and networks led by stateless Palestinians in the diaspora, and in the region. It is right that the rebuilding and the education in emergency work should be undertaken and shaped primarily by those with direct experience. What the presence of the South African partners demonstrated, however, with their vast and deep experience of apartheid, of the post-apartheid reconstructions and also its failures, was the need for international solidarity, action and support.
READ MORE: Red paint thrown over Tower Bridge in London Marathon Gaza protest
An awful lot was heard, reflected on, critiqued, debated, discussed, disagreed about and agreed upon. Concentration was high. So was emotion. Some will not entertain a single idea or solution unless it is first subject to shibboleth tests whereby certain descriptive phrases – 'anticolonial, genocidal, settler colonial, apartheid' – preface all statements. Others spoke differently, referring in warnings about surveillance of the summit, with wry smiles: 'I'm sure our friends will be listening.'
Such phrases I recognised from practised intercultural diplomacy and a lifetime spent in difficult rooms where people have hated each other so much they have wished each other dead and will do anything to find the weaponry with which to undertake the killing. But we were in the room, making higher education work despite levels of destruction, and despite watching on Zoom calls as the rooms our colleagues in Gaza were speaking from shook from the bombardments from Israeli attacks.
The summit attendees were focused on solutions and what was already proving workable. Those I've worked with for more than 15 years on practical ways of enabling education under siege, and now under genocidal conditions, came to Qatar from universities around the world.
They told of how they are now undertaking research and teaching with their colleagues, and led by the needs of colleagues and students in Gaza. We also heard from managers responsible for operations and some strangely uplifting, often surprising decisions in backroom operations in the coalition of caring universities who have committed to making vital yet administratively quite boring things happen – sorting out servers, library access, issuing certificates and transcripts, understanding the limits and alternatives to scholarships, navigating hostile governing bodies even when managers may, personally themselves, be regular attenders at marches for a ceasefire. They are bound by governments that threaten to close, defund or sanction universities supporting higher education in Gaza.
A strong conclusion, as we summed up the Qatar summit, and made plans for the next one, was the need for a new concept of education, and especially higher education, given that, to paraphrase Brueggemann again, the script presenting higher education as therapeutic, technocratic, military consumerism, has not just failed, but has been burned forever in Gaza. The humanitarian actors cannot alleviate the more than 50 days of forced starvation now in place, hospitals have been destroyed by Israel – no therapeutic alleviation; the tech oligarchs have blocked, shadow-banned and monetised the genocide and are now overtly promoting the destruction of all democracy and promoting violent extremism in speech and in physical action.
(Image: PA) Their systems run our higher education and even as someone who has been religiously following calls for boycotts since my first pocket money, I find it well-nigh impossible to boycott the companies engaged in illegal settlement and Israeli arms trade, in my day job. I still use the VPN and word-processing software required for my work, daily.
And universities are of course engines of research into weapons development and large-scale investors into the arms trade. Indeed, as we saw with Baillie Gifford and the Edinburgh International Book Festival last year, investments across most of our increasingly distrusted institutions of public life are bound up one way or another in the world's largest industry – the industry of killing. It sticks to us all like glue. It is our collective and unavoidable script – even those who profess and protest for a purity.
There is no quick fix to this. We might be able to demand divestment from companies supplying Israel with arms, and I certainly wish this – not blanket arms divestment – was the present demand from our students of their institutions, when protesting. Complete divestment, right now, is pie in the sky. I too desperately want the pie in the sky. But I'm going to have to build a lot of steps to get there, with others.
When we consume, we are involved in killing. Deep down we know it. Some are enraged by this and some – we have to face this – love this. Some get off on the violence and algorithms are now programmed to feed this love and worship of violence, not least, the violence against women and people of any minority.
READ MORE: David Pratt on how Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel is slowly but surely tearing itself apart
In Scotland, mercifully, we are not (yet) Gaza. We still live in relative peace despite the undeniable economic war on the poor by governments that refuse to lift the two-child limit and institute rape clauses and disability benefit cuts. The First Minister and, to their credit, the leaders of those opposition political parties (not the Conservatives or Reform UK) know that a summit 'is just a start' and that countermeasures are indeed required. They are prepared to swallow some dead rats to work towards something, as yet, as with all vision, of necessity vague countermeasures. They may also be up for a radical reset of welfare and wealth distribution. I'm going to hold my breath. Hope is indeed a menace, as my late friend Peter Matheson said after leading a breathtaking successful peace campaign in the 1980s in Aotearoa New Zealand.
I get the cynicism. It is a symptom of helplessness, frustration and exhaustion. It is a symptom of knowing that the script of therapeutic, technocratic, militarist consumerism has utterly failed.
That we are not safe. And we are not happy.
The diagnosis is always the first step to treatment plans and there are no miracle cures. And if we keep insisting on 'new ideas', we will fail radically. For this is a time, as in Gaza, for wisdom, courage, for a great deal of deliberation. Brueggemann also said that people don't change much through doctrine or argument or sheer cognitive appeal. People don't change much because of moral appeal – or at least not these days. If they did, our cries of protest at the daily kill rate in Gaza would have stopped the violence on October 9.
But people do change by the offer of other models of old stories half-forgotten, echoes from other peoples and places, tracings, by one conversation, one story, one book or article, one protest and boycott at a time.
One summit at a time.
Please. Hold your breath with me. Hope must menace us all.
Alison Phipps is Unesco Chair for Refugee Integration through Education, Languages and Arts at University of Glasgow
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