As historians and theorists of architecture and the constructed environment, our heartbreak and sense of professional responsibility compel us to speak plainly about genocide as we see it unfolding. We grieve the loss of lives in Palestine and Israel, which impacts all caught in the present cycle of settler colonial violence perpetrated by the governments of Israel, the United States, and many other powers at a distance. Our solidarity with the anticolonial liberation movement in Palestine is consistent with our solidarity with all those who experience racism, particularly structural racism. Our call for Palestinian liberation goes hand in hand with our concern for the dignity and futures of all people.
Our scholarship teaches us that the structural violence that impacts Palestine has been enacted historically by apartheid in the physical environment and through the manufacturing of complicit knowledge formations that enable epistemicide. We note the militarism, extractivist interests, and colonialism that benefit from the production of war in Palestine. A century of dispossession and settlement prefaces the current urbicide of Gaza, while lives, homes, heritages, and futures have been destroyed. The misuses of archaeology and landscape narratives to legitimate occupation and seizure of territory and the construction of infrastructures of control in Palestine are unconscionable. Academic institutions everywhere must work toward an end to a campaign against Gaza that disproportionately kills children, targets healthcare workers and journalists to silence them, and razes schools and hospitals, while systematically harassing students and academics around the world.
There has been retaliation against individuals who advocate for Palestinian liberation, and speaking out on this issue is laden with fear. Yet, we believe that debating positions taken by governments is a demonstrative act of freedom of expression, not a form of hate speech. The conflation of the two is a perpetuation of violence and normalization of authoritarianism. Our statement follows our core professional competence, a foundation that forms a key element of academic freedom. Our commitment and perspectives stem from our dedication to creating public knowledge and interpretive tools to understand history as a vital dimension of the present.
We call for and commit to open forums for teaching and learning. We call on scholarly associations, such as the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA), the College Art Association (CAA), the Society of American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH), and the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA) to take a stand against racism of all kinds, consistent with their statements on academic freedom and anti-racism (here, here, here, here, and here), and not make an exception of Palestine. We urge organizations such as the European Architectural History Network (EAHN), the Society of Architectural Historians Great Britain (SAHGB), and the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ) to join this call.
We owe it to each other to speak out as part of our collective liberation. None of us is free until all of us are free–to think, to learn, and to teach about the past and present with the fullest academic freedom, toward a liberated future.
Scholars of the constructed environment in many disciplines have signed this statement of conscience, which was circulated peer-to-peer from December 3 to December 10, 2023. The list will continue to update below, and you are welcome to add your name here. We are grateful to Thea Abu El-Haj for sharing her artwork.