“Healing” hospital graduation ceremony for students of the faculties of medicine at the universities in the Gaza Strip.
© Al Jazeera
The Palestinian universities and their special relationship with Germany: a lecture series.
For 150 years, Germany and its Protestant and Catholic mission schools, which also steer children toward a German Abitur (or higher education entrance qualification) has had a formative influence on the Palestinian education system. Numerous Palestinian intellectuals speak German, and various professors at the twelve Palestinian universities were educated in Germany. In the West Bank, however, the restrictions imposed by over 50 years of military administration weigh heavily on lecturers and students alike. In the Gaza Strip, teaching and research can almost only be done online now that all the university buildings have been destroyed – as has happened several times in the past 20 years.
- Katja Dorothea Buck, M.A. (journalist specializing in religious minorities and religious freedom in the Middle East, Tübingen): German educational pioneers in the Holy Land: Importance and legacy of the German Protestant and Catholic missions for the Palestinian school system.
- Professor Helga Baumgarten, retd. (Birzeit University, former DAAD Professor of Political Science): 50 years of Palestinian universities: Freedom of teaching and research under occupation?
- Professor Ahmed Abu Shaban (Al-Azhar University Gaza, Agricultural Studies/York University Toronto, Environmental and Urban Change): From weakening to annihilation: Higher education and the systematic destruction of universities in Gaza.
For more information, please visit the website of the Institute for Near and Middle Eastern Studies.