The University of Barcelona promotes the first European chair of Palestinian studies

BarcelonaThe University of Barcelona presented this Wednesday the Ferrer Foundations Chair for Palestinian Studies, the first to be promoted in Europe dedicated exclusively to this subject. The chair will have a multidisciplinary approach, with faculty from the fields of international law, ecology and the environment, Arab studies, contemporary history, communication, and the arts. These studies will be financed with the support of the foundations linked to the pharmaceutical laboratories Ferrer, which have action for Palestine among their lines of activity.

"We are a scientific institution, dedicated to the production of knowledge with rigor, and that does not mean that we are indifferent: commitment is also a university value. We universities are reservoirs of values, based on science, rigor, solidarity, and basic rights," pointed out Dr. Joan Guàrdia, rector of the UB. The UB broke relations with institutions and companies linked to the genocide in Palestine, through a government agreement after the student encampment, and urges the EU to do the same. The rector wanted to recall that university centers financed by the UB were systematically destroyed by the Israeli army and their university colleagues murdered in Gaza: "I don't even know where they are, and that for an old professor like me is an enormous frustration."

The director of the chair, the doctor in international law Elisenda Calvet, recalled that "in Gaza the humanitarian situation continues to be critical, more than a year after the announcement of a ceasefire," and urged to study Palestine "not only as a space of conflict, but also as a society, a culture, a history, and a human experience that deserves to be understood and studied with rigor." She also defended the role of universities in the development of an evidence-based analysis to promote critical thinking amidst polarization.

Cooperation with Palestinian universities

The activity of the chair will be structured around three axes: the analysis of the Palestinian reality from a legal, political, historical, and social perspective; the study of narratives and the fight against disinformation; and the transfer of knowledge to enrich public and institutional debate. It will organize an annual international conference where it will present a report, work on the training of communication professionals, and also plans to create a portal with documentary resources and access to publications. At the same time, it will promote academic cooperation with Palestinian universities.

Estefania Rico, director of the Ferrer Foundations, has urged to continue talking about Gaza and has defended the centrality of Palestinian voices with a warning: "The last bastion of the moral legitimacy of the West is at stake in Palestine, where the triangle of imperialism, colonialism, and racism materializes, at a time when inequalities and injustices reach an unsustainable level."

At the presentation event, Dr. Omar Melad, rector of Al-Azhar University in Gaza, recalled in a video message the massive destruction of the universities in the Gaza Strip and claimed that "the university is more than a set of buildings; it is what gives societies the capacity to understand the past and think about the future, and a space to preserve the human voice and accountability." The Palestinian ambassador in Madrid, Fadi al-Husseini, closed the event by claiming that, "although some do not know it and want to erase us, Palestine is a proud nation with a long history: these three years have been the worst, but we always rise stronger."