Short Abstract

The ‘Palestine Exception’ has exempted Israel’s settler-colonial regime from academic decolonial agendas. How has the exception been imposed and contested? How have academic protagonists framed the past of Occupied Palestine? How do such efforts promote divergent forms of resilience?

Description

Divergent framings of Occupied Palestine erupted more sharply throughout mainstream institutions, especially in academia. Each narrative frames the past to shape the future. Over several decades, academics have developed critical concepts on many relevant aspects, e.g. performative narratives, neocolonial development, colonial modernity, securitization, automated war, racist genomics, dehumanization, irresponsible innovation, scholasticide-epistemicide, etc. However, the ‘Palestine Exception’ has exempted Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime from international law. Likewise it has been exempted from academic decolonial agendas, detached from anti-colonial struggles.

The Palestine Exception has been imposed by various means including: liberal discourses (neutrality, balance, inclusion, safe spaces, mutual tolerance, etc.), overt repression, court injunctions and even the criminal law (Fúnez-Flores, 2025; Makdisi, 2025; Pervez, 2025; Shwaikh and Gould, 2019; Ziadeh, 2025). Sooner or later, academics have learned the permissible boundaries of criticism; some have accepted various cliches (such as ‘two sides’, religious conflicts, age-old hatreds, etc.) to accommodate the settler-colonial regime and academic complicity. With special relevance to STS, Israel’s partnership with Big Tech has devised high-tech innovation enabling mass surveillance and genocide, partly as a showcase for global export (Albanese, 2025; Arora, 2025; Abdelnour, 2023; Pansera, 2025). This complicity has been neglected (or even silenced) among STS academics.

This Panel focuses on the Palestine Exception in academia. Abstracts should address these questions:

1. How has the Exception’ been imposed and contested in academia? What have been efforts to de-exceptionalize this issue?

2. How do self-discipline, censorship, smearing and shaming mechanisms serve to intimidate researchers?

3. How have academic protagonists framed the past of Occupied Palestine? How potentially shaping the future?

4. How do such efforts promote divergent forms of resilience? Of what institutions and potential futures?

How can those issues be illuminated by STS perspectives? Linked with decolonial ones?

A literature list is available from the convenors. See https://www.4sonline.org/palestine_forum.php

Also an online workshop is planned for spring 2026.

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