This open letter was first distributed on Oct 7th, 2026. Because of a technical error, part of the text was not visible. We fixed the problem and re-published the letter here.

Dear EERA,

We are a group of educators and scholars who attended ECER 2026 and who are concerned about the ongoing genocide and scholasticide in Palestine (Amnesty, 2024; Albanese, 2025a; Human Rights Council, 2025) and the complicity of EERA in its ties with Israeli academic institutions.

We have received your email (dated 19th August 2026) as response to a protest organized during the ECER conference in Tampere in front of the ECER reception venue. We were dissatisfied and surprised by its framing, referring to an "incident" that happened during a pro-Palestine protest. We received your subsequent replies to the Helsinki researchers' letter and the SUMUD letter (SUMUD, 2026) with deep disappointment and concern. In all responses, EERA missed the core point and focused on the "incident" as if that incident came out of nowhere, stripped of its context. This is characteristic of Western abyssal thinking (Santos, 2014) that reduces topics of grave human rights violation, such as genocide, to a matter of sides and debate and erasing the authority of the victim of atrocity. Your use of the language of diversity, cultural differences and dialogue acts as a tactic of silencing and innocence, and fails to address questions of complicity and accountability. Describing what is happening in Gaza as an ongoing conflict is not a neutral formulation; it obscures the reality of genocide and reduces a matter of grave human rights violations to a disagreement requiring scholarly dialogue. We are also concerned by EERA's suggestion that such matters should be left to governments and universities. EERA is not a passive venue in which academic exchange happens; it is an organization that makes choices about whom it brings together, which institutions it legitimizes through participation, and what kind of academic community it seeks to build. Those choices are themselves consequential. In this letter, we discuss three points:

(1) EERA should make a clear stance on opposing the genocide in Gaza (Amnesty, 2024 ; Albanese, 2025a; Human Rights Council, 2025).

(2) EERA should not host academic institutions supporting the genocide (Wind, 2024).

(3) EERA should review its code of conduct that infringes upon epistemic justice (Hajir and Qato, 2026 ; Lynn, 2026 ; Ziadah, 2025).

Israeli academic institutions are deeply complicit in the genocide in Gaza (and the West Bank) through funding, supporting, and legitimizing the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as detailed by Wind (2024). All universities in Gaza have been destroyed. 90,000 students have lost access to HE (Cochrane, 2025, Abu Shaban et al., 2026). Over 21,000 students and teachers have been killed since October 2023 (PCHR, 2026 ; Giroux, 2025). These are facts, not political or religiously motivated statements. Beyond the genocide, Israel is also committing scholasticide (Dader et al., 2024 ; Giroux, 2025 ; Hajir and Qato, 2025). None of the Israeli universities has condemned the scholasticide. This denial and the surrounding victimization rhetoric is part of the Zionist propaganda machinery (Aouragh, 2016).

Furthermore, a recent report by Adalah —the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel— co-written by Tuma, Mansour and Diab (2026) indicates that Israeli academic institutions are systematically repressing Palestinian expression and have effectively implemented an educational apartheid system. By failing to recognize the genocide in Palestine carried out by Israel as a crime (Albanese, 2025b) and allowing these universities to attend scientific conferences, EERA is facilitating future projects that channel funds into institutions that cooperate with military and technological development, and essentially providing them with the latest scientific knowledge which then is intentionally used to further the genocide (Wind, 2024) as well as weaponized to whitewash crimes. This is why, EERA needs to take a clear stance in calling out the genocide and addressing the accountability implications of continuing to provide platforms to institutions complicit with it. Academic spaces must not become places where such institutions are normalized or narratives that deny, justify or depoliticize the destruction of Palestinian life and education are reproduced.

2. Cutting ties with Israeli educational institutions

While Israeli scholars are enjoying international conferences, like ECER, Palestinian scholars are not just deprived from participation, they are assassinated on the ground (Desai et al., 2025). This creates epistemic erasure by denying Palestinians' testimonial authority (Fricker, 2007), reinforcing settler-colonial violence. Israeli academic institutions are intimately implicated in the genocide and scholasticide in Palestine. Most of the scholars within these Israeli institutions cannot be independent critical thinkers, but even if some of them show criticality they are still promoting and representing their institutions through their presence in the conference. In working in Israeli HE institutions, they take an active role in the systemic erasure of Palestinians (not only through research but also through institutional practice) and participate in legitimizing the apartheid ethnostate of Israel. The Academics for Palestine provides a database (academicsforpalestine.dk/academic-boycott/complici...) that summarizes some of the specific implications institution by institution, including the grave human rights violation that the Israeli institutions attending ECER 2026 are involved in and which were already summarized in the SUMUD open letter sent to you before the event. Thus, we believe that ECER, and other European conferences, should not welcome participants (whether attendees, speakers, representatives, delegates or others) from Israeli academic institutions. For the record, ECER 2026 follows the standard of excluding scholars from Russian and Belarusian institutions for humanitarian reasons, and this logic should be extended to the Israeli academic context.

EERA's responses to the letters by Helsinki researchers and to SUMUD suggest that the exclusion of Russian and Belarusian institutions was because EERA was required to follow the rules of the host country. This explanation does not resolve the ethical question; it makes it more urgent. EERA is capable of implementing institutional participation criteria when required by its host context. The question before us is therefore whether EERA is willing to apply a consistent ethical principle when the circumstances demand it. If institutional exclusion can be justified on host university grounds in one context, EERA cannot simply declare itself institutionally neutral in another context without explaining the ethical principle that distinguishes the two cases. The burden is on EERA to articulate a coherent standard instead of invoking "rules and regulations" as though ethical responsibility ends where legal obligation begins. This is why EERA should cut ties with Israeli educational institutions.

3. ECER 2026's unsafe space behind a non-neutral code of conduct

As a consequence of the previous points —not acknowledging the genocide and welcoming Israeli institutions at ECER conferences— EERA actively participates in creating an unsafe environment. These points relate to the non-performative neutrality of EERA which was also exacerbated by its code of conduct. The code of conduct declares that any forms of discrimination are not tolerated, while simultaneously creating an unsafe space.

In the email sent to all participants on 19th of August, alongside the large presence of participants from Israeli academic institutions, creates a socially unsafe environment for participants racialized as 'Arabs' and for Muslims (particularly visible Muslims) participants, because they are often target of anti-Muslim discrimination and dehumanization inside and outside academia. Unfortunately, one of the ECER participants has been the target of such discrimination, as reported to EERA's administration via email. When trying to enter the ECER reception venue, a police officer stopped this participant (visibly Muslim) and pointed to the demonstration saying that "we are not allowing any of those people inside. Those instructions we have been given." The participant made it clear to the officer that she is ECER participant and there were many of other participants (not visibly Muslim) who were in the demonstration but they were allowed to enter. This situation showcases clear discrimination, which goes against the very code of conduct of EERA (eera-ecer.de/about-eera/ethical-guidelines/ecer-co....) Intimidation of academics and teachers by pro-Israel lobbies is increasingly well documented and discussed (Hajir & Qato, 2025). EERA needs to protect its most marginalized delegates by design through deliberately creating a safe space rather than only through declarative and non-performative language (Ahmed, 2012)

In inviting the presence of individuals from Israeli academic institutions, the social environment becomes prone to such discrimination. This is why EERA should follow anti-racist principles that distinguish intent versus impact. EERA should not hide behind words and innocent language but responsible and accountable for creating a safe space instead of being complicit in perpetuating harm.

This also raises a fundamental question about what EERA means when it describes ECER as a "safe space for all"; "Safe for whom?" as addressed by SUMUD's open letter. A conference cannot be considered genuinely safe simply because everyone is formally permitted to attend. A safe space does not happen by declaration but through structural safety for all (including minoritized groups). Safety has long been weaponized by Zionists through 'perpetual victimhood', turning the real victims of settler-colonial violence (Palestinians) into perpetrators (Khouri, 2010). Safety concerns whose dignity, humanity, and lived experiences are protected within a space. A safe academic space requires ethical boundaries concerning what forms of institutional participation are compatible with the safety and dignity of those who are subjected to atrocity.

There is also a fundamental contradiction in EERA's framing of "political views" as a protected category. We agree that people should not be excluded from academic spaces because of their political opinions. However, support for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or the systematic dehumanization of a population cannot simply be treated as an ordinary political position deserving protection under a code of conduct. EERA's commitment to non-discrimination should therefore require it to distinguish between political disagreement and advocacy or justification of atrocity crimes. If EERA's code of conduct prohibits discriminatory conduct, then it should also make explicit that support for genocide and other atrocity crimes is incompatible with that commitment. Otherwise, "political neutrality" risks becoming a shield that protects the expression or institutional normalization of positions that directly undermine the very principles of non-discrimination that the code is intended to uphold. Neutrality in times of genocide aligns with the oppressor and constitutes silencing and complicity (Tommasi et al., 2026). We therefore support the call for EERA to clarify its code of conduct.

ECER 2026 adopted the slogan "Knowing and Acting". Now that you know, albeit belatedly, we are wondering where the actions are. Dr. Richard Budd, one of the keynote speakers of this conference, convincingly brought up the topic of social justice and insisted that we must use "power when you have it". Another keynote speaker Professor Radhika Gorur made extensive use of the concept of epistemic injustice and reminded us too that knowing cannot be separated from acting. According to her, knowing involves making choices that influence the kind of world we want to build. This applies equally to EERA as an institution, through the choices it makes about the collaborations it enters into and the voices it chooses to amplify. Inspired by the messages of the keynote speakers and the theme of this year's ECER conference, we take action, and we urge EERA to do the same. Below, we outline a list that we consider the minimum to do for the next conference:

1- EERA should acknowledge the genocide and scholasticide in Palestine by Israel, in official communication.

2- EERA should send a clear signal that the European educational research community does not remain silent in the face of genocide.

3- EERA should share its deep concerns about the scholasticide in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

4- EERA should stand in solidarity with those who speak up for people whose voices and rights are marginalised.

5- EERA should adopt the logic applied to Russians and Belarusians exclusion to the Israeli context.

6- EERA should follow Boycott Divest Sanction (BDS, n.d) by cuttings ties with Israeli institutions who are complicit in the genocide, scholastice, and settler-colonial violence in Gaza and the West Bank. This means not accepting delegates affiliated with Israeli institutions unless these institutions are proven to oppose the genocide.

7- EERA should support the presence and opportunities of Palestinian delegates, mirroring EERA's support for Ukrainian delegates. This can be done through economics and financial support such as waiving membership fees, free conference entry, and grants.

8- EERA should establish dedicated panels on the genocide in Gaza and create meaningful spaces to listen, mourn, and learn from those directly experiencing and documenting it.

9- EERA should center the most vulnerable and marginalized participants by creating a safe environment which does not gather the victim and perpetrator under the same roof. This is what anti-racism is all about and we all need to be accountable.

This list represents our demands for the ECER 2027 conference, and we are informing you one year in advance. We also want to make clear that our work does not stop here. If necessary, we will continue to organize and make our demands heard widely and loudly, including by calling for a boycott of future conferences should they continue to host Israeli academic institutions.

Thank you for taking these demands seriously.

References:

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Albanese, F. (2025a). From economy of occupation to economy of genocide: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 (A/HRC/59/23). United Nations Human Rights Council. https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/59/23

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