EDI governance and the limits of neutrality in university responses to Gaza

Bibliographic Data

ID22163753
AuthorsCecilie Lolansen (0009-0007-6904-983X, University of Nottingham, corresponding author), Aneeza Pervez (0000-0003-0715-6641, University of Cambridge)
Year2026
Volume11
Publication date2026-07-07
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFrontiers in Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2504-284X • E-ISSN: 2504-284X
PublisherFrontiers Media SA (PUBLISHER • CH)
DOI10.3389/feduc.2026.1877998
OpenAlexW7167637718
LanguageEN
References cited23

Universities are often positioned as spaces of critical inquiry, civic responsibility, and global engagement. Yet responses to Gaza have raised important questions about whether these commitments are enacted consistently across geopolitical contexts. In Gaza, universities and educational institutions have been severely damaged or destroyed, with students and staff killed and educational infrastructures profoundly disrupted. Focusing on UK higher education, this Perspective article examines how university responses to Gaza are shaped by university governance, discursive norms, and the institutionalisation of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Drawing on critical scholarship on higher education, decolonisation, institutional silence, and the politics of knowledge, the article argues that appeals to neutrality, the linguistic framing of crisis, and EDI governance can impact the conditions under which Palestinian suffering is recognised, marginalised, or rendered difficult to name. The argument is not that universities lack commitments to equity, inclusion, academic freedom, or global responsibility, but that these commitments are mediated through institutional structures that may constrain the forms of critique they claim to support. By examining how neutrality, balance, wellbeing, and reputational risk are operationalised in practice, the article considers how institutional silence can become a mode of governance. It argues that meaningful engagement requires more than symbolic concern or procedural inclusion. It requires sustained attention to the conditions through which responsibility is organised, critique is managed, and the labour of naming violence is unevenly distributed

Corporate governance · Geopolitics · Higher education · Institutionalisation · Politics · Scholarship · Silence · Education and experiences of immigrants and refugees · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Peace and Human Rights Education

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