A study day on the Israeli-Palestinian question at the University of Milan goes ahead under pressure

A study day entitled "A Land Without Peace: The Israeli-Palestinian Question", held in early March 2024 at the University of Milan, became the target of pressure to cancel it as soon as its poster was circulated. The programme opened with a historical analysis running from the late nineteenth century to the Oslo negotiations, followed by a session on the Palestinian and Israeli political landscape. The afternoon was devoted to international law and its application by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, the regional and international context, and media coverage of the conflict. The speakers were almost all scholars from various Italian universities with long experience of studying the Middle East and a range of perspectives.

According to Elisa Ada Giunchi, professor of Asian history and institutions at the University of Milan, the university came under strong pressure to cancel the event or revise its programme, and some younger speakers, in more precarious positions, were pressed to withdraw. Despite a few absences, the study day went ahead, with hundreds of students attending in the lecture hall and online. While it was under way, protesters outside the faculty accused the organisers and speakers of complicity with Hamas, holding signs that equated them with the group and its leader. Giunchi added that media coverage gave prominence to these accusations and used archive footage of large pro-Palestinian demonstrations unrelated to the event, fostering the idea that academic meetings on current events are partisan.

Giunchi placed the episode in a broader narrowing of space for discussion in Italian and European universities since October 2023: the more than 4,000 Italian academics who signed a petition for a ceasefire were accused of complicity with Hamas and antisemitism, and seminars and conferences on the causes of the conflict were cancelled under outside pressure. In her view, the study of history and international law is being delegitimised because it contradicts a narrative in which everything begins on 7 October.