Women academics carry burden of war and keeping HE alive

Before October 2023, Dr Suheir Ammar, an associate professor of architecture in the faculty of engineering at the Islamic University of Gaza, taught architecture in Gaza, training students to design functional, affordable spaces for community life. Today, she is trying to organise her family’s survival from a 20-square-metre tent in Deir al-Balah.

In this confined space, which offers little privacy or personal space, five mattresses double as a living area, a dining room and a pathway.

Her daily routine is now shaped less by academic work than by the daily tasks of survival: sourcing water, baking bread over open fires, and coping with extreme inflation, such as when a kilogram of flour reached US$35.

Yet, remarkably, Ammar’s academic work did not stop. For a time, she walked 25 minutes each way under the threat of airstrikes to deliver face-to-face instruction in a student’s apartment before eventually securing a borrowed laptop to resume online teaching.

Ammar’s experience is not an isolated case. It reflects the wider breakdown of higher education in Gaza under war.

Her story, alongside those of other Palestinian scholars, recently took centre stage at the Gender, Work and Organization (GWO) Conference in Astana, Kazakhstan from 8 to 10 June 2026.

In a dedicated session titled “Knowledge, Care and Survival Under War”, women academics from Gaza spoke about the “double burden” they carry: the attempt to sustain teaching and research while simultaneously navigating displacement, severe exhaustion, and caregiving responsibilities.

Global attention has understandably focused on the destruction of Gaza’s higher education infrastructure and institutions. According to the recent report Scholasticide in Gaza: The Systematic Destruction of Palestinian Higher Education and the Continuation of Collective Resistance, all 19 recognised higher education institutions in the territory have been severely damaged or completely destroyed, while UNESCO has estimated the physical damage at US$373 million.

The human toll has been equally devastating: more than 1,372 university students and over 246 academics and university staff – including three university presidents and 10 college deans – have been killed. The report’s authors describe this systematic dismantling of the sector as “scholasticide”.

Yet the testimonies presented in Astana suggest that the survival of higher education in Gaza cannot be understood through destroyed campuses and casualty figures alone. It now also depends on the unpaid and largely invisible labour of women academics working to sustain teaching, student support and scholarship under war.

Yet some scholars argue that the crisis in Gaza’s higher education sector did not begin with the current war.

Amani Al-Mqadma, head of international relations at the Islamic University of Gaza, said the destruction has deepened a much older pattern of academic isolation shaped by occupation and years of blockade. This, she argued, has created a widening gap between global knowledge production and what students and researchers in Gaza can access, particularly in the humanities and social sciences.

For Al-Mqadma, the challenge is, therefore, not only to rebuild damaged institutions but also to reconnect Palestinian scholars to international academic networks as active contributors rather than subjects of testimony.

“We have been living in isolation for nearly 20 years,” Al-Mqadma said.

Teaching amid collapse

For women academics in Gaza, the destruction of campus life has forced constant adaptation in how they teach and support students. With campuses reduced to rubble and digital access severely disrupted, continuing to teach has required constant improvisation.

Dr Miram Abu Daqqa, a PhD in English literature and a volunteer instructor at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza, was forced to adapt to a reality where traditional virtual platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams were impossible. Before she eventually evacuated Gaza, Abu Daqqa lived with nearly 80 extended family members in Khan Younis. Internet access was virtually non-existent, and electricity was a luxury.

To maintain contact with her students, Abu Daqqa restructured her entire curriculum. She recorded lectures as compressed audio files, strictly keeping them under ten minutes so they could be downloaded over weak cellular connections via WhatsApp and Telegram.

“I could not give up on my students when I saw one of my students risking his life by climbing to the highest point in the rubble to catch an internet signal to download the course materials,” Abu Daqqa noted.

Dr Kholoud Attia Al-Faleet, an assistant professor of business administration in the faculty of economics and administrative sciences at the Islamic University of Gaza, also drew on her academic training to navigate wartime conditions.

To circumvent months-long internet blackouts, she pre-loaded academic references onto USB flash drives for offline use and relied on her previously archived YouTube lectures.

However, Al-Faleet points out that survival itself became a full-time, exhausting project. “I wake up after the dawn call to prayer... and look around and check my body. Am I in the same place I slept? Is my body whole? Am I in the afterlife?” she recounted. The simple act of boiling water or making a meal required hours of scavenging for wood. “A lighter to start a fire in the wood has become a buried treasure.”

Academic survival is a gendered burden

The war has collapsed the boundary between academic work and domestic care, leaving many women academics to manage teaching responsibilities alongside the daily work of keeping their families safe, fed and connected.

In Gaza, women academics are expected to function as educators and emotional anchors for their students, while simultaneously serving as the primary providers of household survival labour.

For Abu Daqqa, daily life involved managing 10 litres of water for four people over two days – water that had to suffice for drinking, cooking, washing clothes by hand, and basic hygiene. “Every day became a struggle to secure the basic necessities of life while continuing to fulfill my responsibilities as an educator, a mother, caregiver and head of the household,” she explained.

Ammar echoed this reality, noting that the mental load of war is distinctly gendered. Beyond physical labour, she bore the burden of constant strategic decision-making for her family: “What will we eat? Is there water for drinking or washing? What do we need from the market? And taking decisions: When do we evacuate? Is the situation too dangerous now? Where will we go? And how?”

In these conditions, many of the basic conditions for academic work – access to books, quiet space, stable internet and professional exchange – have disappeared, displaced by the daily demands of survival.

Exile, continuity, and academic solidarity

Physical escape from Gaza does not alleviate this academic and emotional burden; it merely reshapes it.

Dr Asmaa Abusamra, assistant professor at the University College of Applied sciences (UCAS), who crossed into Egypt hoping to better support her family, found herself trapped in exile when the Rafah crossing closed. She is now the sole provider for three families, navigating the profound psychological weight of survivor’s guilt.

“People often think that once you leave, you are safe. My body may be here, but my heart and my mind are still in Gaza,” Abusamra explained. “I live with constant anxiety, wondering whether they are alive each time the phone is silent.”

For scholars in the diaspora, maintaining their academic work is both a coping mechanism and a lifeline to their homeland. Abusamra channels her grief into institutional action, speaking at international conferences and helping to establish a “Space of Hope” learning initiative inside Gaza, equipped with internet access so students can continue their education.

From testimony to institutional questions

The testimonies also raise questions about how long individual academics can continue to absorb the emotional and practical burdens of keeping higher education functioning in Gaza.

Al-Faleet spoke candidly about reaching the breaking point. In March 2024, overwhelmed by the destruction and the loss of her brother, she suffered severe depression and survived a suicide attempt. What tethered her to life was her academic community. Students, aware of the bombings in her area, continuously sent small messages simply to check if she was alive.

“They rely on me as a window of hope,” Al-Faleet reflected. “Throughout my time working at the university, my students have known me as the strong, formidable professor. I did not allow my students to hear my voice in my weakest moments of life.”

In these conditions, teaching can become more than professional work; it can also serve as a way of preserving purpose, routine and connection.

As Abusamra observed: “Teaching is an act of resistance, learning is an act of hope, and serving our communities is an act of survival.”

However, Abu Daqqa noted that the scale of the trauma has ruptured the very language used within the academy. As a literature professor, she finds academic terminology increasingly hollow. “Displacement becomes an irrelevant word as it cannot convey what it means to lose not only your home but the entire infrastructure of everyday life,” she said.

What should international HE do?

When the women of Gaza addressed the international academic community at the GWO conference in Astana, their objective was not to solicit pity. They demanded to be recognised as active knowledge producers who require structural support and equitable academic partnerships.

Dr Shumaila Yousafzai, professor of entrepreneurship and founding director of the Nazarbayev University Research Centre for Entrepreneurship (NURCE) and the conference chair, deliberately designed the programme to move beyond a model of speaking about marginalised communities towards creating opportunities to speak with them.

“There is always a danger, especially in academic spaces, that we begin to speak about people so eloquently that we forget to speak with them,” Yousafzai noted. “Speaking about gives us control over the frame. Speaking with requires humility... Solidarity is not rescue. Rescue places us above others... Solidarity asks us to make space without taking over that space.”

This sentiment was echoed by Dr Amani Al-Mqadma, a Palestinian academic from Gaza, who reflected on the conference session. “Yes, today we are the victims. We are displaced... But none of this means that we are inexperienced, unskilled, or voiceless,” Al-Mqadma stated.

“Academics should not compete with scholars from Gaza for the authority to tell our own stories... What we need is not representation by others. We need opportunities to lead, to shape the research agenda, and to define the narratives that concern our own lives.”

For the international higher education sector, moving from rhetorical solidarity to structural support requires actionable commitments. Robert Quinn, founding executive director of the Scholars at Risk Network, argues that the experiences of Gaza’s academics fundamentally validate the core purpose of the university.

“In countries where safety and stability are generally present, there is a tendency to see a scholar’s claim to academic freedom as a luxury,” Quinn said.

“Scholars in conflict zones and authoritarian countries show us this is not true; that academic freedom is not a luxury; it is a necessity. Their courage, resilience, and dedication... show that academic freedom and the quest for knowledge are not personal, selfish pursuits, but rather shared, sacred pledges.”

Quinn outlined three practical steps that universities worldwide must take to prevent the further erosion of Gaza’s higher education sector.

First, international institutions must continually invite scholars from Gaza for temporary visits, fellowships, webinars, and joint research projects to ensure the visibility and representation of Gaza's higher education on global platforms.

Second, universities must use their institutional leverage to press national authorities to grant these scholars freedom of movement and travel.

Finally, the global academic community must relentlessly urge states and multilateral entities to fund structural rebuilding projects for higher education in Gaza, spanning physical infrastructure to long-term academic partnerships.

Gaza’s women academics are helping to keep a shattered system alive from within tents and exile. Their message to the international higher education sector is not a plea for rescue but for partnership: Gaza’s universities will need rebuilding not only in bricks and budgets but also through academic relationships that recognise the women who have helped sustain teaching and scholarship through war.