Ever heard of university twinning? It was a term that rang familiar bells when browsing through the archives for this 55th anniversary of Brig.
In 1983, Stirling University decided in a vote that it should ‘twin’ with Hebron University on the West Bank. Months later in July, there was an attack on the university campus where three students died and more than 40 were wounded.
It is unclear how much the twinning, what is essentially a collaboration between universities, amounted to in 1983, but Stirling was visited by one of Hebron’s academics, Dr Jeremy Jones.
He spoke to Brig about the difficult student life on the West Bank, where military harassment and interference were disrupting the education of students and teaching from the staff. The academic freedom was suffering and now students had been attacked. The Student’s Association President at the time, Douglas Campbell, hoped that the twinning would help broaden people’s horizons to what was going on outside Scotland.
It seems at Stirling that we are very good at giving ourselves to the causes that matter greatly in society. In 2023, the university was awarded a sum of money from Universities UK International’s twinning initiative needed to coordinate an academic partnership with Odesa State Environmental University in Ukraine. The research conducted by academics of the twin universities will help improve water quality in the war-torn port city.
The twinning between UK and Ukrainian universities is giving hope and keeping the educational sector running in Ukraine while the war continues. The pairings are important in showing that higher education is more than worth preserving.
The same wide-scale support for education in war-torn Gaza has not been seen since 7 October. Or at least, if there are university twins, the collaborative work has not made the same headlines. It begs the question if the academia here is valued less.
Access to education is not a privilege, it is a right. And we should be doing our utmost to preserve and fight for it.
It is not only the further education institutions in Gaza that are under deadly hardship. Schools are bombed, not to mention that school-age children and teachers are killed in the violence. Gaza will need a lot of help if children and adults are to ever return to their education.
It may be cliché, but no less truthful, to say that education paves the way forward. It bridges borders, provides stability and equality, reduces poverty, and in cases of conflict, we need it to understand the past so that at some point we will finally learn to not repeat it.
Maybe it’s time to show Gaza’s people that they are supported by academia. Maybe it’s to find Gaza’s twin.
Featured Image Credit: Freya Deyell
Fourth year English and Journalism student and Comment editor. Talk to me about fashion, culture, language and media.
