This empathy-centred study analyzes the catastrophic impact of the war on Gaza’s higher education, characterized by widespread infrastructural destruction, human loss, and "scholasticide". Using qualitative interviews and Empathy Mapping with academic staff and students, the paper documents a multi-dimensional collapse. Findings reveal that academic staff perceive institutional loss (libraries, archives, research capacity), whereas students focus on the embodied struggle of learning amid fear and resource constraints (electricity, internet). The study identified six interconnected dimensions of disruption—from the collapse of knowledge access and the irreversible loss of academic sources to the material constraints on learning and the role of education as identity under erasure. Empathy Mapping deepened these findings, revealing that academic identity endures even when its institutional conditions have been destroyed.
Awadallah et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
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