Indigenous Students’ Geographies on the Academic Fortress Campus: Palestinian Students’ Spatial Experiences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Abstract

This article addresses an under-studied phenomenon in the lived experience of Palestinian students in Israeli universities as seen from a spatial perspective. Specifically, it analyses the everyday spatial experiences of Palestinian students on the Mount Scopus Campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Situated in a contested space amid Palestinian villages, the campus's architecture and prominent location are intended to project power and symbolic domination over the surrounding Arab environment. The study analyses the narratives of fifteen Palestinian students from this campus, underscoring the dialectical relations between their feelings of alienation and estrangement, on the one hand, and practices of resistance and subversion on campus, on the other. Moreover, the analysis reveals how, through their daily spatial behaviours, Palestinian students challenge the settler-colonial landscape-production that the Israeli authorities attempt to impose.