School of Social and Political Science

Description

This is the first event in a two part programme which will discuss Britain’s legacy of imperial and settler colonial dispossession of Palestinians, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the multiple forms of UK complicity with the ongoing genocide.

Each event requires separate registration. Details of the second event can be found here: The Gaza Tribunal

In this event, Dr. Victor Kattan (University of Nottingham) and Danny Friedman KC, will present the Britain Owes Palestine (BOP) petition, which calls on the UK government to recognise that Britain acted unlawfully in Palestine between 1917 and 1948 and owes acknowledgement, apology and repair. They will do so in conversation with Shaira Vadasaria and Nicola Perugini, scholars at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Science, whose work with the UoE sponsored Decolonised Transformations has investigated the University’s involvement in the dispossession of Palestinians. Their research examines both its historical entanglements, including through its former UoE Chancellor, Arthur James Balfour, as well as its ongoing investments in companies contributing to genocide. The aim is not simply to present two accountability initiatives in parallel, but to bring them into conversation: first, by setting out the legal architecture of British responsibility in Palestine, and then by examining how its legacies persist within a Scottish university’s investments, curriculum and institutional memory.

On the 109th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, academic institutions, civil society, and government have an obligation: to apologise, divest, and make reparations.

The event will be chaired by Professor Hugh Goddard, Honorary Professorial Fellow in the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World.

The event is sponsored by the University of Edinburgh Politics and International Relations Contemporary Middle East Series, Al Waleed Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, UCU Edinburgh, and Britain Owes Palestine, in collaboration with Global and Contemporary History of Palestine Hub at the Edinburgh Centre for Global History, CRITIQUE, Centre for Ethics and Critical Thought, and Sociology Seminar Series.

The views and opinions expressed at this event do not necessarily reflect the policies, positions, or views of Augustine United Church