ABSTRACT
The chapter explores how faculty and administration at Birzeit University (West Bank, OPT) struggled to preserve the academic freedom of a Palestinian university – a ‘national institution’ for a nation in waiting – under direct Israeli military occupation. It looks particularly at the crucial period of 1980 through the first Palestinian intifada to the Oslo accords in 1993. It concludes with reflections on how faculty–student partnerships to defend the University and its members enriched education and informed new curricula, as well as posing a number of challenges. A short afterword considers the effects on Palestinian higher education of the new period ushered in by the Palestinian-Israeli interim (Oslo) agreements.
