{"id":1726,"date":"2024-09-18T22:39:05","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T19:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jineoloji.eu\/en\/?p=1726"},"modified":"2024-12-12T12:39:10","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T09:39:10","slug":"building-alternative-universities-in-the-midst-of-war-and-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jineoloji.eu\/en\/2024\/09\/18\/building-alternative-universities-in-the-midst-of-war-and-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Building Alternative Universities in the Midst of War and Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

by Luqman Guldiv\u00ea –

Source : https:\/\/turningpointmag.org\/2024\/09\/18\/building-alternative-universities-in-the-midst-of-war-and-revolution\/<\/p>\n

The Democratic Autonomous Administration of North-Eastern Syria (DAANES) is building an alternative education system under siege from multiple powers, defying the control of the Ba\u2019athist education system of the Assad regime as well as the Turkish occupation forces and their proxies. The alternative system has accomplished such measures as the reintroduction of the Kurdish language for young students\u2014drastically altering the way of life in the region. However, building institutions of higher education in an area where many native Kurds could not even have Syrian citizenship two decades ago poses a major challenge.<\/p>\n

This rebirth of native languages, carried out alongside a turn towards indigenous and feminist liberation philosophy in academia, played a crucial role for the self-sustenance of a revolution that started over a decade ago. While students at Rojava\u2019s newly reconstituted and founded universities can freely study more subjects than before, they struggle to gain accreditation for their studies by the international community.<\/p>\n

\u201cRojava University, the University of Koban\u00ea, and Shark University are all results of our revolution,\u201d says Zozan S\u00eema, a member of Jineoloj\u00ee Academy1<\/a><\/sup> in North and East Syria (NES), and continues, \u201cWe call our revolution the woman\u2019s revolution. That is why students of our universities should learn about the women\u2019s revolution, its gains, its struggle against sexism, and its aim to create free coexistence through the equality of men and women in the democratized space of politics, and learn about all these norms.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is an ongoing revolution in an ongoing war with multiple warring parties and multiple interfering regional and international actors. The situation critically raises the question of how a society can invent a new educational system\u2014even higher education institutes\u2014during the ongoing revolution while navigating warfare and the permanent threats of occupation by Turkey, the Syrian regime, and their proxies? This is not a hypothetical question but a very real one that people in Rojava have been asking themselves for about a decade. The answer is not easy.<\/p>\n

Aras Hiso, one of the teachers organizing the first Kurdish classes in the schools in Koban\u00ea after July 2012, remembers how they were \u201cteachers and students at the same time\u201d with almost no practical experience. Qualified teachers working at the schools established by the Ba\u2019ath regime belittled them, saying, \u201cYou can\u2019t organize any educational task, you are not qualified, you are not teachers; you have neither people to direct schools nor people who can establish educational systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skeptics were eventually proven completely wrong, with the system now sustaining more than 4,700 schools, 900,000 pupils, and 60,000 staff.2<\/a><\/sup> There are also three universities, several higher education institutions, and academies now operating. However, the real challenge is not simply to build schools and universities, but to develop an entirely new educational system with a philosophy based on new sociological principles. Discourses based on concepts found in the Sociology of Freedom<\/a> as well as jineology \u2013 the science for understanding life from a woman\u2019s perspective \u2013 are crucial aspects of this new educational system.<\/p>\n

A former colony inside a former colony<\/h2>\n

For institutional reasons, we have to view the whole Ciz\u00eer region of Syria as well as Koban\u00ea and Efr\u00een\u2014the three cantons that together constitute Rojava\u2014as internal colonies of the Syrian state until the beginning of the Rojava Revolution. H\u00eeva Mihemed El\u00ee, the deputy of co-presidents of the Educational Committee of Koban\u00ea Canton, describes the exclusion of Kurds from the whole public and formal spaces before the revolution: \u201cThere were no prospective for Kurds to have any real space in the institutional structures of the Ba\u2019ath regime in Rojava.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kurdish language was banned, the culture was not recognized, and most importantly, the Kurds were mostly seen as non-indigenous population elements. Several thousand Kurds were denied Syrian citizenship, inflicting far-reaching consequences for those affected, forcing primarily men from those areas to emigrate to other regions within Syria or neighboring Arabic countries to find work. The state determined their political, social, and economic lives so that they could provide resources most desired by Damascus: oil, wheat, olive oil, etc.<\/p>\n

The fact that the Syrian state gained its independence after several decades of the French mandate regime, first in 1946, means Syria was, until then, a de-facto French colony. On the other hand, this means Syria as a whole has both its colonial past and its subsequent post-colonial history of integration into different blocks and alliances. During the Ba\u2019ath reign, it was mainly the Soviet block. After 2000, Bashar Al-Assad started several economically liberal reforms to integrate the country into the Western world order. We may consider Rojava from this background as a former colony inside a former colony. These intersecting colonial relationships are crucial to understanding the region\u2019s recent history.<\/p>\n

Discourses on Decolonizing the Universities of Former Colonies<\/h2>\n

Let us look at the example of the African experiences of developing educational systems and universities under postcolonial conditions. With the exception of South Africa and its different paths of liberation and post-liberation processes, the idea of colonizing structure is actually a relatively new introduction to the discourses on decolonizing education, especially higher education in African \u201cdecolonization\u201d discourses. In the late 1980s, Congolese philosopher and writer Valentin Yves Mudimbe introduced the the concept of a \u201ccolonizing structure\u201d (1988: 2). He found this structure reproduced in and continuing to manipulate and \u201cintegrate\u201d postcolonial African societies and states. In the case of the elites of the \u201cpostcolonial\u201d era in many African countries, they were very successful within the colonizing structure. As a result, the elite willingly and actively attempted to establish the same educational models\u2014also in higher education\u2014needed for the extraction of resources and knowledge. The influence and power of these educational systems, their methods of producing knowledge, were terrifyingly effective: they are still the mainstream in all African countries with a colonial past.3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Prompted by Mudimbe\u2019s criticism, several efforts are now underway to reorganize and decolonize African educational systems and universities, and this also includes the field of African Studies as such in the former colonial centers. These efforts primarily aim at decolonizing education and building an alternative educational system, that is, developing higher education with a fundamentally new philosophy.<\/p>\n

We can thus understand why for Ferat Gernas, a member of the Coordinating Committee of Universities in North and East Syria, it is vitally important to recognize the role of universities in \u201ccapitalist modernity\u201d4<\/a><\/sup> as to be able to imagine and invent new universities: \u201cWe witness daily how, in capitalist modernity, actual physical and moral genocides are going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gernas points out how the system\u2019s crises boil down to the crisis between capitalism (with human actors) and nature. He summarizes this thesis by saying, \u201cThe global hegemonic system and its pushing ideology, liberalism, are normalizing this annihilation of humans and nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Annihilation is indeed perceived as a deed that should not be happening. As a consequence, Gernas develops his arguments as follows: \u201cWe see the need for an intellectual intervention, and we ask ourselves: why are intellectuals, universities, and as a whole the academia so helpless and desperate? Yes, I generalize, but I have to ask, are they willing to participate in that genocidal way of organizing society, which is absolutely dark and inhuman?\u201d<\/p>\n

The question seems to be a starting point for a systemic critique and is indeed followed by one: \u201cWe felt, and still feel, there is a need for a revolutionary intervention to initiate an intellectual and academic revolution, too, indeed a mental revolution, which can challenge the mentality of 5000 years of state-formed and forced mentality. If not, we will continue seeing all of this darkness around us as normal. No doubt it is all but normal,\u201d Gernas concludes.<\/p>\n

The Myth of Independent Academia<\/h2>\n

In the colonial context, the fact that research and academic work are not independent and, to the contrary, serve as tools of the colonizers, is today partially known. But identifying research \u201cas a significant site of struggle between the interests and ways of knowing of the West and the interests and ways of resisting of the Other\u201d opened the way for liberating research and academia from the colonizing structure. (Smith 1999: 2)<\/p>\n

The leader and theorist of the Kurdish liberation movement Abdullah Ocalan conceptualized this critique, through the term scientism, which he has called the new religion of hegemonic power structures.5<\/a><\/sup> His critiques of science focus on the purpose of science, and he convincingly compares the social role of the knowledges produced by various religions and knowledges produced by modern scientific structures.<\/p>\n

According to Ocalan, both knowledge production systems produce and spread knowledge for power structures to enforce their dominance over the masses. Their difference is simply a matter of method: different technologies are applied to enact violence and power over people, while distinct knowledges are produced to justify these applications. (Ocalan 2020) We may also refer to Ocalan\u2019s earlier reflection on state and power, where he argues that the reproduction of slave-holding social organizations, required\u2014at least partially\u2014convincing the slaves to be satisfied of their social role within their respective society. (Ocalan 2007) Accordingly, ideological or technological knowledges produced by religions or science are not as different as they seems if they are used to build power structures, serving merely their perpetuation instead of solving societal problems.\u00a0The critiques of science and more generally Western knowledge-producing systems in the Kurdish Liberation Movement\u00a0 are largely based on these reflections by Ocalan.<\/p>\n

With the July 2012 Rojava Revolution, society in Rojava and the neighboring Arab majority lands started to develop a school system. It was primarily interested in schooling children in a more democratic way. The Kurdish Liberation Movement\u2019s proposal to home-school Kurdish pupils has been practiced since 2008, despite the Ba\u2019ath regime.<\/p>\n

The Administration is well aware of criticism against the school system and curricula and the dissatisfaction of parts of the population with the lack of recognition, personnel (even though regime schools have the same lack of qualified personnel), laboratories, and educational equipment (for more, see Al Ahmad 2023). But it doesn\u2019t give up the idea of a constitutive democratic educational system, enabling each entity to organize education and curricula autonomously, something indeed entirely new in that region and anchored in the \u201cSocial Contract\u201d of the DAANES.<\/p>\n

It may seem a small step, but such a small deed as offering public spaces for native languages has huge consequences for challengig power structures and ideologies too. This may partially explain why Kurds were politically and socially much more prepared for the \u201cSpring of the Peoples\u201d than many of Syria\u2019s other communities.6<\/a><\/sup> In Syria, the Revolution became militarized and turned into a bloody civil war, with several international and regional actors interfering. Eventually, the war between the regime, myriad Syrian opposition groups, and other Islamic factions evolved into a proxy war. The experience of organizing Kurdish schools and regular neighborhood meetings that were to be turned into neighborhood councils gave the areas with a Kurdish majority the opportunity to organize society autonomously. This also meant putting locals in charge of their own self-defense.<\/p>\n

Critics of the new educational initiatives, including the Turkish-backed Kurdish National Council, which is frequently in dispute with the Autonomous Administration, have raised the issue of non-recognition.<\/p>\n

According to H\u00eeva Mihemed El\u00ee, the deputy head of the Educational Committee in Koban\u00ea, \u201cthis vocal critique on the DAANES\u2019s schools by the opposition patronized by Turkey is an exaggeration of the non-recognition of degrees. The degrees of our schools are not nationally and, consequently, internationally recognized. Yet, people trust in the ability of our school system. However, the fact that the degrees are not recognized remains the main problem. That is why a social class looks down on the autonomous Administration\u2019s institutions and its teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA close look would make it visible that the undermost social class sends its children to the schools and institutions of autonomous Administration. That is why those with more financial resources, who are rich, are sending their children to cities like Damascus and Aleppo for their studies or enrolling them in the regime schools in Qami\u015flo and Hesek\u00ea,\u201d she continued. This social segregation is critical in that it may aggravate the social cliff between classes, something the revolution acts against.<\/p>\n

Aras Hiso, a member of the Educational Committee in Koban\u00ea and staff at the University of Koban\u00ea, confirms that the education system\u2019s critiques are partly justified. However, he differentiates between two arguments for those officials enrolling their children in the regime\u2019s institutions: \u201cThere are officials of the Autonomous Administration who send their children to regime schools and universities. One of the arguments is generally accepted and causes no dissatisfaction. It states that the subjects their children study are not offered in the higher educational institutions of DAANES; people show understanding for them. However, there is strong dissatisfaction and legitimate criticism for those who send their children to the regime\u2019s school because of a lack of national recognition. But I have to add, with our graduates showing their qualification in the practical field, this tendency weakens among all social classes.\u201d<\/p>\n

H\u00eeva Mihemed El\u00ee was schooled before the Rojava Revolution. Given her background, she is able able to compare the educational systems of the Ba\u2019ath regime and the Autonomous Administration: \u201cThe main difference between the educational approach of Ba\u2019ath regime\u2019s schools and those of DAANES is that, at the regime schools, information should be memorized without sharing information about how, why, and where to use this information. In the schools of the Autonomous Administration, there is a clear effort to mediate the meaning and use of any given information. Another important difference is the assessment process for pupils. In the regime\u2019s educational institutions, assessment takes place through exams, and failing exams means being eliminated from the respective educational institution. On the other hand, in the institutions of DAANES, a pupils\u2019 participation in the classroom, their general understanding and ability to discuss, their attitude versus others in the classroom, and the way of and reasons for knowing are as important as assessment through exams.\u201d<\/p>\n

She has experienced that there are pupils who \u201cindeed love to understand subject matters as they are taught at our schools\u201d because, for them, it is \u201can entirely new experience\u201d to be given the opportunity to understand a subject. However, the lack of formal recognition and criticism of some parts of society may force them to leave the school: \u201cWhen they are told several times that their degrees are not recognized, they sometimes decide to study elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Almost three months after the liberation of Koban\u00ee from ISIS, children are back in school. Returning children to normal life and education is at the top of priorities. Northern Syria, Koban\u00ee, April 2015. \u00a9Maryam Ashrafi<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Language Revolution<\/h2>\n

Aras Hiso, a member of the Educational Committee in Koban\u00ea and staff of the University of Koban\u00ea, remembers how the first Kurdish classes after the revolution in Koban\u00ea were held in the Martyr Osman School in the neighborhood of Gumruk. \u201cAt that time, the regime\u2019s curricula continued to be applied at the schools. There were no teaching staff able to take on the task,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The cooperation between the Institution for Kurdish Language (SZK) and the Confederation of Kurdish Students organized Kurdish language classes for two hours a week in all schools.<\/p>\n

Hiso remembers, \u201cSometimes teachers at those schools, some of them also Kurds, tried to hinder those language classes, but we eventually succeeded in entering all of the schools in Koban\u00ea.\u201d He also emphasizes that he was one of the first teachers in Koban\u00ea. In a group of 14 teachers, he was one of the youngest. The same group also prepared Kurdish language teachers with support from teachers from the Refugee camp in Mexm\u00fbr (Makhmour) in Iraqi Kurdistan.<\/p>\n

He recalls the first meeting to develop curricula for the schools as follows: \u201cIn 2015, in Efrin, a campaign to change the whole curricula was started. The same year, they succeeded in preparing their own curricula for the 1st to 3rd classes of elementary school. After the liberation of Koban\u00ea in May 2015, there was a first meeting of the Committee for Social Education (KPC) in cooperation with the SZK, and we decided to develop a more democratic curriculum in Kurdish for the first six classes. That is why we established higher education institutes to educate teaching staff for our schools. It was decided that a curriculum for all schools, including high schools, should be ready the following year. The new curricula were ready after printing all books for all classes and subject matters. Classes such as Jineoloj\u00ee were introduced at the high school level after 2018.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Manbij City Council, in a rare move, decided to continue with the regime\u2019s curriculum while adding courses from the Autonomous Administration\u2019s curriculum. There is still an ongoing negotiation between different views within the City Council to accept the curriculum developed by the Autonomous Administration. However, Aras Hiso feels that the \u201clanguage revolution\u201d has succeeded: \u201cAnyway, now, having master\u2019s programs at our universities and preparing for doctoral programs makes me feel successful in the language revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not Our Fate<\/h2>\n

The future of Rojava\u2019s revolutionary project will largely depend on how its higher education is structured. Rojava\u2019s education system is being built under two postcolonial conditions: one being the beginning of the Syrian state after its independence in 1946, the other starting with the Rojava Revolution on 19th July 2012.<\/p>\n

This is why Ferat Gernas, a member of the coordinating body of universities in NES, explains that \u201cwe, the actors of democratic modernity, those who place themselves within the philosophy of the Democratic Nation, are convinced that there is a need for an intellectual intervention into this existing hegemonic regime of truth.\u201d Consequently, he states that \u201cone of the main reason for us to establish universities is exactly this. If not, we fear this dark regime of truth will continue its hegemonic status. Mainstream and mainly positivist science may continue to try convincing us that this dark regime of truth is our fate, but we never fell into this trap and never believed that this darkness is our fate.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the Autonomous Administration\u2019s declared aims is to organize higher education based on a critique of the existing social sciences. Ferat Gernas describes the existing social sciences as a tool to \u201cdestroy social, ethical, and historical norms.\u201d His view concurs with the broader idea that capitalist modernity and its ideology of liberalism (also neoliberalism) are anti- society, on a level that they actively destroy the very society they depend on (Ocalan 2020).<\/p>\n

\u201cBy a new sociology, we mean that the social sciences should be based on strong historical and social sources, in a way that sociology can be reinterpreted and reconstituted,\u201d stresses Gernas, highlighting the importance of \u201ca new view\u201d on history and anthropology, and a \u201cnew philosophy.\u201d Successful implementation of this aim would accordingly bring about an amendment of social sciences and relations within society and the democratization of the social base itself.<\/p>\n

That is why students of all faculties and higher educational institutions go through classes of jineoloj\u00ee, democratic nation, history, and democratic confederalism. Gernas likens capitalist modernity to a \u201cblack hole creating a big and terrifying vacuum drawing and swallowing all social norms of the society.\u201d Universities in DAANES are actively working to defend their students \u201cagainst the huge impact of this vacuum\u201d on them.<\/p>\n

The successful implementation of a new social science is seen as a key for alternative universities, where students will be spared from the impacts of capitalist modernity. According to Gernas, these alternative universities not only condemn the idea of \u201cindustrialism in the service of political power and state, but we want to hinder its practical implementation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we produce knowledge, it is directly related to society itself, and we aim to find solutions to its problems. We don\u2019t produce knowledge for powerhave, market, and material gain,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9S\u00eemav Ehmed Heyder<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While it is difficult to estimate how successful these efforts are, a few examples show there is plenty of room for hope. Ferat Gernas mentions that, in Syria, those studying medicine tend to rapidly open a medical office for financial gains, whereby their medicine students\u2019 first choice is to work in health centers called Kil\u00een\u00eek\u00ean Gel<\/em> (People\u2019s Clinics), which provide free healthcare for everyone.<\/p>\n

Until Rojava University opened its Petrochemical Faculty in Rim\u00ealan, no women were allowed to enter spaces reserved for the oil industry and petrochemical studies in the city. With women studying petrochemistry, not only those spaces but also the politics of developing the petrochemical industry became \u201cmore human,\u201d as Ferat Gernas put it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen women entered oil fields as engineers, their ecological sensitivity and their readiness to more actively preserve nature rapidly changed the politics and ways of oil production,\u201d said Gernas. Oil is certainly not ecological in itself, but Rojava and DAANES rely on it as a source of energy and finances. According to Gernas, the fact that women are entering this field is already a significant change.<\/p>\n

The biggest challenge in this continuing construction of an alternative university is still the same problem that the founding actors call the \u201cbig and terrifying vacuum\u201d of capitalist modernity. As Ferat Gernas expresses it, \u201cThis vacuum draws many students to itself.\u201d By contrast, the only imperative of alternative education is meeting the actual needs of society.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe decided to develop a study program when we saw there is a real need of the local communities, of the institutions of Democratic Autonomous Administration or our educational system,\u201d says \u015eervan Mislim, the co-president of the University of Koban\u00ea. As an example, he evokes how they developed the master program for Kurdish Studies in their university: \u201cAt our university, we developed a master program for Kurdish Studies because there was a real need in our schools and communities in Koban\u00ea to develop such a program.\u201d<\/p>\n

They first identified a need and proceeded to find the necessary spaces and capacities for fulfilling it. One need arose for schooling in the mother tongue: \u201cMost of our students are schooled in Kurdish, but at the university level, we have not been able to secure all teaching in Kurdish until now, which is a real obstacle for some of our students,\u201d says Mislim.<\/p>\n

The universities were able to \u201csuccessfully\u201d mediate between their graduated students and the DAANES institutions, which, according to Mislim, \u201crenders those institutions more capable of dealing with the tasks and services they are supposed to produce for the communities.\u201d As a result, people consider this \u201cas a gain of the whole society and the revolution.\u201d At the same time, the graduate students\u2019 participation in organizing social and political spaces raises people\u2019s trust in \u201cour universities and educational system as a whole,\u201d states Mislim subsequently.<\/p>\n

\u015eervan Mislim deals with the practical issues that emerge in organizing teaching and researching, much more than with theoretical considerations. That is why, according to him, \u201ca lot of deficiencies\u201d relate to the immaturity of the universities and the lack of personnel and several material resources. However, he states, \u201cIn our young history of about seven years at the University of Koban\u00ea, we had successes and failures; we actively try to improve and develop according to the needs of communities and our students.\u201d<\/p>\n

In line with this practical approach, he calls for solidarity, saying, \u201cWe think there is a need to act in solidarity with our university, especially in developing teaching material and obtaining material needed for different laboratories in 12 different departments in our university. For academics, it is an act of solidarity to share their expertise with our students and staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

H\u00eeva Mihemed El\u00ee, a deputy of the co-presidency of the Educational Committee in Koban\u00ea, indicates that the graduates have high employment rates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose who finish the Autonomous Administration\u2019s high schools mostly study at our universities. And every graduate student from our universities has been employed. There is no graduate student who hasn\u2019t been employed. Actually, the students who graduated from the regime\u2019s universities are also employed in the institutions of the Autonomous Administration. As an example, I can mention the staff of the University of Koban\u00ea, especially in different fields of engineering, who graduated in 2022 and 2023 and have been employed by the university.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A jinelogy education in northeastern Syria. \u00a9 jineoloji<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Interpreting and Understanding Life and Society from a Woman\u2019s Perspective<\/h2>\n

Jineoloj\u00ee is an integral part of the alternative universities in Rojava. Zozan S\u00eema, a member of Jineoloj\u00ee Academy, points to how women\u2019s oppression \u2013 as well as their resistance and knowledge \u2013 are rendered invisible. This was the main reason for establishing Jineoloj\u00ee Academy, which coordinates jineoloj\u00ee classes at the university level.<\/p>\n

\u201cJineoloj\u00ee Academy was necessary because we couldn\u2019t see either the way how we as people and as women are subjugated or our struggle against this subjugation within the existent science practices. Our identity as women and our issues were invisible within mainstream ways of knowing,\u201d says S\u00eema. \u201cOn the other hand, the struggle of Kurdish people in the quest for freedom and its experience of more than 40 years has its own history and experience. Indeed, with the establishment of this academy, we could discuss the Kurdish movement\u2019s ways of seeing things, its interpretations, its solutions for different problems and questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The concept of a woman as the first colony played a role in establishing jineoloj\u00ee as an independent discipline within the academia in NES. According to S\u00eema, conflicting descriptions and interpretations of women\u2019s identity, and also still very present oppression of Kurdish culture and people, keep the traces of oppression and resistance against it very alive. She continued. \u201cIf we try to know ourselves, to understand the oppression against us as Kurds, we conclude that women as the first colony is a truth. It is a statement by Leader Apo [Abdullah \u00d6calan],\u201d said S\u00eema about the concept of women as the first colony.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the movement analyzed our society as a whole, it discovered some truths about the situation of women as well. We see that it is not an eternal colonization; the identity of women was not invariably and forever an oppressed one. There are several different theories on the identity of women. Some of them consider women as an entirely oppressed identity, while others consider this situation as a natural state of being. But we will also show our differences in this respect. For us, women\u2019s identity is neither an essentially sexual one, a naturally oppressed identity, nor an eternally oppressed identity. As I mentioned, being a woman is not an eternally oppressed identity, but \u2018housewification\u2019 has become the main method to subjugate any identity. When we speak of the first colony, our interpretation is based on this, and our interpretation continues to conclude that the first colony and the last colony are closely related, which implies that social liberation is connected to the ending of this last colony. The hegemonic global system, which is strongly patriarchal, is based on the colonization of women. Our conceptualization of women as the first colonized nation is based on such a reflection,\u201d S\u00eema said, paraphrasing again Abdullah \u00d6calan.<\/p>\n

According to S\u00eema, academies seem to be best fitted spaces to develop the expression of \u201cour own ways of knowing, which have been rendered invisible in mainstream science and its different practices.\u201d She says this is why \u201cthere is a need to build our revolution through a knowledge which is freed from occupation and colonization and make sure that this knowledge is produced outside of positivist sciences.\u201d According to her, the way to ensure this is to \u201cproduce from our experience knowledge and share it with the broader society, that is why we see academies as a well-fitted format to produce this knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zozan S\u00eema thinks they can \u201cerase all hierarchies and dogmas structurally fixed within the mainstream sciences\u201d within the academy framework. This, in turn, will further enable them to \u201cdevelop the curricula of Jineoloj\u00ee independently, collect different knowledges, and register different ways of knowing.\u201d She argues that the Kurdish movement\u2019s experiences led it to decide on its method for the revolution, and their own experiences of education within the movement had led them \u201cto establish these academies for Jineoloj\u00ee.\u201d<\/p>\n

S\u00eema confirms the description of Jineoloj\u00ee as the science of women, saying, \u201c[it] is not a wrong description, but meanings we give to being women are multiple.\u201d She states that constructing women\u2019s knowledge is at the core of jineoloj\u00ee and pursues her argument further, saying, \u201cimportant thing hereby is, we don\u2019t consider the identity of women as a biological one.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the system to reproduce existing social relations, sexism\u2019s influence in society is considered a decisive one. In the field of sciences, Jineoloj\u00ee sees the same \u201coverwhelming impact of sexism.\u201d According to S\u00eema, this is why jineoloj\u00ee \u201cplays a key role\u201d in the struggle against the influence of sexism in \u201cour higher education\u201d but also in academia in general.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an unimaginable political gain for the women\u2019s movement,\u201d says S\u00eema. \u201cOur revolution made a dream come true: Educating our children against sexism and its influences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knowing is \u201cXweb\u00fbn\u201d<\/h2>\n

The new building of the University of Koban\u00ea has a quote on its entrance: \u201czan\u00een xweb\u00fbn e, xweb\u00fbn heb\u00fbn e,\u201d<\/em> meaning \u201cknowing is being oneself, being oneself is existing.\u201d The relation conceived between knowledge and xweb\u00fbn<\/em>\u2014being oneself\u2014is crucial for universities in the NES. The universities engage in processes of self-analysis to ensure that their foundationally anti-colonial perspectives are reproduced continuously. A research project called Project Xweb\u00fbn is part of this societal engagement and has been going for eight years at universities in the NES. A member of the research team working on the project, Leyla Ebdo, points out the importance of redefining the very concept of knowledge and producing and democratizing knowledge, especially as it concerns the \u201cpolitical subjectification\u201d of individuals and the continuous application of alternatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese processes and their socio-political effects, how they affect individuals, have hardly been investigated. That is why the Xweb\u00fbn Project is vital for understanding development and assessing our universities\u2019 role in social change. To see what was implemented successfully, to redefine, democratize, and decolonize knowledge and the ways of knowing,\u201d says Ebdo.<\/p>\n

This self-analysis project calls for the participation of students and teaching staff to secure the decolonization of research processes. It is done through a method of dialogical meetings that is geared toward avoiding euro-centric influences. According to Ebdo, \u201cnot only the philosophy of the research [\u2026], but also the methods to conduct the project will be decided upon in an internal dialog between the teaching staff and students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ebdo finds it important to secure expertise and, at the same time, \u201cacademic solidarity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to have an external dialogue with academics with expertise,\u201d she says. \u201cWe see it as an act of solidarity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Footnotes<\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. Jineoloj\u00ee is the science of woman and life, proposed by Ocalan. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. \u015eah\u00een Oso, a member of the Educational Committee of DAANES from Koban\u00ea, gave these numbers during an earlier interview with the author. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Japan is often mentioned as the only country outside the Western sphere that was able to industrialize successfully because it had never been colonized. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. As conceptualized by Abdullah Ocalan, capitalist modernity is the ideological, cultural, and social project that dominates and colonizes contemporary human imagination. In the same discourse, liberalism as a European ideology is a pillar of capitalist modernity, seemingly tolerating different views but monopolizing the claim to truth and judgment over good and evil. Ocalan sees it as the worst anti-society ideology. He proposes to strengthen democratic modernity to encounter capitalist modernity (2020). \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. Scientism is the view that science and scientific methods are the only way to render the truth about the world and reality. The way Ocalan criticizes scientism can be read from this sentence: \u201cThe nation-state\u2019s second most important eclectic ideology is positivist scientism [The first one being liberalism]. It is the ideological source closest to nationalism. They foster one another. Its founder, Auguste Comte, explicitly wanted to construct positivism as a secular, universal religion.\u201d (Ocalan 2020) \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Actors of the Rojava Revolution refer to the struggle for regime change in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East in 2011 and 2012 not as the \u201cArab Spring\u201d but as the \u201cSpring of the Peoples,\u201d highlighting that in many of those countries, the concerned population was all but homogenous. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Sources<\/h3>\n

    Al Ahmad, Samer. 2023. Education under strain in Al-Hasakeh Governorate: Disjointed Curricula and Political Antagonism Impact Civilians. Berlin: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Alfaisal, Haifa Saud. 2011. \u201cIndigenous Epistemology and the Decolonisation of Postcolonialism\u201d in Studies in Social &amp; Political Thought, Volume 19 Summer 2011.<\/p>\n

    Mudimbe, Valentin-Yves. 1988. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.<\/p>\n

    Ndofirepi, Amasa P. The African University in the Neoliberal Era: In Pursuit of Socially Just Knowledge in the 21st Century. In: Decolonizing African University Knowledge,<\/p>\n

    Volume 2: Challenging the Neoliberal Mantra (edited by Ndofirepi et al.) New York and London: Routledge. Pp 32-50.<\/p>\n

    Ocalan, Abdullah. 2007. Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilisation. London: Pluto Press. 2020. Sociology of Freedom: Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization 3. Oakland: PM Press.<\/p>\n

    Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    by Luqman Guldiv\u00ea – September 18, 2024 Source : https:\/\/turningpointmag.org\/2024\/09\/18\/building-alternative-universities-in-the-midst-of-war-and-revolution\/ The Democratic Autonomous Administration of North-Eastern Syria (DAANES) is building an alternative education system under siege from multiple powers, defying the control of the Ba\u2019athist education system of the Assad regime as well as the Turkish occupation forces and their proxies. The alternative system has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1730,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-medias","category-faculty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jineoloji.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jineoloji.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jineoloji.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jineoloji.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jineoloji.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jineoloji.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1731,"href":"https:\/\/jineoloji.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1726\/revisions\/1731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jineoloji.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jineoloji.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jineoloji.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jineoloji.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}