“Toward a World of All Power to All People”

This statement was edited on February 10, 2024.

Since 1947, the Journal of Architectural Education has provided a space for architectural educators to publish on concerns that impact the education of future architects. Our recent issues on “Health,” “Pedagogies for a Broken World,” “Reparations!” and “Deserts” have each addressed how public health, decolonization, and social, economic, and environmental justice are at the very center of architectural pedagogies, scholarship, and practice.

We take seriously our responsibility, and our privilege, as an international, peer-reviewed journal to offer a platform to educators, designers, and scholars whose work is challenged within its context. In the United States, this means offering a space for the publication of work by professors who are operating in institutions that have outlawed speaking and teaching about the systemic, historic, and ever-present injustices of white supremacy, the dispossession of land, the repealing of reproductive health rights, and transgender rights, among countless others. In the journal, and across our platforms, our aim is to provide a space where such work meets an audience of supportive peers.

The violence impacting Palestine and Israel is not abstract to any of us at JAE. Our JAE fellows, editorial board members, theme editors, authors, and readers continue to be directly impacted by it. This violence hit a fever pitch just as our Muslim theme editors began editing the content for this issue, “Infidelities.” Aya Musmar, Nishat Awan, Menna Agha, and Design Editor Ozayr Saloojee found their lives and communities swiftly upended, as were the lives and communities of those contributing here. As I write this, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 28,064 Palestinians have been killed and 67,611 injured since October 7, 2023. This does not include the number missing or unaccounted for, believed trapped under or within destroyed buildings.¹ 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced—a number that changes daily as refugee camps, houses, and hospitals are targeted by Israel’s bombardment. At least 1,200 people have been reported killed in Israel—among them, Israeli citizens and dual nationals from more than 20 countries—some 240 people taken as hostages, and 250,000 Israelis displaced as they’ve evacuated from communities near Gaza and along the border with Lebanon.² These numbers represent an unfathomable and devastating loss of human life.

In their call, the theme editors propose that “infidelity is neither refusal, criticality, nor counter politics. It is a fertile ground that emerges through a certain discomfort with institutional power, social and moral codes, and rules that attempt to regulate behaviors. It has the potential to create transversal relations across difference.”³

Institutions, of course, have the power to shape language and meaning, and they wield it. Over the past six weeks, policing language has become a way to silence expressions of concern for Palestinians, particularly to silence those who believe that they deserve freedom from the violence of the Israeli state’s colonial apartheid system—which has been identified by Amnesty International and other respected human rights organizations—and freedom to live.⁴ In the US, especially, major media outlets, universities, and professional organizations have all skirted around the words genocide, apartheid, war crime. Some world leaders have found themselves unable to demand even a ceasefire (or to pronounce the word), and yet demanding a ceasefire is far from a radical position—a recent ceasefire resolution calling for “an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce” between Israel and Hamas was supported by 120 UN members; 14 voted against it, and 45 abstained.⁵

In light of this, we redouble our efforts, now and in the future, to support authors who continue to be unjustly impacted by this violence. We are especially and deeply indebted to our theme editors for their curation of this urgent issue, for bringing together a collection of voices that must be heard right now. This issue reaffirms the work we have done for the past three years, publishing architectural scholarship that critiques the operation of power within the built environment. With this issue, we seek to contribute to an ever-growing body of research articulating the role of design within occupied territories. We hope this issue will inform and support critical conversations, future pedagogies, and necessary dialogue.

As always, and in the words of my colleagues on this editorial board, we support architectural education that is committed to liberation from all oppressive power, toward a world of all power to all people.

Notes

1 Nidal Al Mughrabi, Adam Makary, Toby Chopra, “Gaza death toll climbs 28,064 Palestinians killed, 67,611 injured since Oct. 7, health ministry says,” Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-death-toll-climbs-28064-palestinians-killed-67611-injured-since-oct-7-gaza-2024-02-10/, accessed February 10, 2024.

2 Wafaa Shurafa and Samy Magdy “Heavy fighting rages near main Gaza hospital and people trapped inside say they cannot flee,” Associated Press, https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-11-12-2023-20f5dcd135b7eb34238a7b25ce560d0c, accessed November 12, 2023.

3 Journal of Architectural Education, Call for Papers for “Infidelities,” JAE 78:1 (Spring 2024), https://www.jaeonline.org/issue/spring-2024/, accessed November 12, 2023.

4 See Amnesty International, “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity,” Amnesty International report, 2022.

5 United Nations, “General Assembly Adopts Resolution Calling for Immediate, Sustained Humanitarian Truce Leading to Cessation of Hostilities between Israel, Hamas,” UN Meetings Coverage and Press Releases, October 27, 2023, https://press.un.org/en/2023/ga12548.doc.htm.