The qmunicate team were invited to an interview with Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, one of the candidates for Rector this election. Dr Abu-Sittah is a British-Palestinian surgeon known for his work in war zones, as well as being a Glasgow alumnus. In this interview, he explains that he is running for Rector to provide “students the opportunity to declare their opposition to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza”. Ailsa Morgan sat down with him ahead of the election to discuss his manifesto, his motivations for running, and the future of the Rector position.
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AM: Our team have obviously all read your manifesto, but for our readers, who as you say might not know about the rector position, would you like to explain your motivation for running for the rector position at UofG?
GAS: So, as someone who studied in Glasgow during the late 80s and early 90s when Winnie Mandela had just been elected as Rector, I’ve always felt that there is a part of Glasgow Uni’s identity that has an internationalist approach, and an anti-imperialist and an anti-authoritarian approach. Remember, this was against the Thatcher government at its height. I felt that the genocidal war in Gaza is going to be the defining event for our generation, and the struggle for justice in Palestine is the new anti-apartheid struggle for this generation. And it’s critical that Glasgow University recaptures some of that spirit, especially in light of the corporatisation that is happening in universities, and the divestment in student union life which is an international policy to suck the intellectual life out of the campus and turn it into kind of a factory for certification. And so, that was the driving force: to bring politics back onto campus, the pertinent issue being Palestine, send a message that the students at Glasgow University support the struggle for Palestinian freedom and independence.
And to use this as a platform for campaigning for other critical issues; student poverty has got worse – student accommodation has now become so scarce that people live in Stirling and Paisley just to make it in to the university. It’s indicative that when you actually speak to people who work in property, investment in student accommodation is probably the most profitable now in terms of portfolios for people in the property market. It’s an issue which is becoming really difficult for students, and is adding to the hardship; is adding to the exclusion of bigger and bigger sectors of society.
There’s also the news today that the Scottish Government is going to even further reduce the places available to Scottish students, and so we have an idea that Scottish universities are being told that they should be universities for everyone other than Scottish students. And it’s not that they’re doing this to diversify, or to open places for students from third-world countries; as the fees for overseas students go up, you’re only attracting the wealthiest of overseas students. So it’s not an enriching experience, it’s actually an experience which is wedded to the idea that education is a commodity, and that you should be selling that commodity to the highest bidder.
AM: I see that reflected a lot in the oversubscription of students at Glasgow, which is completely exacerbating the housing crisis here.
GAS: But the university should have seen this. They’re driven by corporate greed, and they’ve increased the number of students, but they’ve not figured out where they’re going to house these students. If they pay the fees, who cares where they live?
AM: My next question is about your own experience here at Glasgow. What was that like?
GAS: I came here as an 18-year-old from the Middle East, and suddenly was thrown into this city which has a strong tradition of trade union activism, a strong tradition of internationalist politics. There were campaigns supporting the struggle in El Salvador, there were campaigns for Nicaragua; there was the anti-apartheid movement. Glasgow University was one of the first universities to campaign for the freedom of Palestinian students – there was the twinning of Birzeit University with the Student Representative Council here,1 Glasgow City Council had also twinned with Hebron,2 and so there was a strong sense that this was a city that had a proud tradition of progressive, internationalist politics. That’s my abiding memory.
Also, being a medical student here, I have memories of what the NHS used to be like here before the creeping privatisation started. I remember in the early 90s when the cleaning services were the first to be privatised in the hospitals in Glasgow, and how devasting it was. You had staff who had been working in the same ward, as an integral part of the team that provided care for the patients, who were suddenly turned into these companies who used minimum wage workers. These are very strong memories of a place which helped form my identity, in terms of politics but also in terms of what I believed the NHS should look like.
AM: Members of my family also work in the NHS, and this is exactly what they see. They see this privatisation encroaching on the Scottish NHS, which isn’t even as bad as the English NHS.
GAS: The English NHS is gone, just gone. Effectively completely dismembered.
AM: Returning to the rectorship. I was wondering why you think you’re best suited to the position, out of the four candidates we have running?
GAS: One of the most disappointing and depressing things about today, speaking to the students on campus, is that the majority of students don’t know what the Rector does. They don’t know who the Rector is. And that intentional disappearance of the Rector as a political advocate for students, who will stand up to the administration on the pertinent issues of student life – not just on issues like housing, placements, percentages of overseas versus Scottish students – but also in terms of the moral issues at hand. That there is no place in the education system to own shares in arms manufacturers, morally. In terms of the legal position that the university is putting itself in.
Now, after the International Criminal Court passed its ruling that this is plausibly a genocidal war, owning shares in BAE Systems puts the university at risk of future litigation for complicity in genocide.3 So, it is very, very possible that the university can be sued complicity in genocide as an owner of BAE Systems shares. All of these issues need the repoliticisation of rectorship, and using it as a platform for advocacy.
AM: I have these same conversations with my friends, lots of them don’t know who the Rector is, or what they had done, or what any of the candidates stood for either. I think students need a strong political advocate for their rights and the causes they believe in.
But my next question is about your background as a doctor. How has that prepared you for the position of Rector?
GAS: the way it has prepared me, is being part of the generation that started out with the NHS in one form, and ended up with the NHS being dismembered and….
AM: Sold off?
GAS: Sold off. It has taught me that those achievements, if you’re not prepared to fight for them continuously, will be taken away from you. And that’s been a critical component of my career in medicine. And the NHS has been one of this country’s main achievements, and we’re seeing how this is being taken away from people because people have stopped fighting for it. You need to fight for your rights, every one of them. And not take them for granted. Because the people whom you’ve won these rights from will fight to take them back, so you have to campaign continuously and remind those in power that education is not a commodity, like healthcare is not a commodity. Education is a right, and it’s a critical part of investing in the future welfare of the country. It’s not theirs to sell.
AM: Education’s not a business, healthcare’s not a business. My next question is about your experience working in Gaza, if that’s okay. Your manifesto is based on lots of your experiences in the ongoing war, and lots of students are concerned about this – there’s been protests on campus, there’s been the occupation of 11 University Gardens of course. Is it okay if you described a little about your experience?
GSA: Sure. So I had already had a parallel career as a war surgeon, I had worked in Gaza in the 2009 war and the 2012 war, and in 2014 and 2021. I had also worked in Iraq and in Yemen and Syria. So on October 9th, two days after the war started, I went with Doctors Without Borders to Gaza to work as a surgeon and stayed there for 43 days, working in conditions which, it became very apparent, were part of a genocidal war. I was at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital when it was bombed by the Israelis, and continuously operated on people, 50% of whom were wounded children. During my stay, we ran out of anaesthetic medication, and we ended up having to evacuate the hospital because it was no longer able to provide any surgical services.
This war has killed 14,000 children, has left 5,000 children with amputated limbs, has left 17,000 children orphaned. It is the 21st century’s biggest challenge; how the rest of this century will look. If we allow this war to go unchallenged and unpunished, then the next war will start where Gaza’s war ended, will start with military academies teaching future military leaders that it’s incumbent on them to destroy the health system as part of a military campaign’s success. It will start with the idea that killing 14,000 children in 5 months is an acceptable casualty of war. It will start by accepting the targeting and killing of 345 doctors and nurses, and the destruction of five universities. This war is turning Gaza into an uninhabitable place, by destroying all forms of life in it, not just individual human life, but destroying those parts which make life sustainable: health, education, water and sewage, food supplies. That’s what this war is about, and that’s why it’s critical that the International Criminal Court’s ruling about plausible genocide came out.
AM: And it’s my understanding that Gaza has an incredibly young population, but an incredibly literate youth population as well.4 It’s so disheartening to see the destruction of so many universities and cultural sites, and no one is speaking about this side of it in our media.
GAS: If you want to study genocide, you need to watch this war. Social genocide is a critical component of the genocidal project – the destruction of education, the destruction of cultural or historical sites, the destruction of cemeteries where people’s loved ones are buried. All of this is just as important to the genocidal project as the physical elimination of individuals.
AM: My next question is about the University divesting from these arms companies. Do you have strategies in place as to how to argue for this?
GAS: Absolutely. First of all, the university is at risk of complicity in genocide due to its shares in BAE Systems. And as BAE has continued to provide arms for this war, Glasgow University becomes complicit. Since the ICJ has said that this is plausibly a genocidal war, the university needs to de-risk itself and sell its shares. That’s the legal argument.
The moral argument is that there’s no place in education for shares in the manufacture of death machines. Morally, we shouldn’t be in that business. What’s even more devastating, is the knowledge that from its shares, Glasgow University has actually profited from the killing of these 14,000 children. It will receive a dividend. There is blood money coming to the university from the murder of Palestinian activists, Palestinian children – that is pounds and pence coming into the university as blood money. So, not only are we going to be campaigning for the university to defund, we want the university to declare how much profit it made from the killing of people in Gaza, set up a fund in the name of Dina Alhaj, the Glasgow Uni alumnus who was killed by Israel –
AM: Who they profited from, as well.
GAS: – and to set up a compensation fund for the victims and the academics of this war, using these profits.
AM: And obviously, Glasgow Uni has invested in the fossil fuel industry also, and it’s just occurred to me that this would be an interesting thing to talk about.5 Do you have a position on divestment from fossil fuels as well?
GAS: Not only are they wedded to the past, by continuing to have shares in the fossil industry – not only are they sending the wrong message to the scientific community, who are trying to create renewable energy sources…. The idea of a university education is that it’s an investment in the future. An investment in the fossil industry is a refusal to invest in the future. Either they’re schizophrenic, or the hypocrisy is so entrenched that they can do both at the same time – talk about the future, which all education hinges on, and actively benefit from the destruction of that future.
AM: And they brand all their students and alumni as “world changers” as well, and I don’t think that’s the way we want to be changing the world.
GAS: Yes, world changers in terms of destroying the world.
AM: Another aspect of your manifesto is calling for the replacement of the IHRA definition of antisemitism.6 Do you have plans in place for how the university could call for the replacement of this definition, and how do you see that working out, in the academic sphere?
GAS: First and foremost, it’s critical to work with the Jewish community to understand how they understand antisemitism, and their fears of antisemitism, in this conversation. It’s critical that communities at risk are allowed to define those risks, and that they’re not told what these risks are by others. At the same time, we know that the IHRA has also been used against members of the Jewish community, for example by expelling Jewish members of the Labour Party and accusing them of antisemitism. Moshé Machover, one of the country’s leading Jewish intellectuals, was expelled from the Labour Party for antisemitism using the IHRA definition.7 No one has the right to tell the Jewish community what their position on Israel should or shouldn’t be, because there’s been a very rich history of anti-Zionist Jewish political movement. And so, what we need to do is work with the Jewish community and Jewish students at the university to come to a definition of antisemitism which allows for legitimate expression of refusal of complicity in the Israeli government’s genocidal war and the apartheid rule in Palestine – while fighting together against antisemites.
But more critically, antisemites, and islamophobes, and homophobes, and racist individuals come from the same group. And trying to compartmentalise antisemitism from islamophobia as if antisemites cannot be Islamophobic or islamophobes cannot be antisemites, works at defeating these sectors of society who should be allied against the rise of white supremacy, the rise of fascism, and the rise of the right in Europe. This is made even more dangerous by the fact that the Israeli government has allied itself with those right-wing political parties in Europe, which – historically – come from the very fascist parties that were complicit in the Holocaust. Like the Prime Minister of Hungary and his political party that are allied with the Israeli Netanyahu government; they find their roots in Italian fascism. And what the Israeli government has done, is absolved these parties and governments of their antisemitic roots, in exchange for political support for the policies of the Israeli government.
AM: So, in your opinion, minority communities should be supporting each other against the huge threat that xenophobia and white supremacist movements constitute, in this country and in the university as well.
GAS: Absolutely, because they cannot be compartmentalised.
AM: My last couple of questions were about Glasgow Against Arms and Fossil Fuels (GAAF), who occupied a building on University Gardens, and I wondered if you had any comments about it, and what was your reaction to Glasgow Uni’s response as well?
GAS: So, my reaction to GAAF was – good on them. It’s a sign that the attempt to lobotomise campus intellectual life is failing. That again, there is a strong intellectual life on Glasgow Uni’s campus, that students are taking direct action to make their voices heard. The fact that it has got to this point incriminates the University administration in failing to create those conduits of dialogue and influence between the student body and the administration, that people feel that the only way they can be heard is by occupying spaces, because the university administration has completely alienated them and marginalised voices on campus. One of the critical components of this silencing is what’s happening with the unions – you know, the disinvestment in the unions to the point where they’re unable to mount campaigns. It’s insidious, and it’s purposeful. It’s an attempt to take away and silence political voices on the campus.
AM: I think that the lack of investment in the unions really does mean that the focus of each union has to be on running like a business, which is not what their main purpose is.
GAS: It’s an educational mole! The people on the administration, they want you to come in, get your degree, and go home. That’s it.
AM: Okay, just a couple more questions to finish off ….
GAS: I just want to also talk about the Emily Project and the issue of gender-based violence as well.8 I mean, the fact that the University is still, after all these decades and tragedies, failing to grasp this issue, as something that needs to be addressed head-on. The multifactorial way that misogyny leads to gender-based violence needs to be addressed, in terms of security needs, in terms of educational needs, and in terms of support.
AM: So that’s a campaign that you would definitely support as Rector?
GAS: Absolutely, absolutely.
AM: Because it’s something that we at the QMU feel very strongly about as well, it’s something we’re really keen to support as a union. I have a couple of other questions too about campus-based stuff, like how you would deal with recurring issues like staff strikes as well, and we’ve had some pretty bad marking boycotts also with lots of students having to wait a long time for their exam results.
GAS: Academics at Glasgow University, and at UK universities, are so underpaid, that for the majority of them, it’s no longer worth their while to stay in academia. And for the university that is making an obscene amount of money – I mean, let’s not fool ourselves – when we look at the fees of overseas students, it’s mindboggling how much people are paying. And when you look at the salaries of these lecturers and professors, you can see why they were left with no other option than to go on strike. For the university to think that is acceptable, to keep charging students these fees, while failing to reach an agreement with the university lecturers, is an indication that somehow there’s a disconnect between the university administration’s view of the fact that students are now paying, either through their income tax or as overseas students, and the need for the university to deliver the education that they’re paying for.
AM: And I know, it’s also particularly bad for medical students coming from overseas, who have to pay even higher rates than other colleges. One of my friends….
GAS: It’s obscene.
AM: …is from abroad and has to pay exorbitant amounts.
GAS: £25,000 per year?
AM: I think more than that, I think £30,000.
GAS: I was paying £1,200, as an overseas student.
AM: Wow. From ’89 to ’93?
GAS: I was paying £1,200.
AM: My last question is about the students who may not be voting for you, or who have already endorsed another candidate, or who have differing opinions to your manifesto. How will you ensure that you represent them, as well?
GAS: For me, the most important thing is that students vote, that we bring life back into the intellectual and political atmosphere of this university. So people should vote – for me, for anyone else, they should just go out and vote, and make sure that their voices are heard and that this becomes an intellectual debate. As Rector I would be representing the interests of all students from all walks of life, because that’s the job of the Rector, to fight their corner with the administration. To give an example, there was the announcement just today that the Scottish Government is going to be capping the number of places for Scottish students at universities here even more than they already are. The Rector should be meeting with the rectors of other Scottish universities, working with these universities to mount a campaign against the Scottish government, to highlight the fact that this is 1. A disinvestment in the future, and 2. Is manifestly a betrayal of what these student’s families have been working for. And again, it’s creating an unfair society where only the rich can get an education, and working-class kids, and increasingly middle-class kids, are told that they shouldn’t be thinking of a university education. What is insidious about it, is the way it’s done by raising the grade requirements for courses! So suddenly, it’s not the university’s fault that you didn’t get three A’s at A Level – no, it’s your fault! So there’s a false raising of the hurdles to try to hide the real financial case. And today in the Glasgow Guardian, there was an article about overseas students getting into Glasgow with three D’s.
AM: Because they have the money. Well, thank you so much for this Ghassan, it’s been great to talk to you today.
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Voting for the University of Glasgow’s 2024 Rectorial Election will open at 09:00 on Monday 25th of March 2024, and will close at 16:00 on Tuesday 26th of March 2024. All registered University of Glasgow students are eligible to vote and can do so through the UofG Life app. To read more information about the election, the candidates, and the role of Rector, see the university’s Rectorial Election 2024 page.
- Correction: Birzeit University is a public university in the West Bank in Palestine, near Ramallah. Glasgow’s SRC has not been twinned with Birzeit, but Edinburgh University Student Association twinned with them in 2005. [Edinburgh University Student Association, https://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/about/policy/external/righttoeducation?fbclid=IwAR2ozPHZlV8c4AcnuqYRzWdFZMXAY77n-BMX72xu1k0aBzYi47xNM3BazLI].
↩︎ - Correction: Glasgow City is twinned with Bethlehem in the West Bank, not Hebron. [Glasgow City Council, https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=15944] ↩︎
- BAE Systems is the largest weapons manufacturer in Britain as of 2017, and the largest defence contractor in Europe. They produce parts for the F-35 fighter jet, which has been used in the bombing of the Gaza Strip. As of February 2023, the University of Glasgow held shares of £524,382 in the company. [Glasgow Guardian] ↩︎
- In 2020, youth illiteracy in Gaza was less than 1%. [Index Mundi, https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/west-bank-and-gaza/literacy-rate] ↩︎
- In 2014, Glasgow University committed to divesting from fossil fuels by 2024. [University of Glasgow Divestment from Fossil Fuels Statement https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2014/october/headline_364008_en.html] ↩︎
- Currently, the IHRA definition of antisemitism includes, among other things, criticism of Israel as a state. [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism] ↩︎
- Machover’s expulsion has since been rescinded. [The Jewish Chronicle, https://www.thejc.com/news/expelled-anti-zionist-moshe-machover-readmitted-to-labour-party-kz45p5jf?fbclid=IwAR3uIUukPm3eC3F_E_QojZwTp-HbY1SuadH7nroLB2ebmnbgTzn2x9WoJ4o] ↩︎
- The Emily Test is a charity working to improve gender-based violence prevention and support in universities across the country. [The Emily Test, https://www.emilytest.org/?fbclid=IwAR2BUyQkeTWKNzy_KswWaXFWlVQn0dXEqoafIUYTGHoHM6LreOsfWqQsRm0] ↩︎
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