When a classroom is destroyed, schools lose more than four walls and desks. They risk losing a generation’s connection to knowledge, memory and possibility.
Across Gaza, Sudan, Yemen and beyond, education has survived extraordinary violence but survival is not justice. In recognition of the International Day to Protect Education from Attack, Zeena Zakharia, associate professor of international education, examines what it means to protect education amid conflict and crisis.
The proposition is simple: teachers and students should not be targets of aggression. Yet across the world, that basic premise is being eroded. Geopolitical rivalries are dismantling humanitarian law, governments are eliminating civilian protections, and donors are abandoning commitments to affected populations.
When schools, universities, libraries, archives, teachers and students are repeatedly targeted for decimation, what is lost is not just civilian infrastructure. It is a society’s capacity to transmit knowledge, preserve culture, and imagine alternative futures.
Protecting education from attack requires protecting the people, institutions, languages, cultures, histories, and relationships that make education possible. And it requires recognizing educators not as passive recipients of aid, but as frontline humanitarian actors whose deep knowledge holds possibilities for repair.
