Female Staff of UCL Shave their Heads to Show Support with Gaza

Some female employees of University College London (UCL) have stormed into the institution by hurling accusations that it should divest from Israel to all who would consent to listen, which has joined the widespread movement for the turning of the back of the university onto Israeli universities.

Two female members of UCL staff and one alumna demonstrated their solidarity by shaving their heads on Wednesday in a moving demonstration and hearing that Gaza women are being forced to do the same as there is a lack of water. The event was performed in front of an audience of students and staff as it coincided with a day when matters of Nakba Day were commemorated.

May, an employee of UCL, was the first to do so. She shaved her hair in front of the assembling crowd that was watching. By saying so, she highlighted the fact that the women faced “the dehumanisation suffered by Palestinian women in Gaza,” and her act was a call for UCL to divest from companies making profits from the conflict in Gaza as well.

“Shaving a head is depersonalising and is almost always seen to affect human beings. It is truly depressing to be witnessing all the dehumanisation, violence, and cruelty against the Palestinians right in front of our eyes.

 ‘Israeli troops shaving the head of a girl from Gaza’ is one in a million, and the unspeakable collective dehumanisation, violence, and cruelty perpetuated first came when she criticised UCL for owning shares in weapons companies and banking with Barclays that have continued to invest in firms profiting during the Gaza crisis.

Along with the others (there were several people who), Elle, a lecturer at UCL, shaved her head as an expression of protest, providing another load of controversy to her book. The main point she made was that she must bear in mind her ethical obligation to refrain from adding to the plight of the Palestinians. “Being here is my ethical responsibility. I can’t allow what my work does to interfere with these children’s dignity, understanding, culture, humanity, and even existence,” Han said. ‘It is impossible to free one oppressed group without liberating another oppressed group’.

Elle’s agitation was fueled by other women who got in outside the UK parliament with bald head hair in response to reports of Palestinian women in Gaza doing the same thing to avoid hair scalp illness from such cases as their water shortage imposes their inability to clean their hair every time.

This picketing is one of the bigger signs of UCL’s determination to impose an academic boycott against Israeli universities. Protest encampments were also established at other universities in Britain; King’s College London, LSE, and Queen Mary College in East London are some of the places where such encampments were established.

On the other side, the campus college at Cambridge continues to advocate for the Palestinians as well. On Wednesday morning, students marched toward the university’s pollution-free central management building, thereby emphasising that their protest, which began on the 6th of May, has now reached a much higher level of intensity. 

The protesters who first came together in the yard of King’s College are now in tents with their petition for the university to withdraw from the companies having business with the conflict in Gaza.

The protesters who are representing Cambridge for Palestine ask the University to recognise and end any links with companies and institutions cited as contributing towards the “current ethnic cleansing of Palestine”. The protesters further demand support for the Palestinians on campus and continuing support for academic freedom.

Meanwhile, the negotiations reached a turning point when the protesters moved their camp from the lawn of Massachusetts’s iconic Senate House, the ceremonial centre of Harvard University, to the other. This campsite, used for gradation ceremonies scheduled for Friday and Saturday, endangers their dislocation.

The group Cambridge for Palestine reported in the press release that they had set Tuesday, May 14, at 5 p.m., as the senior officials at the university’s administration should negotiate with the group. Rather than doing this, the administration communicated with the protesters through their local educational body, the Cambridge University Student Union.