The organisers of this conferece - Professor David Lloyd, Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Dr Chandana Mathur, Dr Abeer Otman, and myself are delighted and cheered by the support of The Ditch in publicizing our protest at the ongoing crisis for Palestinian students and academics coming to Ireland. All hail to Eoghan McNeill and his colleagues! And warm thanks to my old comrade Harry Browne for his help also.
International academics call off Irish event in protest at Palestinian visa refusals
With the Irish state, for the first time in a decade, refusing more Palestinian visa applications than it grants, as well widespread refusals for student visas for Palestinians, a group of international academics have called off a gathering at Maynooth University.
With the Irish state, for the first time in a decade, refusing more Palestinian visa applications than it grants, as well widespread refusals for student visas for Palestinians, a group of international academics have called off a gathering at Maynooth University.
“Under such conditions, it would be an act of bad faith to proceed with this conference at this time and, to our great regret and to the great disappointment of the many Irish academics and artists who were invited to attend and enthusiastically accepted, the decision has had to be made to postpone the conference till March,” says the Al-Hadinah Al-Fikriya collective in an open letter.
“Given the long historical overlaps between Ireland and Palestine as sites of British colonialism and the conference organisers’ understanding that the Irish people and its government were committed to supporting the Palestinian pursuit of liberation and peace, we all believed that it would be appropriate and productive to hold the next conference in Ireland,” reads the letter signed by Noura Erakat, Ann McClintock, Bill Rolston and other members of the group.
As signatory David Lloyd puts it, “Aside from the dire consequences on the students of this extraordinary denial of freedom of movement, the impact not only on the students but also on the capacity for Palestinians and their allies globally to engage freely in intellectual exchange is grave.”
Here it is in full.
Open Letter on the Denial of Visas to Gazan Students
August 29, 2026
We write as members of the Al-Hadinah al-Fikriyya collective, a transnational community of scholars and intellectuals from Ireland, across the European Union, the United States, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, South Africa, Canada, and beyond.
For the past year, we have been engaged with the Palestinian Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian and colleagues from Maynooth University, Dr. Chandana Mathur, and Dr. Conor Mc Carthy, in addition to Professor David Lloyd (University of California, Riverside) and Dr. Abeer Otman (University of Milano-Bicocca) in preparations for an important international conference on Palestine, Al-Hadinah Al-Fikriya, that was to be held at Maynooth University in October 2026. The conference would be the fourth in an impressive series of international conferences that have previously taken place at the University of California, Princeton University, and the Universities of Cape Town and the Western Cape. Their intent is both to offer sanctuary and a gathering place to Palestinian intellectuals whom the Zionist occupation of their homeland has dispersed and systematically prevented from engaging with one another and to promote research and discussion of the paths to liberation in conversation with fellow intellectuals from the global south. Given the long historical overlaps between Ireland and Palestine as sites of British colonialism and the conference organisers’ understanding that the Irish people and its government were committed to supporting the Palestinian pursuit of liberation and peace, we all believed that it would be appropriate and productive to hold the next conference in Ireland.
We are, therefore, extremely concerned to have been informed of the recent pattern of denials of visas and therefore of entry to Gazan students who had been accepted and offered places for further study by Irish universities and, in some cases, were to have been supported by Irish government scholarships. More than half of Palestinian applicants have now been denied visas, despite having the promise of scholarships and admission. Over and above the denial, some of the rationales for the refusals add an extraordinary degree of petty cruelty to the process, such as asking for copies of academic credentials or bank statements to be mailed by individuals living under the conditions of Israel’s genocide where there is no functioning infrastructure, including schools and universities, of any kind, let alone a postal or banking service. To deny an individual, already vetted and admitted by one of Ireland’s universities on the basis of their intellectual achievements and promise, because they have been obliged by Israel’s three years of unrelenting destruction to live in a displacement camp, adds an unconscionable insult to the disappointment of legitimate hopes.
Likewise, the argument that documentation is needed to ensure that anyone associated with Hamas does not enter the country partakes of the kind of racial smear that suggests that any Palestinian may be a terrorist—the kind of accusation with which those of us from Ireland who lived in Britain in the 1970s are all too familiar. Even the suspicion that such students might seek asylum after arrival shows an extraordinary ignorance of the Palestinian commitment to their land. While they desperately need temporary refuge, the vast majority of such students seek to study further in their fields, whether in the arts, in engineering, or in medical professions, because they know well that Gaza, and now the West Bank also, will need educated and committed personnel to reconstruct what Israel has so wantonly destroyed.
The Al-Hadinah conference at Maynooth had invited scholars from throughout historic Palestine, many, including several originally from Gaza, already living in exile, many from Israel and the West Bank, and others from throughout Europe. Invited participants also included scholars from West Asia, including Lebanon and Syria. Most will need visas to enter Ireland and it is an alarming prospect that they might be denied entry and that the whole rationale of the conference, to bring Palestinian scholars, artists and intellectuals together with others from the global south, will be undermined. Even beyond the prospect of random individual visa denials, we are dismayed to realise that this pattern of refusals, presumably with the politically opportunistic intent of appeasing the racist fear mongering about migrants, reflects governmental policy, gives the lie to our understanding that Ireland would extend its hospitality to Palestinians who are suffering many of the effects of colonial settlement and occupation that the Irish nation historically underwent.
Under such conditions, it would be an act of bad faith to proceed with this conference at this time and, to our great regret and to the great disappointment of the many Irish academics and artists who were invited to attend and enthusiastically accepted, the decision has had to be made to postpone the conference till March. It is hoped that postponement may permit sufficient time for the visa application process to be completed prior to conference travel and for the policy of visa denial to be rescinded. To ask any Palestinian, or indeed, and individual from an Arab or Muslim country, to risk having a visa denial by a European country become a permanent record that would imperil future travel, seems to us unconscionable. Given the late stage of the conference planning at which we learned of this policy, the organisers and participants are now obliged to state and disseminate the reasons for having to postpone the conference publicly and widely and are sharing a version of this letter openly.
We therefore insist that the Irish government and civil service end this pernicious practice of visa denial, not simply for our conference attendees but for Palestinian students, artists and scholars across the board. The fact that Great Britain and the United States denied entry to hundreds of European Jews fleeing Nazi Europe in the 1930s and 1940s is an indelible and notorious stain on their moral record. Especially given that Ireland recently opened its doors to Europeans fleeing the Russian war on Ukraine, the denial of visas to Palestinians during an ongoing genocide is no less evidently racist and no less unconscionable. Ireland has benefitted globally from the reputation it has earned for supporting the Palestinian cause. Please do not let such a reputation be wiped away for the sake of political opportunism or in the fanciful hope of appeasing the racist minority who will only be encouraged by capitulation. A policy of visa denial in the midst of genocide is both immoral and cruel and will be an enduring cause of shame to the government and the individuals that impose it.
Sincerely,
Al-Hadinah al-Fikriyya collective:
- Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, University of South Africa; Queen Mary University of London
- Prof. David Lloyd, University of California, Riverside
- Dr. Chandana Mathur, Maynooth University
- Dr. Abeer Otman, University of Milano-Bicocca
- Dr. Conor McCarthy, Maynooth University
- Prof. Mohamad Seedat, University of South Africa
- Dr. Heather Laird, University College Cork
- Prof. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, The University of Glasgow; The American University of Beirut
- Prof. Sherene Razack, Emeritus Professor, the University of California, Riverside
- Prof. Saree Makdisi, The University of California, Riverside
- Prof. Yusuf Sayed, University of Cambridge
- Dr. Sinead Kennedy, Maynooth University
- Dr. Mezna Qato, Newnham College
- Dr. Umesh Bawa, University of the Western Cape
- Prof. Patrick Bresnihan, Maynooth University
- Dr. Muna Dajani, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
- Prof. Omar Salamanca, Université libre de Bruxelles
- Prof. Ann McClintock, Princeton University
- Dr. Lama Khouri, Palestine-Global Mental Health Network
- Prof. Abdulrazak Karriem, University of the Western Cape
- Prof. Atalia Omer, The University of Notre Dame
- Dr. Hanine Shehadeh, New York University Abu Dhabi
- Amir Marshi, University of Michigan
- Prof. Jude Lal Fernando, Trinity College Dublin
- Prof. Stephen Sheehi, William & Mary University
- Prof. Dylan Rodriguez, University of California, Riverside
- Prof. Ruba Salih, University of Bologna
- Dr. Edel Hughes, University of Galway
- Prof. John Reynolds, University of Otago
- Prof. Noura Erakat, Rutgers University
- Prof. Bill Rolston, Ulster University
- Dr. Rafeef Ziadah, King's College London
- Dr. Robert Knox, The University of Liverpool
- Dr. Brendan Browne, Trinity College Dublin
- Prof. Ahmad Saa'di, Ben Gurion University of Negev
- Dr. Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh, St Mary’s University College
- Dr. Toufic Haddad, University of Edinburgh
- Dr. Lara Sheehi, University of South Africa
- Prof. Salim Valey, University of Johannesburg
- Prof. Shahnaaz Suffla, University of South Africa
- Prof. Sarah Ihmoud, College of the Holy Cross
- Prof. Gerard McCann, St Mary’s University College
- Prof. Jasbir Puar, University of British Columbia
- Palestine-Global Mental Health Network
- Australia-Palestine Mental Health Network
- Chile-Palestine Mental Health Network
- Egypt-Palestine Mental Health Network
- Indonesia-Palestine Mental Health Network
- Ireland-Palestine Mental Health Network
- Shatāt-USA-Palestine Mental Health Network
- South Africa-Palestine Mental Health Network
- Sweden-Palestine Mental Health Network
- UK-Palestine Mental Health Network
- USA- Palestine Mental Health Network
- Abya Yala-Palestine Mental Health Network
- Germany-Palestine Mental Health Network
- The Netherlands-Palestine Mental Health Network
- Greece-Palestine Mental Health Network
- Cyprus-Palestine Mental Health Network
