How the classroom can offer a remedy for trauma

Authors: Nadira Omarjee
Cited by: 0

Abstract

In the past decade, universities the world over have been the site of occupations and encampments. The backdrop of global conflicts and mass oppression due to systemic failure to address the growing inequality gap mobilized the student movements, #RhodesMustFall and the University of Colour from mid-2010 onwards. The recent encampments resulting from the ongoing Gaza genocide and ecocide compounded by images of concurrent genocides and ecocides in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan call for justice against settler-colonialism and its afterlives. These colonial wounds have made hysteria a public mental health concern caused by the devaluation of life with livestreaming genocide and ecocide, highlighting the ways in which civil liberties are being eroded in white liberal democracies like with the banning of Palestine Action in the UK.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Critical and Liberation Pedagogy Educational Philosophies and Pedagogies University Challenges and Reforms

Publication details

Journal / source
VU Research Portal
Publication date
9 February 2026
Language
EN