GLASGOW UNIVERSITY RECTOR DENOUNCES CAPITALISM IN RADICAL FINAL WELCOME ADDRESS

By Voice Reporter

On Monday, Glasgow University Rector Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah delivered the final welcome address of his term.

Dr Abu-Sittah is a Palestinian surgeon who has worked in several conflict zones, including Gaza, Beirut, Iraq, and Yemen. He is a founding director of the Conflict Medicine Program and is widely recognised for his humanitarian work.

Abu-Sittah was elected in a historic landslide in 2024 with over 80% of the vote (with a significant increase in turnout from previous years). He was installed April 11^th 2024 where he delivered an explosive Rector’s Address, denouncing the University’s links with the arms trade; quoting Lenin, Fanon and Che Guevara; and calling for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The rectorship campaign was spearheaded, organised, and led by a coalition of activists from several campus societies, including the Justice for Palestine Society and the Scottish Socialist Party Society. Not only did SSP members campaign vigorously throughout the rectorship campaign, but an SSP activist was amongst Abu-Sittah’s initial nomination team, and the SSP Society was one of the first to officially nominate the surgeon for the rectorship. The campaign brought together students and societies from across the university, who won a stunning victory in the face of opposition from pro-Israel groups and university management.

A Radical Welcome Address

In Dr Abu-Sittah’s third and final welcome address as Glasgow University Rector, he provided new students an eye opening insight into the potential value of university and the nature of the institution they were joining.

Dr Abu-Sittah started by congratulating new students and welcoming them to “probably the best university in the universe”, before delivering a politically charged, inspiring, and deeply anti-capitalist welcome address.

“You will make friends, but more importantly, I call on you to make comrades. Join with people across the world in sharing these hopes and dreams of a better world.

“You in this generation live in an age of paradox. 40% of the world’s population lives in hunger, and it would take only 0.03% of this world’s GDP to end that hunger. Despite the fact that green energy is much cheaper now than fossil fuel, we are witnessing yet another regional war devastating lives because of the world’s obsession – and the Empire’s greed – for controlling fossil fuels.

“And we are at a university where if you are a researcher, it is easier to get funding to make weapons of death than it is to get funding to find cures and solutions to the world’s biggest diseases and problems.”

The Rector made reference to the “cruelty of the class system” and “the brutalism and the slaughter in Gaza” and urged “your generation will have to find solutions to these paradoxes, it is your generation that will have to rise up and change the world, because it is the world that you live in and will eventually try to raise children in.”

He expressed the importance of his own time as a University of Glasgow student, remembering the brilliant and inspirational comrades he made during that time. Their camaraderie, he said, had travelled with him in his struggle “for the rights of people in Latin America, Palestine, Kashmir, and across the world.”

Dr Abu-Sittah praised the people of Glasgow, who “despite the fact that they lived in a small place in the world, have always reached out to the rest of humanity in solidarity – not in charity.

“It is ideas that make the university, and it is solidarity that will end the politics of identity and create a politics of shared animosity towards the cannibalistic capitalist system that now generates wealth through killing and wounding, and the destruction of human life.”

His final message was a hopeful one, that students would find joy in “the struggle for ideas, the struggle to connect with people from across the globe and from across the spectrum of social backgrounds to make a better world.”

“I hope you have the best, most fruitful four years ahead.”

The rector concluded his speech with a quote from the Angolan freedom fighters: A luta Continua, Victoria Ascerta. The struggle continues, victory is certain.

The speech was met with rapturous applause, enthusiastic cheers from the crowd and chants of “Free, free, Palestine!” – on the balcony above, representatives from the University’s Queen Margret Union flew a Palestinian flag.

A Valuable Example

The success of Dr Abu-Sittah’s campaign in 2024 and the impact he has had as rector should prove a valuable example for the Palestine movement. This historic victory was partially the result of the context in which the elections took place (Israel’s genocide in Gaza), but it was also down to the platform on which he ran and the organised and united nature of the campaign.

The platform put forward by Dr Abu-Sittah and his campaign team focussed on combatting the University’s complicity in the Gaza genocide, but also the commodification of education and the impact of neoliberalism on Scotland’s universities. This campaign was successful because it was well organised, energetic, and unashamedly radical.

We should all heed Dr Abu-Sittah’s instruction to the new crop of University of Glasgow students to seek out solutions to the Capitalist crises of war, poverty, and environmental collapse – ultimately, these solutions will be built on struggle, solidarity, and socialism.