Academic boycotts target sector most supportive of Palestinian rights, Israeli professors warn
Leading Israeli academics spoke to Jewish News about the sustained global campaign to boycott their institutions
The orchestrated campaign to cut off Israeli academia, led by universities and scholarly bodies in Europe and South America, and by some in the UK, is targeting one of the most pro-Palestinian sectors within the Jewish state, leading professors have warned.
Dozens of universities in countries such as Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Ireland have joined with institutions in Brazil and other Latin nations to cut links with Israeli academia, amid claims that it is complicit in the Israeli government’s actions towards Palestinians.
While the UK lags behind some of its European counterparts, there are growing signs of increasing pressure on university chiefs by pro-Palestine activists to cancel existing courses over alleged links with Israel, its military, and its government.
Speaking to Jewish News this week, Professor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem described a “highly organised and well-funded campaign” against Israeli academia, characterised by a range of measures targeting all universities.
These actions include suspending student exchange and joint research programs, and selectively excluding Israeli researchers from international collaborations, especially in European Union-funded projects.
“We are witnessing a dramatic drop in Israel’s success rate in European research grant competitions, from being among the highest in Europe to less than five percent,” he said.
Shani, an inaugural Accelerator Fellow at the Ethics in AI Institute at the University of Oxford, further described symbolic exclusions, such as Israeli faculty being invited to conferences but denied the right to display their university affiliation.
“These measures have serious professional, reputational, and financial consequences for Israeli academia,” he cautioned, underscoring the profound effects on the nation’s academic standing and future prospects.
Paradoxically, Shani argues that academia and culture are targeted despite being the most sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
He reasoned that those who campaigned for boycotts were happy for this fact to be largely overlooked.
“The academic sector is among the most sympathetic to the Palestinian cause,” he explained, noting that Palestinian students make up 20% of the student body, reflecting their demographic share of the population. Universities have also increased efforts to recruit Palestinian faculty and have appointed Palestinian vice presidents and university presidents.
Israeli universities, Shani emphasised, “have taken public stands critical of government policies, protected the right of Palestinian students to protest, and promoted diversity at the leadership level.”
Instead, he suggested, “Such measures may reflect a broader intention to delegitimise the state of Israel.”
His argument was supported by Maureen Adiri Meyer, the director of Tel Aviv University’s highly regarded international student courses. She told Jewish News, “Our president has been very, very loud and outspoken about what he thinks of many of the things happening here. He, together with the head of all the Israeli universities, has written multiple letters to the government.
“I don’t know if you know that that we’re as a university we’re independent from the political system in Israel.
“It’s not like that everywhere in the world, but we are under the Council for Higher Education, which is not directly connected to the political government or anything. The funding is public funding, but it’s not under the government in any way. The current Ministry of Education does not like us at all because there are a lot of disagreements on many topics.
“I will also say that, to some extent, the university was able to stay very clear on having conversations on anything that feels it should be discussed—whether it’s the humanitarian crisis in Gaza or whether it’s things that have to do with the IDF. But on the other hand, we didn’t stop our partnerships with the IDF either. Like there’s, it’s a real, and it’s very transparent.”
Shani later confirmed that, as one of the Israeli legal scholars leading the fightback against calls for academic boycotts, the UK was not one of the worst offenders.
But legal action had been taken on occasions. Few institutions in the UK, France, and Germany have announced they are cutting links with Israeli academia, with Universities UK (UUK) saying it does not support an academic boycott.
“So some universities, actually not a lot of universities, but some universities have signed on to the BDS platform, which basically says no institutional relations with Israeli universities, meaning you cannot have any form of collaboration with an Israeli university,” explained Shany.
“You would not have a student exchange program. You will not facilitate any assistance in promotion. You will not engage in joint research projects, etc., etc., within universities. This is actually something which is for us at the end of the spectrum.
“Relatively few universities in the West have signed on to a full-fledged BDS, partly because it violates domestic anti-discrimination laws. So going all the way towards BDS is politically and also sometimes legally costly for universities. But we have a lot of many more than 50 shades of grey here, and there are a lot of grey boycotts.”
In the UK, Nobel laureate and former president of the Royal Society Venki Ramakrishnan last year told the Guardian he has mixed feelings about boycotts.
“On the one hand, the Israeli government’s approach to Gaza has been hugely disproportionate, harming civilians, including young children, in the thousands,” he said.
“On the other hand, most Israeli academics I know, including several I count as my friends, detest Netanyahu and his government. A boycott of this would penalise those who are not responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, and who in fact are very sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians.”
But Meyer was less positive about the actions of UK universities. She praised the continued good links between Tel Aviv and Manchester University, but insisted things had been problematic for some time with British-related attempts to cut ties.
“We do have a very strong partnership with the University of Manchester,” she added. “They’ve stayed wonderful partners, continuing joint calls for joint research up till a month ago; but they’re getting a lot of pushback from students’ movement.”
Reflecting on partnerships beyond the UK, Meyer recounts TAU’s ongoing, if strained, relationship with Columbia University in the United States. “While I think Columbia University was awful to Israel, I can tell you that throughout this entire period, we were in touch not only with the president but with the dean of the School of General Studies, with everybody. They didn’t do a good job, but they were trying. They didn’t do anything purposefully against us. And I think many universities, not all of them, some are anti-Israel.”
Shani also stressed the battle Israeli academia has been fighting with the increasingly far-right Netanyahu government in recent years.
“This whole situation is at some level grotesque because we are constantly under threat by our own government,” he admits. “Our government is threatening us all the time that they will cut public funding to us because we are not behaving properly. We are too critical. We allow Palestinian flags, even sometimes to be flown on campus. I mean, so this whole fact that we are getting beaten up from both sides is extremely bizarre.”
More, blocks on research funding could be very problematic, both for Israeli universities and the country as a whole, given the Israeli economy is heavily based on science and technology.
Since 2021, Israel has received a net sum of €875.9m (£740.4m) from the EU’s Horizon Europe programme for scientific research. However, last July the European Commission proposed partially suspending Israel from Horizon Europe.
Also speaking to Jewish News this week was Tel Aviv University’s Dr. Carl Yonker, who stressed the reality of what really can be achieved by Israeli academia in wider society.
“I manage one of the most diverse classrooms possible,” he reveals. “Like, you know, I have Muslims, Druze, Christian, Jews. I have from the north… from the south, from the centre, from rich, from poor. I have Ethiopians. I have Russian immigrants, Ukrainian immigrants… all sitting in one classroom.
“And for the last three years, I, as an instructor, manage a classroom where I have students whose homes are getting bombed. Students whose homes are getting bombed from Hezbollah in the north.
“I have Arab students who have family in Gaza who are in shelters or who have lost family, and absent students of mine who are in the reserves. And I’m managing a classroom with all of them, and I care deeply about each one of them—where they are, and it’s incredibly hard.”
Israeli academia has been one of the country’s main strengths for decades.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, founded in 1918 and officially opened in 1925, is one of Israel’s oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher learning. Tel Aviv University (TAU), established in 1956, is Israel’s largest university, with a strong reputation for innovation and multidisciplinary research.
Jewish News travelled to Israel this week as part of a delegation organised by the Or Ofir Foundation and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to explore efforts to tackle antisemitism and hear first-hand from leading Israeli academics and university chiefs.
The delegation also visited the impressive Tel Aviv University campus during a busy week-long schedule.
The Or Ofir Foundation is a non-profit organisation established in memory of Ofir Libstein, the former head of the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council who was killed defending Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, 2023, during the Hamas terror attacks, along with his son Nitzan.