Israeli academics face hundreds of ‘explicit’ boycotts by foreign universities, report says

The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 2024

Shira Kadari-Ovadia reports in Haaretz on 25 February 2025:

Israeli researchers have reported hundreds of cases of academic boycotts and difficulties in cooperation with overseas institutions over the past few months, according to a report released on Monday by Israel’s Association of University Heads.

Since last October, 200 complaints have been submitted to the association, the report said. Between Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023 and October 7, 2024, another 300 complaints were submitted.

The association began collecting these reports after deciding that every university should appoint someone to handle academic boycotts after the increase in such cases since October 7, 2023, and set up a designated task force as well.

The report said that institutional cooperation with universities overseas has seen a dramatic decrease. In Spain, for instance, it has ceased almost completely, while major universities in the Netherlands and Belgium also announced that they were ending academic cooperation with Israeli institutions.

Another problem, it said, is the growing difficulty in getting scientific papers published in journals and books. Scientific journals are refraining from publishing articles by Israeli researchers, while overseas researchers are refusing to conduct peer reviews of articles submitted by Israelis.

The trend also leads to a drop in funding from overseas research foundations. Sometimes, because overseas researchers were afraid their own research grants would suffer, they have asked Israeli colleagues to leave international research consortia, the report said.

Researchers’ personal ties with overseas colleagues have taken a toll. Thus, even if an institution hasn’t officially decided to end cooperation with Israeli universities, researchers say their overseas colleagues often don’t want to continue conducting joint research or writing joint articles.  “There are quite a few cases in which faculty and students have taken personal steps to boycott Israelis, stating their intentions explicitly, driven by political considerations forthright,” the report said.

Israeli faculty have also reported having their invitations to conferences rescinded. When that doesn’t happen, the conference is sometimes disrupted by protests and demonstrations.

The report said that during the first months of the war after October 2023, academic protests against Israel consisted mainly of student demonstrations. But now, the boycotts stem mainly from the institutions themselves and the universities’ faculty members, with most of the complaints submitted to the council related to institutions in Europe and the United States.

The report described several attempts to expand academic boycotting of Israel. Last May, for instance, Ghent University in Belgium voted to sever academic ties with Israeli universities due to their ties with the defense establishment, thereby being complicit with human rights violations.

The university then tried to persuade other universities in Belgium and beyond to sever ties with Israeli academia as well and even asked the European Commission to bar Israeli institutions from participating in projects that receive funding from the European Union. However, the commission rejected that request, and as a result, Ghent University withdrew from projects that had Israeli partners.

The report also warned that academic boycotts of Israel might intensify now that U.S. President Donald Trump has returned to the White House. On the plus side, it said that the Trump administration’s policies are beginning to spur “bureaucratic changes in institutions of higher education in the U.S., which are emphasizing maintaining institutional neutrality.”

But at the same time, the pro-Israel sentiment Washington is trying to propagate “is creating a counter-reaction, especially among faculty members who advocate maintaining freedom of expression on campus, preserving the right to demonstrate, and, often, supporting the boycott movements as well.”

Moreover, it said, Israel’s close relationship with the Trump administration “may make it harder for Israeli academia to establish ties with overseas universities in the future, especially with universities in Europe, whose academic leadership doesn’t support the new narrative the Trump administration is promoting in American academia.”

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