---
title: "Academic boycott of Israel"
chunk: 8/8
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:17:27.825907+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Criticism ==
A prominent Palestinian academic, former president of Al-Quds University, Sari Nusseibeh, has argued against academic boycotts of Israel, telling Associated Press "If we are to look at Israeli society, it is within the academic community that we've had the most progressive pro-peace views and views that have come out in favor of seeing us as equals.... If you want to punish any sector, this is the last one to approach." He acknowledges, however, that his view is a minority one among Palestinian academics.
A study focusing on the impact of academic boycotts on academic freedom and discourse, based on interviews during the Gaza war that began in 2023, found that Israeli academics faced overt and covert discrimination, obstacles to collaboration, and potential long-term career challenges.  Participants in the study stressed the need to keep science separate from politics and preserve cross-border collaboration as essential for advancing research and addressing global challenges.
Cary Nelson argues that while boycott resolutions are unlikely to affect Israeli policy, they risk politicizing and damaging the reputation of the humanities, undermining open debate, and shaping public opinion in ways that may harm academia itself. The Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan told the Guardian that a boycott of academics would penalise those who are not responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, noting that many oppose those policies or hold views sympathetic to Palestinians.
Carlton University political science professor Mira Sucharov proposes that examining the differing forms of privilege and marginalization experienced by Jews and Palestinians across geographic and historical contexts can help students critically situate debates over the goals and fairness of academic boycotts of Israel.

=== Comparisons to academic boycotts of South Africa ===

The academic boycott of South Africa is frequently invoked as a model for more recent efforts to organize academic boycotts of Israel.
Some have invoked the comparison to argue that an academic boycott of Israel shouldn't be controversial and that if an academic boycott of South Africa was justified, so is one of Israel. Andy Beckett countered that academic boycotts of South Africa faced significant criticism at the time, writing that "In truth, boycotts are blunt weapons. Even the most apparently straightforward and justified ones, on closer inspection, have their controversies and injustices."

=== Accusations of antisemitism ===
Anthony Julius and Alan Dershowitz argue that boycotts against Israel are antisemitic, using anti-Zionism as a cover for "Jew hatred". They compare the boycotts to the 1222 Canterbury Council, specifically the council's implementation of sharply limiting Christian contact with Jews, Nazi boycotts of Jewish shops in the 1930s, as well as Arab League attempts to economically isolate Israel and refrain from purchasing "anything Jewish".
Harvard President Larry Summers "blasted" the boycotts as "antisemitic":

[T]here is much that should be, indeed that must be, debated regarding Israeli policy.... But the academic boycott resolution passed by the British professors union in the way that it singles out Israel is in my judgment anti-Semitic in both effect and in intent. 
Summers had previously argued that a proposed boycott was antisemitic "in effect, if not intent". This position was criticized by Judith Butler, in an article titled "No, it's not anti-semitic". Butler argues the distinction of effective antisemitism, and intentional antisemitism is at best controversial. 

If we think that to criticise Israeli violence, or to call for economic pressure to be put on the Israeli state to change its policies, is to be "effectively anti-semitic", we will fail to voice our opposition for fear of being named as part of an anti-semitic enterprise. No label could be worse for a Jew, who knows that, ethically and politically, the position with which it would be unbearable to identify is that of the anti-semite.
According to Martin Kramer, a hidden reason behind the academic boycott is to isolate Jewish academics so as to push them out of disciplines where Jews have been perceived to be "over-represented", and that this is done by inserting litmus tests for Jews who wish to advance in their careers as academics, demanding that they demonstrate virulent hostility to Israel or else be stigmatized. Kramer argues that this is a primary reason why the boycott has found a significant number of supporters from fields which have little to do with the Middle East.

== See also ==
Boycotts of Israel#Academic and cultural boycotts
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
Disinvestment from Israel
Boycotts of Israel
Reactions to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

== References ==

== External links ==
The Ethics of Academic Boycott, University of Chicago Press
Israel and the Campus, American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise