Academic boycott: The possibility of a more ethical, constructive response.

‘The intifada reaches the ivory tower’, proclaimed the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz in its May 15 issue. Indeed it has. The shockwaves from Palestinian suicide bombings and Israel's war against terrorism in the West Bank territory are reverberating through scientific and educational organisations around the world. The trigger for the headline was an open letter, published on April 6 in the British daily newspaper The Guardian and signed by more than 130 scientists from Europe and Israel. It called for a moratorium on further European cooperation with Israeli scientific and cultural institutions ‘until Israel abides by UN resolutions and opens serious peace negotiations with the Palestinians […].’ The letter created a flurry of further petitions for and against a boycott as well as articles and editorials in European and Israeli newspapers. The waves of the debate finally reached the secluded shores of various science islands in Europe and the scientific journals at the beginning of May, when Nature devoted its editorial to the topic. The journal has since published correspondence both for and against an academic boycott. The scientists calling for a boycott are dismayed with Israel's incursions into the West Bank and its treatment of the Palestinian population. They think that the political community, particularly the US government and the EU, is not doing enough to restrain either side from further escalating the spiral of violence and thus call for additional pressure on the Israeli government. ‘We view the situation as in the case of the South African boycott,’ explained Steven Rose, a neurobiologist and Director of the Brain and Behaviour Research Group at the Open University in the UK, and the initiator of the open letter. ‘I feel that the civil society has to stand up and do something about it. […] There are ways in which we …

Academic boycotts are, in the view of this author, problematic in almost any context. Moreover, they have failed to achieve any significant political objectives beyond media attention. In the specific case of Israel-Palestine, the media coverage of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement (BDS) proposals is far greater than the limited, almost insignificant, impact on the nature of academic and scientific collaboration between Israeli universities and the broader global academic community. The academic boycott attempts remain, at this stage, little more than proposals to members of a small number of scientific communities and guilds to cease all forms of collaboration with Israeli scientists and scholars, regardless of their political positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict and the status of the Occupation. The boycott cannot be enforced upon the members of these scientific communities and guilds, the majority of whom continue to undertake full scientific collaboration with their Israeli colleagues and research partners. The small number of proboycotters who do not participate in scientific meetings and conferences that take place in Israel, or who do not invite Israeli colleagues to participate in conferences arranged elsewhere, are far outnumbered by the many members of the international scientific community who do participate, and are more than ready to take their vacant place around the conference table or in the lecture theatre. Scientific congresses, in all fields of academic endeavor, have continued to thrive against the background of calls for a boycott and if there have been some absent participants for political reasons, it has not been noticeable. A glance at the long list of academic meetings and seminars that have taken place at Israeli universities during the past two years, or those that are planned for the coming academic year, is clear evidence of this; if there have been individuals who have decided not to participate because of their desire to practice boycott, it has passed without notice or impact upon the conference itself. Unlike the case of South Africa, where there was an almost blanket boycott in all political, economic, and social realms, this is not the case with Israel. In both Western Europe and North America, where most of the boycott proposals emanate, the major universities and, in some cases, the governments themselves, have made it adequately clear that, regardless of their own personal positions concerning the Israel-Palestine impasse, they do not support selective or discriminatory academic boycotts and, in some cases, this has even led to a strengthening of scientific ties where none existed previously. In a letter issued by the European Union Science and Research Authority, in response to a request by some scholars to boycott projects with Israel, the union expressed their views that academic boycotts were discriminatory. Since the EU will not fund any university or research consortium that practices policies of discrimination, the EU letter made it clear that they would have to rethink the funding of any such institutions, or individual scholars, that blatantly practiced boycott. This is perceived, by university principals and provosts, as being much more harmful to their own research and funding objectives than lending support to calls for a boycott, and they constantly make the point that the members of the University and College Union (UCU) speak for themselves as individuals, and do not speak in the name of the universities, who are opposed to any such action. The universities, as such, view the UCU as an organization that should exclusively focus on issues pertaining to employment, tenure, and wages and that should not involve the universities in issues relating to foreign policy and insist that any member of faculty who does declare his/her intent to practice boycott, does so on the basis of his individuality and not as a faculty member representing, or speaking on behalf of, the university to which he/she is affiliated. …

The subject of the study is the content, structure, and dynamics of the academic boycott against Israel. The aim of the study is to systematically conceptualize the modern academic boycott of Israel in 2023-2024 by universities in the United States and Western Europe through the prism of the correlation of common and special features of this phenomenon. The study revealed the reasons for the academic boycott of Israel as a permanent phenomenon in 2002-2022; the degree of its validity was determined; the Palestinian-Israeli conflict of 2023-2024 was revealed as a factor in the transition of the anti-Israeli boycott in the academic sphere to a new stage, involving the introduction of unprecedented academic sanctions. The specific features of the academic boycott of Israel by universities of various states of the collective West are considered in detail by the authors in the context of new trends in the anti-Israeli protest movement. The methodological base of the research is represented by historical and systematic approaches. General scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, abstraction and generalization were used when working with empirical data. The comparative method made it possible to identify common and specific aspects of the anti-Israeli academic boycott. The forecasting method made it possible to assess the possible consequences of the current anti-Israeli boycott on the Israeli academic sector. The main conclusion of the study is that the essence of the new qualitative characteristics of the academic boycott of Israel is that the instruments of isolation of the Israeli academic sector in the space of international relations have become measures aimed at suspending or severing institutional relations between Israeli and foreign universities and research centers in the academic field. The novelty of the study lies in the disclosure of the compromise nature of decisions to limit academic ties with Israel, as well as the lack of a radical break. The consequences of the measures taken are unlikely to cause significant damage to the Israeli academic sector. It has been established that the suspension of bilateral agreements between universities of foreign countries and universities in Israel is often presented as a rupture. The contribution of the article to the subject area of research is the disclosure of the academic boycott model, which unfolds in the absence of economic sanctions, as well as the expansion of initiatives by Western countries aimed at evaluating project cooperation with Israel through the prism of human rights and academic freedom values.

Steven Rose makes his case for an academic boycott of Israel in response to the situation of Palestinian scientists.

In "Against Academic Boycotts" (Summer 2007), Martha Nussbaum develops an argument against academic boycotts in general and boycotts of Israeli academia in particular. The argument proceeds by first noting that boycotts are but one option open to those who wish to condemn and resist serious wrongdoing; second, that in a wide range of cases, boycotts were less effective and morally more troubling than the alternatives she presents. From there, on the basis of an analogy to the Israel-Palestine case, Nussbaum concludes that a boycott of Israeli academia is neither necessary nor likely to succeed and therefore unjustified. In what follows, I will point to two ways in which Nussbaum's argument goes astray.

In her excellent, tightly reasoned "Against Academic Boycotts" (Summer 2007), Martha Nussbaum notes that the "main force of the boycott" is directed against "individual members of the [Israeli] institutions," who are accused of not condemning their "government as much as they might have," among other faults. Although Nussbaum finds this rationale and the boycotting of individuals "both implausible and deeply repugnant to the values of academic life," she also notes "that we can only debate this questioning in a philosophically responsible way if we first offer a principled account of the responsibilities of scholars to engage in public debates." What follows is an attempt to answer Nussbaum's implicit question about the responsibility of scholars; an answer that also provides a footnote to her critique of the proposed boycott from a somewhat different perspective.

In Reply. —Unlike Dr Dommisse, who has been correctly critical of apartheid but also has built his writing career on this, I and many of my colleagues who have remained in South Africa have struggled not only against apartheid but also to retain and strengthen those institutions necessary for building a new and better South Africa. Being highly critical of apartheid and its effect on medicine and health care and also at the forefront with many white and black colleagues in integrating Groote Schuur Hospital under difficult conditions so that patients of today, as well as those of the future, could be shielded from apartheid policies, I feel no discomfort in opposing total academic boycott as vigorously as I have opposed apartheid. The humanitarian basis for our concern about apartheid and academic boycott is, we believe, more consistent with the international medical ethos than a rigid political approach. My argument

This forum is a contribution to debates over the (im)possibility of cooperating with the Russian academic community while Russia’s war against Ukraine continues. After briefly reviewing previous studies on the effectiveness and morality of academic sanctions, the forum continues to assess the politics and effectiveness of the academic boycott in changing the belligerent behaviour of the Russian regime. For this purpose, it introduces the idea of ontological (in)security and moves on to discuss, from different perspectives, whether sanctions and boycotts may lead to policy change by way of destabilizing the ontological security of Russia, or whether the academic boycott contributes to strengthening the ruling authoritarian regime.

This study is aimed at determining the specifics of the content range of the political and legal discourse of academic institutions in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which focuses on the academic boycott of Israel. The study consistently reveals as part of event analyses the specifics of the response of university communities in the states of these regions to the events of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict of 2023-2024. As the study showed, in the states of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the political and legal understanding of the boycott is tied to the academic, mainly university environment and, with the exception of South Africa, is not shared by official authorities in regard to the legality and effectiveness of the academic boycott. In general, the range of attitudes is represented by pursuance of break in relations, suspention or, on the contrary, maintaining academic ties with Israel. While the official political and legal discourse of the academic sector of South Africa, as well as Latin American countries, includes all three attitudes, only the third one is characteristic of India. In this regard, the anti-Israeli academic boycott as a social movement of global nature is not absolute at the level of institutional decisions. In addition, there are no decisions taken at the intergovernmental level regarding academic cooperation.

The academic boycott against South Africa has had a limited success. The original idea was proposed by exiled South African students in the late 1950s and social science theorists supported the proposal. The central rationale for the boycott was the inequalities in access to higher education because of race. The paper examines the higher education system in South Africa today and relates it to the established dogma for imposing an academic boycott. It seeks further to establish an extended rationale based on modern sociology of science. The notion of science as a cultural and societal product opens new and radical ways of criticising South African science in general. The paper criticises the defending of a collaboration with South African science. It claims this bears the signs of a scientistic programme, a reminiscence of a technical rationality within the global scientific community. It reviews a number of sectors where science and the scientists are deeply involved in industry, business and go...

THE liberal universities in South Africa, already under attack from persons on both the left and the right in their own country, now face a new challenge from overseas — the academic boycott. It is...

Academic boycotts, activism and the academy

The academic boycott of Israel, a branch of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, is one of the richest—and most divisive—topics in the politics of knowledge today. In Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine, Nick Riemer addresses the most fundamental questions raised by the call to sever ties with Israeli universities, and offers fresh arguments for doing so. More than a narrow study of the boycott campaign, the book details how academic BDS relates to a range of live controversies in progressive politics on questions such as disruptive protest, silencing and free speech, the real-world consequences of intellectual work, the rise of the far right, and the nature of grassroots campaigning. Written for open-minded readers, the book presents the fullest justification for the academic boycott yet given, considering BDS efforts on campuses around the world. The opening chapters explore the fundamentals of the academic boycott campaign, detailing the conditions on the ground in Palestinian and Israeli higher education and analyzing debates over the boycott and its adoption or resistance in the west. The later chapters contextualize the boycott with respect to broader questions about the links between theory and practice in political change. Directly rebutting the arguments of BDS’s opponents, Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine demonstrates the political and intellectual soundness of a controversial and often misrepresented campaign. In defending an original view of the differences between reflecting on politics and doing it in the specific context of the liberation of Palestine, the book’s arguments will have a resonance for many wider debates beyond the context of either universities or the Middle East.

The academic boycott of Israel, a branch of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, is one of the richest—and most divisive—topics in the politics of knowledge today. In Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine, Nick Riemer addresses the most fundamental questions raised by the call to sever ties with Israeli universities, and offers fresh arguments for doing so. More than a narrow study of the boycott campaign, the book details how academic BDS relates to a range of live controversies in progressive politics on questions such as disruptive protest, silencing and free speech, the real-world consequences of intellectual work, the rise of the far right, and the nature of grassroots campaigning. Written for open-minded readers, the book presents the fullest justification for the academic boycott yet given, considering BDS efforts on campuses around the world. The opening chapters explore the fundamentals of the academic boycott campaign, detailing the conditions on the ground in Palestinian and Israeli higher education and analyzing debates over the boycott and its adoption or resistance in the west. The later chapters contextualize the boycott with respect to broader questions about the links between theory and practice in political change. Directly rebutting the arguments of BDS’s opponents, Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine demonstrates the political and intellectual soundness of a controversial and often misrepresented campaign. In defending an original view of the differences between reflecting on politics and doing it in the specific context of the liberation of Palestine, the book’s arguments will have a resonance for many wider debates beyond the context of either universities or the Middle East.

This article asks whether an academic boycott is morally justified. It does not relate to the question whether academia and politics should be mixed. Instead, relying on the case study of the debate surrounding the academic boycott of Israeli academia by British, and later American academics, the article analyzes the various arguments applying analytical political philosophy tools. Broadly speaking two families of arguments—consequentialist and deontological—are found. Consequentialist arguments rely on three psychological, sociological, and political assumptions that are false and make them counterproductive (bearing in mind the overall goal declared by the boycott promoters). Despite some initial appeal, the deontological arguments also fail, at least to a certain extent, to justify the boycott. Finally I discuss what I call “selective boycotting.”