German cancelation of Israeli professor’s talk highlights widening academic boycotts
Even as University of Leipzig presents decision to nix lecture by historian Benny Morris as security-related, some view it as capitulation to BDS in a relatively friendly country
Zev Stub is the Times of Israel's Diaspora Affairs correspondent.
When the University of Leipzig in Germany canceled a lecture by Israeli historian Benny Morris planned for Thursday, its professors took pains to frame the decision as a security issue, not a political one.
“As a university, we are committed to promoting respectful dialogue and the open and critical exchange of ideas, even when these ideas challenge and contradict our own perspectives,” wrote Leipzig professors Gert Pickel and Yemima Hadad in a statement last week canceling the talk with Morris, an academic considered controversial on both sides of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Morris’s research on the 1948 War of Independence made him an early leader of the “New Historians” post-Zionist movement, as his documentation of expulsions and killings of Arabs during the war challenged Israel’s traditional narrative of its history. However, Morris has also made statements comparing the Palestinian people to “wild animals” and saying that Israel would have been better off committing “ethnic cleansing” than being exterminated by them.
“In principle, inviting speakers to the university does not necessarily mean that we agree with their views,” they wrote. However, recent statements made by Morris “that can be read as offensive and even racist” led to “understandable, but frightening in nature, protests from individual student groups,” they said, without providing details. “The above points mean that Prof. Benny Morris’ lecture will not take place.”
The statement went on to distance the university from “a culture of cancelations” over ideas, but many saw the decision as a capitulation to anti-Israel threats.
“This is just another part of the ongoing story of academic boycotts against Israel,” said Emmanuel Nahshon, a former Israeli diplomat now leading an Association of Israeli Universities task force for combating academic boycotts. “This decision was a bit surprising because Germany is among Israel’s staunchest allies in the academic world. Many university presidents in Germany have spoken out strongly against any calls for boycotts. But sometimes, you have cowardly professors who give in to the pressure of students to avoid fighting.”
Israeli academia has been subjected to boycotts for decades, particularly after the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign made it a central target of its anti-Israel strategy in 2004. But the push for the institutional isolation of Israeli universities and intellectuals has grown substantially since Hamas launched its October 7, 2023, onslaught in Israel, sparking the ongoing war.
An internal document from the Association of Israeli Universities in November shows that more than 300 boycott activities were recorded worldwide during the first year of the war. These included 50 cases where academic publications were barred, 30 lectures that were disrupted or canceled, and dozens of spoiled collaborations and grants. Universities in Belgium were by far the worst offenders, with more than 40 boycott activities.
Israeli academia relies heavily on international cooperation, with some 38 percent of Israeli research conducted in cooperation with European academics, the Innovation, Science and Technology Ministry has said.
“The problem is that boycotts have now come to be seen as legitimate in the academic world,” Nahshon noted. “Until recently, universities placed high value on respecting diverse points of view and shunning politics. They would have been ashamed to take part in boycotts. But now, they have given in to radicals trying to suppress freedom.”
That change came to the fore in August, when the American Association of University Professors, the largest organization of academics in the United States, reversed its decades-old stance against academic boycotts.
The new policy says: “Academic boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom; rather, they can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.”
While the statement did not explicitly target Israel, many understood the new approach to be a capitulation to BDS as a new tactic to target Israeli academics.
“The hypocrisy of that statement was clear,” Nahshon said. “It’s obvious that the point of this is to give universities greater cover to discriminate against Israel. It’s not an intellectual debate.”
As the specter of boycotts grows, Israel has begun taking steps to fight back. Last summer, the Innovation, Science and Technology Ministry led by Gila Gamliel allocated NIS 90 million ($25 million) to counter academic boycotts through a combination of legal efforts, international collaborations, and programs to promote Israeli academia to foreign students and researchers.
A program called “Scholar Shield” was also launched by the Technion’s Samuel Neaman Institute to track and respond to boycott activities. And efforts are being made to penalize universities that participate in boycotts.
“It’s important to understand why there are not more institutions in Europe boycotting Israel,” Nahshon said. “Schools that receive EU funding through programs like Horizon Europe or Erasmus+ are expected to follow certain principles like promoting academic freedom and cross-border collaboration. That means a formal boycott would endanger the school’s access to billions of euros earmarked for research and development.”
Israel is hopeful that similar regulations will be implemented in the United States during the administration of incoming president Donald Trump, Nahshon noted.
“There are huge federal funds available in the US for research,” Nahshon said. “We would like to promote legislation that would block any university or individual who boycotts Israel from those funds.”
But tracking boycotts isn’t always easy. “There are overt boycotts, where the institution states their intentions clearly, and then there are covert boycotts, where Israelis are not invited to conferences or considered for publication, but there is no official university policy,” Nahshon said. “We are starting to see more of those types of boycotts, and we are working to identify them proactively. This work is critical for the future of Israel’s academia.”
The Times of Israel Community.