Facing 66% rise in academic boycotts, Israeli universities gear up to fight back
Boycotts of Israeli institutions and researchers won’t stop anytime soon and Israel needs to adapt to the situation, report finds
Zev Stub is the Times of Israel's Diaspora Affairs correspondent.
Academic boycotts against Israeli institutions continue to gain momentum with no signs of slowing down, according to a report published Monday.
About 500 incidents of academic boycotts were reported during the last half-year through February 2025, 66 percent more than in the six months following the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023, according to the Association of University Heads’ Task Force to Combat Academic Boycotts.
The US, Belgium, Spain and England are the countries where the most boycotts were recorded, followed by the Netherlands, Italy and Canada, the report found.
“Our main conclusion following this report is that these boycotts won’t stop anytime soon, and will likely continue for years to come,” Emmanuel Nahshon, the head of the task force, told The Times of Israel. “Israel needs to learn to adapt to this situation and develop better tools to deal with it.”
This will include creating stronger networks with local Jewish communities and universities, and developing a team to fight the boycotts, Nahshon said. The Association of University Heads is already using its relationships with large Jewish organizations abroad to fight back, and there are efforts to get assistance from the Israeli government, but it will take time, he said.
Among other things, the task force works to monitor the social media activity of pro-Palestinian organizations on campuses to gather information and prepare for upcoming boycott events.
In addition, a collaboration with a leading law firm in Brussels has had positive results challenging specific European institutions and building coalitions with academics and communities abroad, the task force said.
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 war against Israel on October 7, 2023.
According to the report, academic boycotts of Israel are being used to harm collaborations for both institutions and individual figures, as well as preventing Israeli researchers from participating in academic conferences and lectures. There is a decline in overseas participation in academic conferences held in Israel, and Israeli researchers report difficulties publishing articles abroad, the report said.
“Academic boycotts violate the basic principles of academic freedom and freedom of scientific research,” said Ben-Gurion University President Daniel Haimowitz, who is also chairman of the University Presidents’ Committee. “Science and academic research should bridge cultural and political gaps, not deepen them.”
The task force report listed several prominent boycott cases, including a few it helped to overturn:
- Ghent University in Belgium decided in May 2024 to sever its academic ties with all Israeli universities, and appealed to the European Commission to deny Israeli academic institutions the ability to participate in Horizon Europe and Erasmus projects. After its appeal was rejected, Ghent independently withdrew from projects involving Israeli partners.
- In the summer of 2024, the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations decided to suspend its relationship with the Israeli association, which would harm student exchanges and research and clinical exchange programs. The task force has been working to overturn the decision.
- An appeal to the EU by the Irish Nursing Students Association to expel the Israeli association was rejected, thanks in part to the task force’s legal action.
- An attempt by mathematicians in France and North Africa to boycott Israel’s Mathematical Union from an international body was mitigated and has not caused any known damage to the Israeli organization.
- A student initiative to pressure administrators at the Sorbonne in France was put down after a legal challenge and efforts by the Jewish community there.
- In January 2025, when a private university in India canceled the invitation of a senior Israeli academic to speak at a conference, the Israeli ambassador to India recruited one of India’s wealthiest businessmen to successfully reverse the boycott.
“In the end, this will affect everyone,” Nahshon said. “Those who are looking to destroy Israel know that our universities need to interact with the broader academic world, and they see this as a weak point. We have to make sure they don’t succeed.”
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