Campus protests, opinion pieces and open letters continue to petition for boycotts of Israeli academics, as a means of pressuring Israel to end its war in Gaza. I argue that weakening academia anywhere, including Israel, is most likely to have consequences exactly opposite to petitioners’ stated or implied goals of helping Palestinian people in Gaza.
First, to be clear: whether or not you feel that Israel’s response to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks was or is justified, the fact is that Gaza is currently experiencing a major humanitarian crisis. The people of Gaza need as much food, medical supplies and aid as we (the United States, Israel and the broader international community) can get them, as soon as possible. Innocent people are suffering, and whatever your politics, I hope we can all agree that it is a bad thing when innocent people, including children, suffer. The governments of Gaza under Hamas and Israel under the Netanyahu administration each share deep blame for that suffering.
So why don’t I believe that boycotting Israeli academics is the right thing to do? Because the people living in a country are not their government. To provide some context, many Israeli academics oppose the ongoing war. Huge crowds of Israelis have been organizing in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other cities nationwide. Boycotting Israeli universities, whose students and faculty are overwhelmingly left-leaning, and where nearly 20% of students identify as Arab or Palestinian, hurts exactly the people in that region who are most likely to oppose the Netanyahu administration. Harming Israeli academics helps Netanyahu and will ultimately make life worse for Palestinians in Gaza.
For another perspective, also consider your own politics. If you are currently affiliated with an American university (e.g., say, as a member of the Dartmouth community), does that automatically mean you support your president’s immigration raids, anti-environment policies, tariffs, cuts to cancer research funding and his One Big Beautiful Bill? If not, consider reflecting on why you yourself choose to affiliate with an American university even if you do not support the American government’s actions. Is it, perhaps, that you are able to see some differences between your choice to affiliate with a university that happens to be located in America and your views on the American government’s actions? If you apply that standard to your own choices, why do you think people in other countries don’t deserve the same considerations? One might also ask why many protesters at U.S. institutions call for boycotts of Israeli universities for Israel’s actions, but not universities in Russia, Iran, China, Sudan or other countries — including the United States — whose governments regularly engage in human rights abuses? Academics from other countries are welcomed and supported according to their intellectual merit rather than their country of origin — as they should be! — because the international community recognizes the value they bring and the critical need to engage with colleagues around the world regardless of where they are from.
Education, science and academia in general are all under attack today. We will be stronger if we stick together as a global community and avoid non-scholarly infighting. Let’s not weaken ourselves by excluding fellow academics because of where they are from, their religion, gender, sexual orientation, race, socioeconomic status, academic interests, political affiliations or any other demographic. We can be better than that!
Jeremy R. Manning is an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences. Guest articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
