In December 2024, Dartmouth joined the Kalaniyot program, a network of American and Israeli universities who partner together for two goals: to make American college campuses less hostile to Israel and deepen research ties. Once funding is secured, the Dartmouth program aims to offer post-doctoral fellowships, sabbatical funding and opportunities for collaborative research projects in the sciences between Dartmouth faculty and Israeli researchers.
Before that can happen, I argue that the Dartmouth-Kalaniyot program should be immediately shut down, and that Dartmouth students, faculty and staff should rally to prevent the program from taking effect. This is for a variety of reasons — most importantly, Dartmouth should not have ties to universities with connections to the Israeli military and its various crimes against humanity.
For example, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, a Dartmouth-Kalaniyot partner, works closely with Israel’s military-industrial complex, facilitating research for companies such as Elbit Systems, Rafael, Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. These companies, in turn, supply weapons and military technology to the Israel government, which has been using them to target and destroy critical civilian infrastructure and kill civilians en masse. This cooperation between the academy and the military isn’t the exception, but a widespread and long-standing phenomenon among Israel’s major universities. Kalaniyot-affiliated universities are no exception.
These crimes have led a growing number of international legal scholars to call the destruction in Gaza a genocide. It goes without saying that enabling genocide and other crimes against humanity should be plenty of reason for Dartmouth to disassociate from these institutions, rather than strengthen ties with them through programs such as Kalaniyot.
The Dartmouth-Kalaniyot program is also alarming because it could sponsor research on our campus that facilitates crimes against humanity. Nowhere do the bylaws of the Kalaniyot program lay out any ethical policy for the kind of research that will be carried out at Dartmouth. Given the research record of Kalaniyot-affiliated universities, it seems very possible that Dartmouth may end up sponsoring research with military applications — a disturbing prospect that could see the College implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Furthermore, the kinds of researchers that the Kalaniyot program intends to bring to the College is alarming. Though the views of Israelis are not monolithic, based on previous Kalaniyot cohorts at other universities, there is a real risk that researchers with hateful views towards Palestinians and Muslims could be brought to campus. In one example, Kalaniyot scholars at Massachusetts Institute of Technology took to social media to claim that civilians in Gaza and Hamas are not mutually exclusive. At a minimum for such a program, one would hope that there would be a screening to prevent anyone encouraging hatred or violence against Palestinian civilians from being admitted; evidently, however, no such measures exist for Kalaniyot — a disturbing prospect for a school only an hour and a half drive away from where three Palestinian-American college students were shot at the outbreak of the Gaza war.
Instead of confronting concerns such as these, the program presents itself as something “apolitical,” with its bylaws portraying the program as something solely focused on academic enrichment. Yet, this “apolitical” narrative falls apart after a cursory glance at Kalaniyot’s website and promotional materials, which are transparent in their desire to make American college campuses more supportive of Israel and to counteract student protest against the war in Gaza. Kalaniyot co-founder Ernest Fraenkel has previously directly referred to student protestors as “the other side,” presenting images of students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza as a “challenge” to be overcome. Indeed, that Dartmouth is sponsoring a program which is so open in its desire to quell campus outrage at Israel’s war on Gaza seems to be in violation of the spirit of institutional restraint.
I will be the first to acknowledge that antisemitism is a problem around the world, and that many college campuses have seen incidents of antisemitism linked to protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. At the same time, these developments do not change the fact that Israel is currently committing crimes against humanity in the occupied Palestinian territory. In the end, in tandem with the responsibility to address the challenges Jewish students are facing on campus, Dartmouth has an ethical duty to not associate with, much less partner with, institutions which facilitate research that is used to kill Palestinian civilians en masse and render their lands unlivable.
I pray for a day when there will be no moral issue in establishing programs with Israeli universities, when there is no more genocide in Gaza and no more apartheid rule in the West Bank, when Israelis and Palestinians both live side by side in peace and with equal rights — but as it stands now, today is not that day. It is a shame on the Beilock administration, and the College as a whole, that Dartmouth is one of the first universities to join a program such as Kalaniyot in the midst of the destruction of Gaza and the long-standing colonization of the West Bank. Yet, it is not too late: before funding is secured and the program begins, Dartmouth faculty, students and staff should do everything in their power to stop the program from taking effect.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
Ramsey Alsheikh is an opinion editor, staff columnist, cartoonist, and aspiring jack-of-all trades. He is currently double majoring in Computer Science and Middle Eastern Studies modified with Jewish Studies.
