Re: https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2025/08/academic-boycotts-make-no-sense
Associate professor of psychological and brain sciences Jeremy Manning cites the presence of left-leaning faculty as reason to collaborate with Israeli universities. In reality, left-wing Israeli academics such as Maya Wind and Ilan Pappé have also urged an academic boycott. Wind’s book “Towers of Ivory and Steel” extensively describes how Israeli universities are uniquely crucial to its state apparatus. A few ways include: Israeli universities collaborate with military and government agencies to develop bombs, drones and missiles; train soldiers and police; seize private Palestinian land; expand illegal settlements; and produce scholarship that subjugates Palestinians —e.g. inventing legal justifications for Israel’s violations of international law; archeological excavations which erase Arab history and destroy Palestinian homes.
With administrative and widespread faculty support, Israeli universities also suppress research and teaching of Israel’s settler-colonialism, occupation and apartheid. Scholars who do teach these topics experience hostility and face threats to their academic freedom and personal safety. For instance, Pappé faced mounting harassment and eventually left Israeli academia in 2007 after being encouraged to resign by the president of the university where he worked. This undercuts the myth, which Manning propagates, of Israeli universities as bastions of liberal thought that provide meaningful political resistance.
Calls to alleviate Gaza’s “humanitarian crisis” ring hollow from those seeking to legitimize the occupation (the conditions that manufactured the current “crisis”) through programs like Kalaniyot.
Manning concludes his op-ed by arguing that academics should not be excluded based on demographic. This appears to be yet another instance where Palestine is the exception; Israel has destroyed every single university in Gaza.
Raniyan Zaman is a member of the Class of 2022. Letters to the Editor represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
