Since Israel’s response to the October 7th terrorist attacks, university associations and faculty unions around the world have increasingly moved to boycott Israeli institutions. From Brazil and Ireland to Norway, Belgium, and Spain, academic bodies have passed resolutions cutting ties with Israeli universities over the war in Gaza. McGill University’s faculty association in Canada became the latest to join that list, voting overwhelmingly to boycott all Israeli cultural and academic institutions two weeks ago.
There is obvious merit to wanting to punish states that commit crimes against humanity. Still, this academic boycott may get us no closer to peace and justice.
It’s true that Israel has a lot to answer for. In its response to Hamas’s terrorist attacks, Israel has killed at least 70,000 Palestinians, most of whom are women and children, according to the most conservative estimates corroborated by Israeli security experts. 70 percent of the Gaza Strip is destroyed and uninhabitable. Gaza may never exist again.
Israeli troops routinely kill journalists, doctors, and aid workers, and kill civilians, including children, trying to get food and medicine, all in violation of international humanitarian law. Outside Gaza, Israeli settlements, supported by the Netanyahu coalition government, also encroach further and further onto internationally-recognized Palestinian lands, with settlers and IDF regularly kicking Palestinians out of their homes and killing civilians. Israel has bombed Syria’s government and a residential neighbourhood in Doha, and has blocked humanitarian aid.
Netanyahu and the far-right have also turned Israel, a once-thriving pluralistic social democracy, into an ethnonationalist autocracy hostile to non-Jews.
Supporters of these academic boycotts want to isolate Israel’s educational system as an act of protest. As Ilan Pappé put it, this boycott aims to make Israeli academics understand their responsibility in creating these conditions, and urge them to demand change from their government. Through this act, they hope to pressure Israel into political or moral reform.
Advocates of the boycott often cite Apartheid South Africa as proof that isolation and international pressure can work to compel morality.
They’re only partly right.
It is true that Apartheid South Africa was reformed through sanctions, but the conditions here do not match. Apartheid South Africa was far more economically and diplomatically vulnerable than Israel, and its eventual transition was shaped by a combination of U.S. and UK pressure, the Berlin Wall falling, United Nations resolutions, and domestic change (fueled by an ethnic majority against a minority). None of those conditions really exist in Israel today.
Nonviolent diplomacy and aggressive bargaining are most often (with some notable exceptions) the most successful ways to bring about concessions and long-term change. Research has also shown that existing academic boycotts against Israel have had no significant effect on Israeli academia. They may not be as spiritually edifying, but we’re trying to improve the world, not just make ourselves feel better.
That is why meaningful, principled engagement with Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Russia, China, Iran, and others, has proven more effective than isolation or violent regime change. That does not negate how passionately we believe these authoritarian systems and militarism are anti-human. Supporting principled engagement can open channels of humanitarian aid, political concessions, and reform in times of dire need.
Each of these countries has been subject to isolation and sanctions, yet none has become more open or democratic as a result, and ordinary people have suffered. Restricting academic freedom and scientific inquiry while academia is dying, particularly while Israel is a scientific superpower, is also wrong.
Similarly, in this case, Israeli academia, like most academic environments, is where most critics of Israel’s behaviour lie, and may have a direct impact on policy.
It is precisely when states are isolated that they turn to more unsavoury actors, and when fear begins to drive policy, which tends to lead to some pretty awful results. Isolation can push countries to double down on their bad policies, rather than changing course.
Excluding Israeli universities from global academic life would not weaken the Netanyahu government or its policies in Gaza, but would do the opposite. It would push Israel further inward. We have already seen Israel’s behaviour become more erratic and dismissive of international consensus as it has gotten more isolated. This is consistent with all other sanctioned states in wartime; Russia, Myanmar, and Iran are good examples.
Likewise, while peace advocates (and most Israelis) may all want Netanyahu gone, a shift to the right would be likely, and materially disastrous. Leaders backed into a corner with nothing to lose do not become Nobel Prize winners. Netanyahu is prolonging this war to stay in power and out of jail.
If our humanitarian goal is true, then we should pursue all options necessary to fulfill it. Wouldn’t it be in the interest of peace to maintain relationships with the remaining critical-minded figures in the country, particularly if they have a chance at changing debates and policies? Cutting off these partnerships decreases our chance, though it may be slim, of creating peace, and decreases academics’ own credibility and leverage when pushing for progress. Powerless, they now become easier to ignore.
There is a wide array of research, produced by the very universities that advocate for these boycotts, that says boycotts are not effective at producing behavioral change. In recent months, similar motions have been debated or approved at universities across the world. Faculty groups at universities in Brazil, Ireland, Norway, Belgium, and Spain have endorsed versions of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
These campaigns for academic boycotts against Israel started in 2004 but became popularized by BDS after Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in 2014, with 500 anthropologists and Middle East scholars endorsing an academic boycott. This is, however, the most significant academic boycott campaign since then.
Even when symbolic, these moves have drawn intense debate over whether academic isolation fosters justice or stifles dialogue. Around the world, influence is weakening, making way for hard power and nationalism. Governments, including in the Western democracies, have cut back hard on aid, diplomacy, and cultural partnerships. Though there are significant problems with existing relationships, rarely are geopolitical vacuums filled by better actors.
Israel-Palestine is a sensitive issue for a lot of people, and rightfully so, given the Western world’s deep ties to Israel, which gives the West a uniquely privileged position to influence policy. But it is precisely because of this relationship that cutting ties is counterproductive. If peace and justice truly are our north stars, we must continue dialogue and partnership and use our leverage to enable progress.
Joseph Bouchard is a journalist and researcher from Québec covering security and democracy in the Americas. He currently serves as a Middle East History and Peace Fellow with Young Voices. He is a PhD student in Politics at the University of Virginia and a SSHRC doctoral fellow.
