Despite the perception that Israeli universities are centers of opposition to government policies, there has been a marked silence regarding the suppression of Palestinian academic freedom. These institutions have consistently failed to protest the closures of Palestinian universities or the damage inflicted during uprisings. By remaining silent in the face of significant human rights violations, they effectively align themselves with the state's oppressive policies. Rather than fostering dissent, these universities often marginalize those who speak out, reflecting a broader structural complicity with state actions [257]. This complicity extends beyond the occupation of Palestinian territories to include institutional discrimination within Israeli universities themselves. Reports highlight numerous instances of discrimination against Arab-Palestinian students, including de facto age discrimination, housing allocation based on military service, and the exclusion of Arabic from university signage. These issues further illustrate how deeply embedded the discriminatory practices are within Israeli academic institutions [257]

Such conditions have fueled the call for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions, initiated by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) in 2004. The call for academic boycott is one of the backbones of the global Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement (BDS), which started in 2005 comprising 170 Palestinian civil society organizations and was inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement. 

Taking into consideration that Israeli universities have for decades contributed in denying Palestinians of their rights, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) made a call in 2004, for boycotting all of Israeli academic institutions. This call does not target Israeli universities because they are Israeli, but because of their direct and indirect structural involvement and/or complicity in institutional discrimination, apartheid, persecution, occupation, and now genocide. Institutional collaborations can be resumed when an Israeli university is no longer complicit in apartheid, persecution, occupation, and genocide, and when this university acknowledges the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as stipulated in international law [258]. PACBI's guidelines of how to apply academic boycott to Israeli institutions were aligned with the internationally-accepted definition of academic freedom [259]:

• The boycott is applied to institutions, and does not target individuals/individual Israeli scholars. Only if an individual is representing the state of Israel or a complicit Israeli institution (such as a dean, rector, or president), or if the person is commissioned/recruited to participate in Israel’s efforts to “rebrand” itself, are their activities subject to the institutional boycott the BDS movement is calling for

• Refuse any form of academic and cultural cooperation with Israeli institutions

• Advocate for a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions nationally and internationally

• International academic institutions promote divestment from Israel

• Working towards institutional condemnation of Israeli policies

• Directly supporting Palestinian academic and cultural institutions, without requiring them to partner with their Israeli counterparts.

Specifically, the following activities violate the guidelines of the Palestinian academic boycott:

1. Academic events (e.g. conferences, symposia, workshops, book and museum exhibits) convened or co-sponsored by Israel, complicit Israeli institutions or their support and lobby groups in various countries. This includes events held in Israel or abroad.

2. Research and development activities:

   • Among academic institutions - institutional cooperation agreements with Israeli universities or research institutes, involving the exchange of faculty and students and more importantly, the conduct of joint research. Multiple of these activities are funded and sponsored by the European Union (relevant for us), and independent and government foundations globally.

   • Between the Israeli government and other governments or foundations/institutions.

   • Between corporations and academic institutions - activities on behalf of international corporations involving contracts or other institutional agreements with departments or centers at Israeli universities.

3. Funding from Israel or its lobby groups to academic activities and projects

4. Talks at international venues by, as well as debates with, Israeli state officials or official representatives of Israeli academic institutions such as presidents, rectors or deans.

5. Study abroad schemes in Israel for international students.  Publicity and recruitment for these schemes through students’ affairs offices or academic departments (such as Middle East and international studies centers) at universities abroad should come to an end.

6. Special academic honors or recognition granted to Israeli officials, representatives of Israeli academic institutions (such as the bestowal of honorary degrees and other awards) or to Israeli academic or research institutions.  Such institutions and their official representatives are complicit and as such should be denied this recognition.

7. Normalization Projects.  Academic activities and projects involving Palestinians and/or other Arabs on one side and Israelis on the other (whether bi- or multi- lateral) that are based on the false premise of symmetry/parity between the oppressors and the oppressed or that claim that both colonizers and colonized are equally responsible for the “conflict” are intellectually dishonest and morally reprehensible forms of normalization that ought to be boycotted [260]. 

8.  Institutional membership of Israeli associations in world bodies. Targeted and selective campaigns demanding the suspension of Israeli membership in international forums contribute towards pressuring Israel until it respects international law.  

9.  Publishing in or refereeing articles for academic journals based at Israeli universities or published in collaboration with Israeli institutions, or granting permission to reprint material published elsewhere in such Israel-based journals. The BDS movement discourages scholars from submitting their research to academic journals that are based at or affiliated with Israeli universities. This is a form of protest against those institutions, as publishing in these journals is seen as legitimizing or supporting them. Refereeing (or peer-reviewing) involves evaluating academic papers submitted to journals before they are published. The movement asks academics not to participate in the peer review process for journals associated with Israeli institutions, as it is another form of engagement with these institutions.

10. Granting permission to reprint material: If a scholar has published work elsewhere, the BDS movement advises them not to give permission to Israeli-based journals or institutions to reprint that work. Reprinting or republishing articles allows journals to share important findings with a wider audience, so denying this permission is a way to limit collaboration with Israeli academic bodies.

11. Serving as external reviewers for dissertations, writing recommendations or other forms of refereeing such as advising on hiring, promotion, tenure, and grant-making decisions at Israeli universities. International academics who choose to review the academic work of faculty or students at Israeli universities on a personal basis are not conflicting with the boycott guidelines, so long as their names are not used by those universities in any way (to gain legitimacy).  Accepting to be on a dissertation, referee or review committee appointed by or serving an Israeli university, however, directly conflicts with the institutional boycott of these universities, as it legitimates Israel’s academic standing around the world.  The boycott also applies to writing tenure or promotion recommendations addressed to university administrators. Furthermore, international faculty should not accept to write recommendations for students hoping to pursue studies in Israel, as this facilitates the violation of guideline 11 below. 

12. International students enrolling in or international faculty teaching or conducting research at degree or non-degree programs at an Israeli institution. If conducting research at Israeli facilities such as archives does not entail official affiliation with those facilities (e.g. in the form of a visiting position), then the activity is not subject to boycott.

13. All academic visits or fact-finding missions that receive funding from Israel, its complicit institutions or its international lobby groups. Israeli government funding or funding by Israeli lobby groups should be boycotted.  On the other hand, balanced, independent fact-finding missions, even those that include meetings with complicit Israeli academic institutions, are not boycottable, provided that no institutional link (e.g., seminars, workshops, exhibits, etc.) of any sort is established with Israeli institutions.

The academic boycott (institutional-level) of Israeli academic institutions applies until these institutions [259]:

• Recognize the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law (including the three basic rights outlined in the 2005 BDS Call) 

• End all forms of complicity in violating Palestinian rights as stipulated in international law.  This complicity includes discriminatory policies and practices as well as diverse roles in planning, implementing and/or justifying Israel’s human rights abuses and violations of international law.

The boycott is designed to put real and symbolic pressure on universities to take an active role in ending the Israeli occupation and in extending equal rights to Palestinians [261]. 

Academic boycotts are undertaken for several reasons, primarily as a means to express dissent, raise awareness, and exert pressure for change. An academic boycott is more than just a symbolic act of protest; it serves as a powerful tool to apply pressure on governments over time. For instance, if DTU initiates a boycott and other institutions follow suit, it could create a compelling incentive for the Danish government to support the movement. Academics should not be viewed as an elite group detached from the political and social environments in which they operate. Instead, they have a responsibility to engage with and influence these contexts constructively.

 For inspiration we can look to the case of apartheid South Africa. The academic boycott of south Africa was a significant component of the broader international anti apartheid movement, which aimed to challenge and dismantle the system of racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa [262]. It comprised a series of boycotts of South African academic institutions and scholars initiated in the 1960s, at the request of the African National Congress, with the goal of using such international pressure to force the end to South Africa's system of apartheid.

Origins and Motivations: The academic boycott was motivated by the introduction of apartheid policies by the South African government in 1948, which formalized and intensified racial segregation and discrimination. The boycott aimed to:

• • Isolate South Africa academically and culturally.

  • Raise awareness about the apartheid system and its injustices.

  • Exert pressure on the South African government to end apartheid.

  • Express solidarity with black South Africans and the anti-apartheid struggle.

Forms of Boycott: The academic boycott of South Africa took various forms, including:

• • Refusing to attend or organize conferences in South Africa.

  • Not publishing in South African academic journals.

  • Not collaborating with South African academics or institutions that supported or were complicit in the apartheid system.

  • Encouraging academics and institutions to divest from South African companies and investments.

  • Campaigning for academic associations and institutions to publicly condemn apartheid and support the boycott.

International Support: The academic boycott gained substantial international support, with endorsements and participation from prominent academics, universities, and academic associations. Some notable examples include:

• • The British Anti-Apartheid Movement, which played a significant role in initiating and coordinating the academic boycott.

  • The United Nations, which called for academic and cultural boycotts of South Africa in its 1980 resolution.

  • Numerous academic associations and unions, such as the African Studies Association, the American Association of University Professors, and the National Union of Students in the UK.

Even though the effectiveness of the academic boycott is hotly debated among scholars [263], the subsequent end of apartheid lends credibility to such initiatives. "The academic boycott of Israel, following the wide-ranging boycott of South Africa has helped to publicise and end the iniquities of apartheid" [257]. One can never be 100% sure how effective a boycott is. There are no statistics to monitor. What one can be sure to say is that it brings publicity and awareness to the massive inhumane behaviors of a State. The academic boycott is an act of solidarity and offer a landscape to protest about a situation for those suffering the injustices of a regime or state who is not adhering to the rules of the world as disclosed by the International Court of Justice [264]. Since the positive effects of the South African Cultural Boycott, the Palestinian ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ (BDS) movement to boycott Israeli goods and cultural products commenced in 2005, and comparisons are often made between the two countries in their arguments for the cultural boycott of an oppressive state. BDS has been endorsed by scores of South Africans, including Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, who made the following public statement in 2014: "I have witnessed the systematic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces...Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government." [265]