On March 13, the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands announced it was suspending its student exchange program with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a program that has existed since 1986. The university tried to frame the move as part of a broader policy, which also included severing ties with universities in Hungary and China over concerns about human rights. But this move did not occur in a vacuum. It is part of a campaign promoted by the BDS movement and carried out by pro-Palestinian organizations on campuses across Europe, the United States, Canada, and other countries.
Two days before, an Instagram post was published by the Occupy for Palestine student group at the University of Toronto, featuring a video claiming that the main campus of the Hebrew University, Mount Scopus, is located on “occupied land.”
While these student groups try to argue that the area is occupied under international law, in fact, the land on which the university was built was legally granted to the university’s founders in the will of Sir John Gray Hill, a lawyer from Liverpool whose estate was located on that land. Moreover, the World Zionist Organization paid £6,500 for the land in 1914, and the cornerstone of the university was laid in 1918.
Both the University of Amsterdam and the student groups at the University of Toronto raise the issue of alleged violations of academic freedom for professors at the Hebrew University. The most prominent example is Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who was suspended from her position as a senior lecturer at the Hebrew University on March 12 of last year.
She was suspended after stating that she is proud that Israelis are afraid to hear her speak Arabic because “criminals should be afraid,” and denied that Hamas and its supporters committed mass rape against Israelis on October 7. Her remarks were not backed by any reliable data, as one would expect from a scholar of her standing.
Actions such as suspending or firing faculty members for antisemitic remarks are not unique to the Hebrew University or even to academic institutions in Israel. Dr. Rupa Marya from the University of California, San Francisco was fired in October last year after making derogatory comments toward a first-year medical student who had served in the IDF.
Similarly, in January of this year, Professor Katherine Franke from Columbia University in New York was dismissed after supporting pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia and making remarks against IDF reservists studying at the institution.
At the University of Michigan, administrator Rachel Dawson was fired in December 2024 following numerous antisemitic comments and even a refusal to assist Jewish students, claiming they “have enough money and privilege and can take care of themselves.”
In another post calling to sever ties between the University of Toronto and the Hebrew University, pro-Palestinian groups noted that since 2019, the “Havatzalot” intelligence program has been held at the Hebrew University. They falsely claimed that the campus is essentially a military base.
Unfortunately, these claims were echoed in Israel before the current war. As early as 2020, the Hadash student group at the Hebrew University published a statement that “the university’s roof has become a sniper post to shoot at Issawiya and its brave youth”—a claim the university firmly denied.
If the University of Amsterdam really cared about taking a stand for free speech, it would make sense for them to have severed ties with all of these universities on similar grounds, but they haven’t. Only Hebrew University made the cut, suggesting that this rationale is an excuse to discriminate against the Israeli institution rather than expressing a principled stance on any sort of academic values.
These academic boycotts severely harm Arab students at the Hebrew University, who make up about 14% of the student body according to the university’s official statistics. When the University of Amsterdam and other academic institutions cut ties with the Hebrew University, they are in effect denying Arab and Jewish students valuable educational and research opportunities.
The backwardness is clear: campaigns that claim to be “pro-Palestinian” end up hurting the very Israeli Arabs who have chosen to integrate into Israel’s leading academic institution. Arab students lose access to international exchange programs, research collaborations with foreign universities, and career and professional networking opportunities.
Although these boycotts claim to promote social justice, in reality they deepen discrimination against Israel’s Arab public. Instead of opening doors and expanding opportunities, they close them for those who need them most.
