FAQ

The academic boycott is directed at Israel’s regime and its complicit corporations and institutions because they are responsible for denying the Palestinian people their rights under international law. Meanwhile the “international community,” under US hegemony, has failed to hold Israel to account. Successive US governments have consistently singled Israel out for support. Israel has unconditionally received more US economic and military funding than any other country in the world. Israel additionally receives virtual immunity in the UN thanks to countless UN Security Council vetoes of resolutions criticizing Israeli atrocities or calling for a ceasefire. The question is not whether Israel should be singled out, but why it is currently not held to the same standard as other countries.

BDS is a tactic, not a dogma. We don’t boycott for the sake of boycotting; we boycott when we think it can work. It is a morally consistent tactic that the great majority of Palestinian civil society has asked us to embrace. It is not hypocritical to boycott Israel; it is hypocritical to single out Israel to not be boycotted. Supporting BDS against Israel is part of a larger commitment to global justice and anti-racism, consistent with opposition to human rights abuses around the world.

The answer above is adapted from Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.

Israeli universities are frequently described as “complicit” in the occupation of Palestine, but are they mere bystanders or active participants? The direct connections between university development and knowledge creation and the occupation and military rule over Palestinian land and people makes the academic boycott so urgent and important for our sector. Israeli scholar Maya Wind has documented the history of Israeli university development and the historic and contemporary actions of these universities in her 2024 book Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom (earlier perspectives can be found in [Against Apartheid: The Case for Boycotting Israeli Universities]{.ul} [2013]). Specific Israeli departments and disciplines, including the discipline of geography, develop practical knowledge and material support for military, security, and state projects. Israeli universities serve as “outposts” of spatial and cultural colonialism, particularly Hebrew University in East Jerusalem, the University of Haifa in the Galilee, Ben Gurion University in the Naqab, and Ariel University located in a settlement in the occupied West Bank of Palestine. These universities were constructed and act at the very edge of the colonial project through their direct appropriation of Palestinian land and/or their attempts to erase and replace Arab people and culture with a project of “Judaization.” And many Israeli academic departments closely collaborate on the development of technology, scientific knowledge, and policy recommendations to support and extend the Israeli colonial project.

Universities are no safe haven for “progressive” elements of Israeli society. A 2024 report by the independent human rights organization Adalah, for instance, documents dozens of cases in which Palestinian students have been subject to discipline due to their social media posts. Palestinian students enrolled at Israeli universities are subject to smear campaigns, disavowals by universities and failure to protect from slander and violence, expulsions, and acquiescence to military detention. So too have Palestinian faculty been suspended and arrested, and suppression of anti-war positions across Israeli academia has become rampant since October 7, 2023. Furthermore, Israeli universities are directly part of hasbara, or positive propaganda for Israel. For instance, the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University has developed training packages for Israeli students studying abroad or faculty traveling to conferences to combat what it sees as the “delegitimization of Israel” in academia (Wind 2024, 97). The words and actions by Israeli universities make it clear that their interest and purpose is opposition to criticism of Israeli policy. It is increasingly clear that the kinds of policies and actions undertaken by Israeli universities further endanger academic freedom in our workplaces and classrooms in the United States.

A growing number of anti-colonial Israelis support BDS, including the academic boycott of Israel. In May 2025, more than 1000 Israeli academics signed an open letter demanding an end to the war on Gaza. The best thing international scholars can do for individual progressive critics of the occupation within Israeli universities is describe, diagnose, and oppose on an international level these institutions – in order to create greater spaces of action for any such critics.

As described by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, academic freedom includes four interdependent pillars: “the right to teach; to engage in discussions and debates with persons and groups inside (including in classrooms) and outside the academic community; to conduct research; and to disseminate opinions and results of research." The academic boycott of Israel is institutional and therefore, as described by the AAUP, [does not conflict with]{.ul} academic freedom. We believe that upholding BDS is in fact protecting academic freedom, both of geographers in Palestine and those of us in the US. Israeli academics may lose privileges, not rights, due to the boycott of their institutions.

Israel’s relentless and deliberate attack on Palestinian education, referred to as scholasticide, goes back to the 1948 Nakba, the wave of systematic ethnic cleansing of a majority of the indigenous Palestinians to establish a Jewish-majority state in Palestine. Palestinian scholars and students are methodically denied their basic rights, including academic freedom, and are often subjected to imprisonment, denial of freedom of movement, and even violent attacks on themselves or their institutions. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has destroyed 396 educational facilities in Gaza, including all 12 of Gaza’s universities. The Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza has written a letter which calls “friends and colleagues around the world to resist the ongoing campaign of scholasticide in occupied Palestine, to work alongside us in rebuilding our demolished universities, and to refuse all plans seeking to bypass, erase, or weaken the integrity of our academic institutions.”

Clearly, the academic freedom of Palestinian academics and students is severely hindered by the occupation and policies of racial discrimination. Palestinian citizens of Israel have also suffered for decades from the structural racism that pervades the Israeli educational system. Finally, even though the academic boycott of Israel does not undercut academic freedom, PACBI founders, in harmony with the BDS movement’s profound commitment to universal human rights, have consistently argued that this freedom should not be privileged as above other human rights. The 1993 World Conference on Human Rights proclaims, “All human rights are universal, indivisible . . . interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis.”

The AAG is not a neutral institution – not only does it have an internal ethics statement, it also understands its mission as advocating “for the fundamental rights of geographers.” This includes advocating for the protection of academic freedom, standing up for ongoing funding of geography, demonstrating the truth of climate change and the necessity of climate action, and advocating for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) within our discipline. Though each of these commitments is seen as controversial within the US public sphere, our professional organization still commits to upholding these values.

AAG has frequently made statements when current events appear to impact our discipline. Recent examples include the AAG’s Petition of Solidarity with the People of Ukraine, Statement Condemning Targeted Violence Against the Asian American and Pacific Islander Community, Support for Critical Geography, and the Condemnation of Travel Bans. The AAG has made no analogous statements concerning the Israeli occupation or genocide, or their specific reverberations on academic freedom in the US.

AAG will likely argue that it has a fiduciary responsibility to uphold which prevents it from taking action on either academic boycott or divestment. Nonetheless, the fact that the AAG has divested from fossil fuels and retargeted investments in “socially just and environmentally friendly options” demonstrates that it can make changes to its portfolio in response to member actions.

Now is the time to vote on BDS because Israel is committing a genocide of Palestinians, funded by US and enabled by academic institutions and their financial and political support of Israel - right now. We will always be safer acting as a collective. University administrators and federal governments have targeted some of the most vulnerable pro-Palestine students, staff, and faculty, including international scholars and contingent workers. As an organization of over 10,000 individual members from hundreds of institutions, the AAG’s passing of a BDS vote signals that Palestinian liberation is a popular cause, and is not a cause for which only the most vulnerable members of our community should sacrifice their careers. The way to protect our at-risk students and colleagues is not to do nothing in response to the genocide, but instead to act collectively, courageously, and in line with long-standing demands from Palestinian civil society.

Grad students and early career faculty have been the strongest supporters of this campaign, from the organizing of the pre-conference at the AAG to the formation of Geographers for Justice in Palestine. Even undergraduate students have joined us! We recognize that tenured faculty in particular are worried about potential blowback to their students. However, as with the higher education labor movement, the encampments against the genocide in spring 2024, and other campus social movements, it is in fact students and early-career faculty who have been the leaders. We cannot say that there is no risk involved. Nonetheless, our disciplinary organization undoubtedly holds some positions that individual members might disagree with. Individual members ought to be protected by first amendment rights.

As described by AAG President William Moseley, geography is an international discipline. It is suggested that “some 26 percent of the annual meeting attendees in Detroit came from institutions outside of the US” – a figure that may be down from an average of “about 40 percent over the past 10 years.” International scholars and their academic freedom are central to the AAG, and it is paramount that we ask why these scholars are under attack - and stand with them.

International scholars are, undoubtedly, already at risk: for this regime, Palestine is the most salient issue used to target international scholars. International students have even been turned away from the border for merely reporting on protests. If we give up already on the question of Palestinian solidarity, it seems likely that new and different topics of academic study will be used as grounds for attack: evolving procedures for international student visas claim to screen for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States”, which very conceivably include issues that are central to geographic study: climate change, war and imperialism, race and racism.

Consequently, it is actually more important that we stand up now for our international students and colleagues. Avoiding a BDS vote won’t protect international scholars, and conceding our solidarity with Palestine only leaves international scholars more isolated and vulnerable to continuing repression. While we cannot say that there is zero risk involved in the BDS vote, the vote is anonymous and secure; it does not single out international scholars for attack, but signals that we are an academic association collectively organizing for Palestinian liberation.

No: you will not have to leave the AAG if your state has passed an anti-BDS law, and the AAG will not be required to avoid states which have passed anti-BDS laws. While state legislatures across the US have adopted laws intended to punish boycotts aimed at Israeli apartheid, these laws do not apply to boycotts by non-profit educational bodies such as the AAG. Rather, as Palestine Legal explains, state anti-BDS laws seek to punish entities that boycott Israel by either (1) disqualifying them from bidding on contracts to provide goods or services to those states’ governments, or (2) prohibiting them from receiving investments from public employee pension funds. Many academic associations have passed boycott resolutions; none of these associations have been impacted by anti-BDS laws. What these laws are intended to do, however, is use fear to discipline people away from certain political positions. We should have the courage and knowledge to not let these scare tactics work.