Anat Peled and Carrie Keller-Lynn
SPME, July 10, 2024
“Israelis are finding they are no longer welcome at many European universities, including participating in scientific collaborations. Their participation in cultural institutions and defense trade shows is increasingly becoming taboo.”
Years of pro-Palestinian campaigning for a global boycott against Israel once found limited support. But in the months since the war in Gaza began, support for the isolation of Israel has grown and widened well beyond Israel’s war effort. The shift has the potential to alter Israeli careers, hurt businesses and weigh on the economy of a country of nine million people that depends on international cooperation and support for defense, commerce and scientific research.
When an ethics committee at Ghent University in Belgium recommended terminating all research collaborations with Israeli institutions in late May, Israeli computational biologist Eran Segal didn’t see it coming.
The sciences had seen little impact from global boycott movements, even months into the war, and Segal’s work had nothing to do with the Israeli military effort. The university’s research collaborations, the Ghent committee noted, include research on autism, Alzheimer’s disease, water purification and sustainable agriculture.
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