Veranstaltungsreihe: "Der Nahost-Konflikt - Projektionen, Reflexionen, Transformationen"

On Monday 13 April at 4 pm, Professor Milette Shamir will discuss the impact of the Middle East conflict on Israeli universities in her lecture entitled ‘Academic Freedom in Times of War’.

Academic Freedom in Times of War: Lessons from Israeli Universities
Milette Shamir, Tel Aviv University

In the weeks after the Hamas attack, universities across Israel were operating in a state of shock. Many students and staff had been called to military reserve duty; others were mourning the lives of friends and family members. And soon another concern emerged. Our campuses bring together a diverse student body that includes both Jewish and Arab students. One of our immediate concerns was that anger and grief would turn into violence. We worried not only about how to maintain safety, but how to do so without sacrificing the university’s defining role as a place where difficult disagreements can still be freely expressed and examined.

In the two and a half years of war that followed, it became clear that this initial dilemma was only the first manifestation of a much broader series of tests. The war has placed Israeli universities under pressure from several directions at once. Drawing on my experience as Vice President for International Affairs at Tel Aviv University, my lecture will examine three arenas in which Israeli universities, and the principle of academic freedom, has come under strain.

The first concerns freedom of speech on campus. I will discuss how Tel Aviv University has been attempting to maintain open expression while preventing intimidation or confrontation, and what this experience suggests about the responsibilities of university leadership at times of war.

The second arena concerns the autonomy of universities vis-a-vis the state. Wartime environments often strengthen political pressures on academic institutions, and this is what’s been happening in Israel, where the government seeks to advance legislative initiatives affecting higher education when public attention is focused on national security concerns. I will address how Israeli universities have been working to defend institutional autonomy while operating within a democratic society under extraordinary stress.

The third challenge is the growing momentum of international academic boycotts. Since October 7, calls to isolate Israeli universities have intensified in large parts of the global academic community, and most especially in Europe. I will reflect on the implications of these efforts for international scientific cooperation and on the broader question of whether academic boycotts undermine or strengthen the very values they claim to defend.

Professor Milette Shamir is the Vice President for Academic International Affairs at Tel Aviv University and a researcher in the field of American Studies at the Faculty of the Humanities. Shamir joined Tel Aviv University in 1998 after earning her PhD from Brandeis University. Her research on 19th-century literary and cultural history has been published by Columbia University Press, Penn University Press, and other leading venues. She has been invited as visiting researcher to several universities including Duke University, The University of Texas in Austin, and New York University.

Shamir is currently the editor-in-chief of the journal Poetics Today. From 2015 to 2019 she served as Vice Dean of the Humanities for Academic Affairs. She co-founded TAU’s American Studies program in 2006, and served as its head for thirteen years. She served as chair of the Department of English and American Studies from 2006 to 2009. In 2012 she founded TAU’s pioneering undergraduate program for international students—the BA in Liberal Arts—and served as its academic director until 2016.

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