Eric Muraille- Laboratoire de Parasitologie, Faculté de Médecine, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
Following the escalation of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict after the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, pro-Palestinian activists occupied universities in the United States, Canada, and Europe, demanding that academic authorities cut ties with Israeli institutions. This article examines the response of Belgian universities to these mobilizations. At first, several institutions rejected calls for an academic boycott and reaffirmed their commitment to institutional neutrality, emphasizing the importance of protecting academic freedom. Their actions were limited to reviewing whether collaborations with Israeli universities posed risks of harmful applications, particularly in the context of dual-use research. In contrast, the Ghent University and the Université Libre de Bruxelles quickly declared that a boycott was a necessity in light of Israel’s violations of international law and human rights. Both established Committees on Respect for International Law to reassess partnerships with foreign institutions. This stance soon became dominant within Belgian higher education. Through joint declarations, all Belgian universities endorsed an academic boycott and urged the European Union to suspend agreements with Israel. Such a position marks a clear departure from traditional academic norms. By abandoning institutional neutrality, universities positioned themselves as political actors, a shift that may reshape how both the public and policymakers perceive academic expertise, while also exposing institutions to political targeting. Moreover, by presenting the academic boycott as a moral and legal obligation, universities risk legitimizing the idea that scholarly communities can be held collectively responsible for state actions. If generalized across Europe, these practices could endanger academic freedom and normalize academic boycotts as a form of collective punishment.
Introduction
Following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the death of over 1,200 Israelis and the abduction of 251 people, including around 40 children, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict escalated with the Israeli military invasion of the Gaza territory (Burke, 2024). By mid-April 2024, pro-Palestinian activists were organizing protests and occupations at universities such as Columbia University in New York City (Tait and Salam, 2024), denouncing what they described as genocide in Gaza committed by the Israeli army and demanding that academic institutions sever their financial and institutional ties with Israel. In Europe, this pro-Palestinian movement gained momentum in early May 2024. On May 7, activists occupied university buildings at Leipzig University in Germany, Sciences Po in France, and Ghent University in Belgium (Neslen, 2024). During May and June, the occupation movement spread to numerous other universities across the continent.
This article examines the response of Belgian universities to calls for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions. To provide a historical and conceptual framework, we first situate the emergence of the principles of academic freedom and institutional neutrality and discuss their respective limits in relation to political activism and the regulation of research projects by Dual Use and Research Security committees. We then trace the history of academic boycotts from the early twentieth century and the controversies they have provoked. Within this context, we analyze the occupations of Belgian universities by pro-Palestinian activists and the evolution of institutional responses to demands for an academic boycott of Israel. We further compare these responses with those of other European universities. Finally, we assess the implications for academic freedom and the production of knowledge of establishing Committees on Respect for International Law within Belgian universities.
The intellectual independence of universities
The first medieval universities emerged between the 11th and 13th centuries. Operating under religious authority, their primary mission to transmit knowledge, which was necessarily compatible with the Catholic faith. One notable case of censorship occurred in 1277 at the University of Paris, when, by order of Pope Jean XXII, Étienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris and Chancellor of the University, condemned 219 Aristotelian and Averroist assertions as heretical or dangerous to Christian doctrine (Piron, 2011). This condemnation forced some scholars to disavow their teachings.
It would take more than half a millennium for scholars to enjoy freedom of education. To understand the late emergence of the principle of universities’ intellectual autonomy, it is important to emphasize that, unlike freedom of expression or freedom of the press, this principle was not included among the original human rights recognized during the revolutionary eighteenth century.
The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 and the first 10 amendments to the U. S. Constitution of 1791 make freedom of speech a fundamental right. Article 11 of the Declaration of 1789 clearly states: “The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man; every citizen may therefore speak, write, and print freely, subject to being liable for the abuse of this freedom in cases determined by law.” This principle was later reiterated in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The principle of academic freedom, considered distinct from freedom of speech, only emerged in the 19th century. Its creation is attributed to the philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt of the first university in Berlin in 1809 (reviewed in Karran, 2009). Breaking with the model of the medieval university, Humboldt advocated for a synergy between teaching and research within his university. He also laid the foundations for relative intellectual independence of the university from religion and the state by promoting the lifetime appointment of professors. This was supposed to allow them to develop long-term projects and explore controversial subjects without the fear of reprisal. This model quickly gained prestige and led to the introduction in 1850 of the fundamental principle of “Freiheit der Wissenschaft” (freedom of science) into the constitution of the Kingdom of Prussia: “Science and its practice must henceforth know no other limits than their own truth” (Article 20).
The effectiveness of this Humboldtian model progressively influenced the development of European and American universities, but it was not until 1915, following the dismissal of professors based on their political orientations, that the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) was created and published the first “Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure” (American Association of University Professors, 1915), which is considered as the founding text of the modern principle of academic freedom.
It stipulates that the academic freedom of professors applies to research, teaching within the university and freedom of expression and action outside the university. Under the principle of academic freedom, researchers are protected from the influence of not only religion and political parties but also the “tyranny of public opinion.” It is presented as essential to the three missions of the university: the search for new knowledge, teaching, and making expertise available to society. Already at that time, it was specified that academic freedom could not be without limits: “It is, therefore, only those who carry on their work in the temper of the scientific inquirer who may justly assert this claim.”
Academic freedom and scientific norms
There is extensive literature on the relationship between academic freedom and the norms of scientific inquiry, and it would be impossible to cover it all here. We will therefore focus on a brief summary of particularly insightful works by the epistemologists Karl Popper and Michael Polanyi, as well as the sociological perspective on the production of scientific knowledge developed by Robert K. Merton.
Karl Popper is known for having introduced the idea that the scientific character of a theory is linked not to the method used to produce it but to its potential for experimental refutability (Popper, 1959). In this perspective, it is through the free criticism of theories by members of the scientific community that the capacity of those theories to describe and explain reality can be improved. The sociologist Robert K. Merton emphasized the collective and cooperative aspects of modern scientific research and presented social norms that underlie the functioning of science (Merton, 1973). Among these, he identifies “communalism,” which reflects the idea that scientific knowledge is not the private property of researchers, but belongs to the scientific community as a whole and, beyond that, to humanity. Along the same lines, the epistemologist Michael Polanyi introduced the idea that the scientific community must be independent of religions, political ideologies, and the state in order to progress in its scientific mission of seeking knowledge and understanding (Polanyi, 1951). He conceived science as a free market where ideas must circulate without impediment and be evaluated by peers according to standards internal to science.
Thus, following these authors, academic freedom should be perceived as a necessary condition for the progression of scientific knowledge. This is for example the position of the Robbins Committee on Higher Education (1963) commissioned by the British government, which concluded that academic freedom “is a necessary condition of the highest efficiency and the proper progress of academic institutions” (Committee on Higher Education, 1963), and this opinion is shared by many contemporary authors (reviewed in Karran, 2009).
International acceptance of the principle of academic freedom
The perception of academic freedom as a necessary condition to produce scientific knowledge gradually made it an international standard, recognized in most universities and countries during the second half of the 20th century.
In 1988, on the 900th anniversary of the University of Bologna, the Magna Charta Universitatum (Great Charter of Universities, MCU) was drawn up, and clearly states that the university “must be morally and intellectually independent of all political authority and economic power” (Observatory Magna Charta Universitatum, 2022). It was signed by 975 universities from 94 countries.
In 1997, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reformulated international standards of academic freedom in its “Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel” (UNESCO, 1997). In its preamble, UNESCO underscores that higher education and research “constitute an exceptionally rich cultural and scientific asset” that plays a major role in the “development of humanity and modern society.” It goes on to affirm that this task “can only be fully enjoyed in an atmosphere of academic freedom and autonomy for institutions of higher education.” Under its definition of academic freedom, “Higher-education teaching personnel are entitled to the maintaining of academic freedom, that is to say, the right, without constriction by prescribed doctrine, to freedom of teaching and discussion, freedom in carrying out research and disseminating and publishing the results thereof, freedom to express freely their opinion about the institution or system in which they work, freedom from institutional censorship and freedom to participate in professional or representative academic bodies. All higher-education teaching personnel should have the right to fulfil their functions without discrimination of any kind and without fear of repression by the state or any other source” (UNESCO, 1997, § 27). UNESCO, like the AAUP, does place limits on academic freedom: “Academic freedom carries with it the duty to use that freedom in a manner consistent with the scholarly obligation to base research on an honest search for truth” (UNESCO, 1997, § 33). And, of course, academics must “ensure that research is conducted according to the laws and regulations of the state in which the research is carried out, that it does not violate international codes of human rights” (UNESCO, 1997, § 34 (g)). Note that UNESCO’s definition is not limited to the campus. It protects the expression of academics within society as a whole, and it furthermore protects academics against their own universities. Although this UNESCO recommendation is not binding, it has gradually acquired international authority and is now considered a reference.
The distinction between freedom of speech and academic freedom
As previously mentioned, freedom of speech quickly emerged in the 18th century as a fundamental right because it has a direct and obvious impact on each individual and is essential to the democratic process. The need for academic freedom is much less evident, which explains why it only became internationally established in the second half of the 20th century. First, academic freedom directly concerns only academics and university students. Secondly, academic freedom only came to be seen as important when it was understood to be necessary for the collective process of producing scientific knowledge and that such “true” knowledge constitutes a common good that is essential for rational governance and economic growth. And from this understanding flows the related conclusion that academic freedom indirectly benefits all, thus conferring on it the status of a fundamental human right (Gärditz, 2021). Third, academic freedom is sometimes confused with freedom of speech. This can lead to neglect for the protection of academic freedom if freedom of speech is ensured. It is obvious that freedom of speech is an indispensable condition for academic freedom. However, as summarized in Table 1, these two freedoms differ in their objectives, legal bases, limitations and epistemological position (De Baets, 2021). Thus, freedom of speech is not a sufficient guarantee for academic freedom. The latter must have specific legal protection.
Table 1. Comparison of freedom of speech and academic freedom, adapted from De Baets (2021).
Constitutional protection of academic freedom
The “Academic Freedom in Constitutions” dataset empirically maps constitutional guarantees of scientific freedom, academic freedom, and university autonomy in 203 countries, over the period from 1789 to 2022 (Spannagel, 2023). The data show that protections for academic freedom have been increasingly included in state constitutions from 1900 to the present, with significant accelerations in the 1950s, with the development of higher education worldwide, and the 1990s, after the fall of the USSR. It is worth noting, however, that while freedom of speech is protected in nearly 95% of countries, academic freedom is only protected in just over 50% of countries. Moreover, further examination of the data reveals a great diversity of definitions of academic freedom, some placing, for example, more emphasis on the freedom of scientific creation.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the de facto protection granted to academic freedom is far from being equivalent in all countries and that this protection tends to increase in countries that adopt a democratic regime and to regress in countries whose governments are taking a more authoritarian and/or religious direction. One metric used to classify the degree of academic freedom is the Academic Freedom Index, which measures (i) the freedom of research and teaching, (ii) the freedom of exchange and dissemination of knowledge, (iii) institutional autonomy, (iv) campus integrity and (v) the freedom of academic and cultural expression (Spannagel and Kinzelbach, 2023). The index, which is available from 1900 to 2021 and covers all 179 countries worldwide, thus allows us to trace the evolution of academic freedom in the world, identify threats weighing on researchers and institutions, and sound alert in cases of censorship or academic repression. At the global level, the Academic Freedom Index rose between the 1990s and 2000s in most countries. However, it has declined since 2013 to highly variable degrees depending on the country considered: while it remains stable in some countries such as Germany, it fell sharply in Turkey and Egypt, for example.
Thus, while academic freedom is protected in the constitutions of a significant number of countries, it is not in many others and appears to be in danger in others.
Institutional neutrality or institutional restraint as a necessary condition for academic freedom
During the second half of the 20th century, the academic community of countries with a strong tradition of academic freedom, such as the USA, was forced to face internal demands brought by social and political movements which have often demanded that academic authorities adopt political positions.
Following student protests of the Vietnam War on American campuses, the president of the University of Chicago convened a faculty committee in 1967 to produce a recommendation for the institution’s approach to political and social activism. The clarity and conciseness of the report of the committee chaired by Harry Kalven merits quoting here certain passages from what is today known as the Kalven Report (Committee on Freedom of Expression, 1967): “A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community. It is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby. Since the university is a community only for these limited and distinctive purposes, it is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness.”
The report concluded that “The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.” This position of institutional neutrality is inspired by the First Amendment of the American Constitution adopted in 1791 which protects freedom of expression, including criticism of the government, as well as by the considerations of John Stuart Mill in On Liberty (1859) (Mill, 1869). For Mill, the free exchange of ideas is not only a right, but also a necessity for the advancement of knowledge and society. He believed that the dissenting opinion can be true or contain an element of truth. Moreover, even a correct opinion must be able to be freely questioned so that it does not become dogmatic. Mill warned that people are easily intimidated and silenced when a contrary opinion is forcefully imposed on a community: “unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion really does deter people from professing contrary opinions” especially if those who express a contrary opinion are stigmatized as “bad and immoral men.”
The Kalven Report is considered a benchmark by many scientific figures as well as by associations defending academic freedom. In 2021, following the political positions taken by certain universities, Herbert Holden Thorp, rector of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and editor-in-chief of the academic journal Science, was keen to point out that “Universities are not cults or political prizes” (Thorp, 2021). In 2023, the American Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) also considered that the neutrality of academic institutions is essential to academic freedom (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, 2023b) and that taking a position on social and political issues should be left to students and professors (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, 2023a). The UK’s Academics for Academic Freedom (AFAF) agrees (Academic Freedom Advocacy Foundation (AFA), 2023).
The systematic recourse by universities to the Kalven Report to justify the refusal to take a position on controversial or politically sensitive subjects has, however, often been criticized (Nietzel, 2023; Thorp, 2024). The main argument is that while some violations of institutional neutrality do indeed undermine the academic freedom of faculty, not all do. The Kalven Report itself does not consider the institutional neutrality to be absolute. It provides for exceptions in cases where the university must defend its founding values. Moreover, when a scientific consensus is reached in an area of public interest such as climate change or vaccination, combating disinformation may require the university to take an official position.
Thus, in response to the student protest movements of the 1960s, Robert Goheen, the rector of Princeton University, proposed the principle of “institutional restraint” (Eisgruber, 2023). In order for the university to remain “a place for untrammeled, rational inquiry and debate,” it must refrain as much as possible from taking official positions, except when it is essential to reaffirm its fundamental values. This obviously leaves a great deal of freedom of action if these fundamental values are not limited to the search for scientific truth and include values such as justice.
Dual Use and Research Security Committees
Political activism is not the only challenge that universities face. The need to respect fundamental human rights, especially in clinical research, as well as the accumulation of evidence showing that technological innovations could generate weapons of mass destruction or have lasting effects on the environment have led universities to impose new limits on academic freedom. These limits are mainly based on compliance with international treaties such as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) (United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, 2023b), the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) (United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, 2023a), and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, 2023), which prohibit the development, research, and dissemination of technologies that could lead to weapons of mass destruction. Research must also comply with the standards established by international conventions to avoid unethical practices. More recently, special attention has been paid to research that could produce genetically modified organisms that could affect human health or ecosystems (Tonui et al., 2022).
It is in this context that the concept of “dual-use research” regulations emerged. This concerns research and technologies that can be used for both civil and military applications, or for beneficial and malicious uses. In Europe, this regulation began to be formally considered in universities and research institutes in the 2000s. In 2009, the European Union adopted Council Regulation (EC) No 428/2009 (Council of the European Union, 2009) which establishes specific export controls for dual-use goods and technologies within the European Union and imposes restrictions on the dissemination of certain research results or sensitive equipment to third countries. European universities have thus been pushed to integrate these considerations into their research practices (League of European Research Universities, 2018), which led to the creation of dual use committees (DUCs) in universities.
The assessments of such DUCs have obvious limitations. The internationally adopted definition of what constitutes problematic research is very broad, which leaves much room for interpretation. Furthermore, it is the end use of a research project that determines whether it presents a risk of misuse and whether it should be prohibited. But, in practice, it is rarely possible to know all the potential end uses of a project before its completion. It is also clear that the use of a particular technology depends on the set of other available technologies and that these evolve rapidly.
While research whose results could be dangerous or misused must be prohibited, such bans are extremely difficult to put into practice without preventing researchers from working in entire fields of research. One well-documented example is “gain of function” studies of viruses infecting humans such as the influenza virus (Casadevall and Imperiale, 2014). The risk–benefit balance of such experiments is difficult to predict and is controversial among the scientific community (Duprex et al., 2015). This problem has been further aggravated by the recent development of genome editing techniques that have made genomic modifications much easier (Badea and Feeney, 2024). Thus, there is much debate regarding the “dual-use dilemma” (Miller and Selgelid, 2007) in research.
The escalation of the conflict between Europe and Russia over Ukraine, together with growing tensions with China—now simultaneously regarded as a partner, competitor, and rival—has reinforced the strategic imperative of protecting academic research in European universities from interference by hostile states and has prompted the emergence of the concept of “knowledge and research security” (Pinna, 2025). In May 2024, the Council of the European Union adopted a set of recommendations aimed at strengthening research security (Concil of the European Union, 2024). These measures primarily seek to prevent the unwanted transfer of knowledge, foreign interference in academic activities, and the misuse of research outcomes. It should be noted that the Council allows member states to adapt their strategies in accordance with their national interests, which may lead to compromises aimed at reconciling competing standards (Bromley, 2023). In Belgium, in response to the Council’s recommendations, research funding agencies, like the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) (Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), 2025), and universities, such as KU Leuven (2025), have established Research Security Committees (RSCs) to advise and support researchers who may be exposed to such risks.
RSCs, however, raise significant concerns in academic literature. They are seen as introducing a national security logic into the core of academic research, potentially at the expense of scientific freedom, international collaboration, and the equal treatment of researchers — thereby generating new ethical dilemmas. Moreover, universities often lack the expertise required to adequately assess national security risks, which increases the risk of misjudgments. The establishment of RSCs also adds another layer of bureaucratization, with potential consequences such as project delays and administrative burden (Hammersley, 2009). Finally, these committees may be diverted from their initial mandate and used to suppress or discourage certain research areas, particularly when the protection of the institution’s reputation is prioritized over academic freedom (Hedgecoe, 2016).
Thus, the imperative to uphold human rights in research, to prevent the development of technologies that might violate international treaties on nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons or harm the environment, and to protect research and knowledge from malicious foreign interference has prompted international organizations and states to require universities to self-regulate their research projects through DUCs and RSCs (Table 2). While the use of these committees may be justified in certain cases, their widespread application risks normalizing the oversight of scientific research by expert panels. This can increase the administrative burden on researchers and constrain their academic freedom. Moreover, these committees may produce erroneous or unfair judgments arising from undeclared conflicts of interest or insufficient expertise.
Table 2. Comparative overview of Dual Use Committee (DUC), Research Security Committee (RSC) and Committee on Respect for International Law (CRIL).
Historical perspective on academic boycotts
Calling for a boycott of researchers and/or universities in a country to punish or put pressure on it is not a new practice and has given rise to much controversy.
The first general academic boycott was directed against German and Austrian scientists after World War I in 1919. These scientists were banned from participating in international scientific conferences and agencies and the boycott only ended in 1926 when Germany was invited to join the League of Nations. According to the historian Gordin (2022), this boycott, like those against Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939 or against the USSR in retaliation for the invasion of Afghanistan between 1980 and 1985, was partial, and consequently was relatively ineffective in stifling the targeted scientific communities.
According to Gordin (2022), the only academic boycott that seems to have had a significant impact on a scientific community and a political regime is the boycott against the apartheid regime in South Africa between 1960 and 1990. Its effectiveness in stifling the scientific community of South Africa can probably be explained by its extended duration, the fact that it was adhered to by most countries and also by the fact that the South Africa scientific community was too small to function properly while cut off from the world. Furthermore, this boycott was associated with strict economic sanctions imposed by the USA in 1986 and one would be justified in believing that it was the latter, more than the academic boycott, which caused the fall of the apartheid regime (Fink, 2002). So, to consider the academic boycott as decisive in the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa seems misguided.
Despite the lack of demonstrable effectiveness, demands for academic boycotts have intensified in recent years, including against Israeli and Russian universities.
In the early 2000s, scientific figures began to call for an academic boycott of Israel (Rose and Rose, 2002), arguing that this strategy had been effective against the apartheid regime in South Africa. A request for a boycott of Israeli universities was also launched in 2005 by Palestinian associations united in the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) movement. Faced with these demands, the AAUP expressed its opposition to any systematic boycott of a university institution: “We reject proposals that curtail the freedom of teachers and researchers to engage in work with academic colleagues, and we reaffirm the paramount importance of the freest possible international movement of scholars and ideas” (American Association of University Professors, 2013). This position of refusing all boycotts was also defended in 2007 by the British Medical Journal (Godlee, 2007). This later also conducted a large survey among its readers to find out whether they were in favor of a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Out of 28,178 responses, 77% were against the boycott. Most of the participants in the survey were American (40%), English (25%), or Canadian (8%).
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukrainian scientists called (National Research Foundation of Ukraine, 2023) for a boycott of Russian scientists and universities (Else, 2022). This boycott movement has led to the breakdown of research partnerships between Western universities and Russia, but many countries do not follow this boycott, and it is only very rarely accepted by scientific journals. For example, in an editorial the journal Nature said it understood calls for a boycott because of the violence of Ukraine’s aggression but would continue to publish papers by Russian researchers (Nature, 2022). It believes that “the ability to freely communicate research and scholarship across national borders has been fundamental to science and international relations” and must be maintained. Like Nature, the British Medical Journal condemns Russia’s war on Ukraine but says that it will continue to publish articles by Russian researchers (Abbasi, 2022). This partial academic boycott had a significant impact on the participation of Russian scientists in international conferences and on the number of works carried out in collaboration with Western universities, but the number of works in collaboration with other countries, such as China and India, has increased (Matthews, 2023). It is therefore doubtful that this boycott will have a rapid impact on the quality of research in Russia and therefore on the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
Main arguments against academic boycotts
In a famous opinion piece published by the journal Nature in 2003 (Blakemore et al., 2003), the English researchers Blakemore, Dawkins, Noble and Yudkin proposed that an academic boycott is such a break with scientific norms that it should be used only as a last resort and only if the following conditions are met: (i) the circumstances are quite exceptional and the boycott is made only to obtain an overwhelming gain, (ii) there are good reasons to believe that a boycott would help change the unacceptable behavior of a regime, (iii) the revulsion against the regime that is proposed to be boycotted must be very widely shared, otherwise it will not be implemented and will remain ineffective, with the risk of fracturing the international scientific community, (iv) the boycott is part of a broader program of measures, imposed by an international agreement, which also includes diplomatic, economic, cultural, and sporting sanctions.
From the point of view of international law, it can be considered (Mancisidor, 2021) that the very principle of a boycott of scientists from a country contradicts the “right to science” guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948: “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits” (article 27) because the effect of an academic boycott is not limited to university researchers. If the boycott lasts for a significant period of time, it necessarily affects the education system as well as health systems and therefore the health of the entire population, including those who do not support the regime in place (De Wit et al., 1987). Thus, it is not because a government makes decisions that are not in accordance with international law that the human rights of all citizens of this country must be compromised.
It may be concluded that academic boycotts constitute a serious violation of the fundamental norms of science and may endanger the human rights not only of the researchers directly targeted but also of the broader population of the country concerned. Therefore, an academic boycott should be considered only when there exists a broad consensus within the scientific community regarding both its necessity and its potential efficacy, and when it is accompanied by substantial economic measures directed against the political regime in question.
BDS’s arguments in favor of academic boycott
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), established in 2004, spearheaded the academic and cultural dimension of BDS campaign. PACBI’s founding statement (Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS), 2004) frames Israel as responsible for the colonial oppression of the Palestinian people and highlights a system of “racial discrimination and segregation against the Palestinian citizens of Israel, which resembles the defunct apartheid system in South Africa.” It further argues that “the vast majority of Israeli intellectuals and academics have either contributed directly to maintaining, defending or otherwise justifying the above forms of oppression, or have been complicit in them through their silence.” The statement concludes by invoking a tradition in which “people of conscience in the international community of scholars and intellectuals have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice” thereby placing upon the global academic community a moral obligation to boycott Israeli academic and cultural institutions.
This call rests on two central statements: (i) Israeli academics are either directly responsible for, or complicit through silence in, the oppressive policies pursued by the Israeli government; and (ii) the international scholarly community bears a moral duty to combat injustice. These claims stand in marked contrast to the classical conception of academic freedom, articulated in the Humboldtian model of the university, by the AAUP, and in the Magna Charta Universitatum. Within this tradition, academics are understood as autonomous from the government and therefore not accountable for its actions; their responsibility is limited to an epistemic duty of honesty—that is, the pursuit of truthful knowledge. To understand the conceptual rupture at stake, it is necessary to briefly trace the intellectual foundations of these two PACABI statements.
The first—that academic knowledge and actors can be implicated in systems of oppression—derives from decolonial thought, which foregrounded the role of colonial knowledge and cultural production in legitimizing domination. Frantz Fanon, for example, argued that colonial (occidental) knowledge reinforced the supposed racial inferiority of colonized peoples (Fanon, 1952). French postmodern theorists, often grouped under “French Theory,” extended this critique of the neutrality of knowledge by theorizing the imbrication of knowledge and power. Michel Foucault articulated the principle of power-knowledge, maintaining that knowledge invariably functions as an instrument of power and thus as a vehicle of domination: “there is no power relationship without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor knowledge which does not at the same time presuppose and constitute power relationships” (Foucault, 1976).
The second statement—that academics bear a positive obligation to resist injustice—finds its roots in African academic declarations, notably the Dar es Salaam Declaration on Academic Freedom and Social Responsibility of Academics (Tanzania, 1990) and the Kampala Declaration on Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility (Uganda, 1990). Under conditions of financial scarcity, political repression, and structural discrimination, African scholarly communities demanded that social justice imperatives be integrated into the normative framework of academic freedom. These demands found partial institutional recognition in UNESCO’s 1997 Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel (UNESCO, 1997), the product of protracted negotiations between states of the Global North and South. The Recommendation specifies that higher education must serve societal needs: §22(l), “Higher education institutions should be accountable for assistance in the fulfilment of economic, social, cultural and political rights while striving to prevent the use of knowledge, science and technology to the detriment of those rights, or for purposes which run counter to generally accepted academic ethics, human rights and peace.” It also explicitly links academic freedom to social responsibility: §33, “Teaching, research and scholarship should be conducted in full accordance with ethical and professional standards and should, where appropriate, respond to contemporary problems facing society.”
The obligation to combat injustice also stems from the post-1945 international order, shaped by the human catastrophes of Nazism and colonial domination. This order rests on the recognition of universal human dignity, the right of people to self-determination, and the establishment of institutions capable of safeguarding fundamental rights. The creation of the United Nations, the adoption of the UDHR in 1948, and the subsequent establishment of international courts such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998 illustrate this transformation. Together, these developments conferred political legitimacy to the idea that oppression and injustice must be opposed. The concept of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005 in resolution 60/1, affirming that states have the primary responsibility to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, further reinforced this idea.
Thus, whereas in occidental contexts academic freedom has originally been conceived as a protective shield for the scientific community—rendering institutional boycotts suspect as infringements on this freedom—in many Global South contexts it has been tightly bound to social and political responsibility. Within such frameworks, boycotts may not be seen as violations of academic freedom but rather as practices consistent with it, insofar as they aim to prevent complicity with oppressive systems and to protect vulnerable communities.
Table 3 presents a comparison of classical academic freedom and the paradigm of an “Academic freedom with social responsibility,” which emerged from decolonial struggles.
Table 3. Comparison of academic freedom and academic freedom with social responsibility.
It is important to emphasize that even in countries such as South Africa—where the notion of socially responsible academic freedom emerged and where universities served as key arenas in the struggle against colonial domination and apartheid—the traditional (Chetty, 2025) and the committed conceptions (Lewins et al., 2025) of academic freedom continue to coexist and clash within the academic community, particularly with respect to the legitimacy of an academic boycott of Israel.
How international scientific institutions responded to 2024 demands for an academic boycott of Israel
In 2024, faced with the intensification of the conflict in Gaza and repeated demands for a boycott of Israel, the AAUP issued a new statement (American Association of University Professors, 2024) saying that “when faculty members choose to support academic boycotts, they can legitimately seek to protect and advance the academic freedom and fundamental rights of colleagues and students who are living and working under circumstances that violate that freedom and one or more of those rights.” Thus, for the AAUP, academic boycotts “can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education” and are no longer necessarily a violation of academic freedom. However, the AAUP emphasized that “boycotts should target only institutions of higher education that themselves violate academic freedom or the fundamental rights upon which academic freedom depends,” though this is very difficult to establish. This change in position of the AAUP has been criticized by some academics who have accused the association of becoming politicized (Quinn, 2024).
In sharp contrast to the AAUP, other major scientific organizations have reaffirmed their opposition to any academic boycott. For example, the International Science Council (ISC) whose members include 135 scientific organizations stated in July 2024 (International Science Council, 2024b), in response to calls for a boycott of Israel, that researchers are free to act according to their conscience and refuse to collaborate with certain universities, but that it does not endorse academic boycotts. The ISC believes that such overreaching boycotts limit the sharing of knowledge by isolating members of certain academic communities from opportunities for exchange with their peers and thus violate the general principle of the Universality of Science, which entails freedom of association, expression, information, communication, and movement in connection with international scientific activities (Lerch, 1999). The ISC statutes prohibit all “discrimination based on such factors as ethnic origin, religion, citizenship, language, political or other opinion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, or age “(International Science Council, 2024a).
Now, having examined the history, criticism and justifications of academic boycotts, we will focus on the response of Belgian universities to the occupation of university campuses by pro-Palestinian activists.
The initial response of Belgian universities to the pro-Palestinian occupation of campuses and calls for a boycott of Israel
During the months of May and June 2024, the campuses of the seven largest Belgian universities experienced occupations by pro-Palestinian activists: the Universiteit Gent (UGent), the Universiteit Antwerpen (UAntwerpen), the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) and the Université de Liège (ULiège).
Despite repeated requests from pro-Palestinian activists, the VUB (VUB and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, 2024), KU Leuven (Belga, 2024), ULiège (de Marneffe, 2024) and UCLouvain (Hutin, 2024) initially refused a total academic boycott of Israeli universities and have favored instead the case-by-case analysis of cooperations by their existing DUCs. Faced with activists’ demands for a boycott, the rector of the ULiège, Anne-Sophie Nyssen, declared on May 13 (de Marneffe, 2024) that “The boycott of all universities is a state boycott. The university is not a political body. It must not turn into a parliament. It must, as a matter of principle, remain a place of exchange and cooperation between researchers who share values and the same fundamental principles.” She has therefore adopted a position of political neutrality like that defended by the Kalven Report. Along the same lines, the rector of the UCLouvain, Didier Lambert, declared on May 30 (Hutin, 2024) that “Throughout history, universities have always been built on openness rather than closure, on inclusion rather than exclusion. Freedom of research is important.”
By contrast, on May 28 and May 31, ULB (Soir, 2024b) and UGent (François, 2024) formally decided to terminate all ongoing institutional collaborations with Israeli universities and to refrain from initiating new ones.
On August 30, UAntwerpen (Carolan, 2024) announced a moratorium on future collaborations, while opting to maintain its ongoing partnerships with Israeli universities. The continuation of these partnerships was justified as a means to prevent the isolation of Israeli institutions and to preserve dialogue.
The nature, duration and scale of the occupations of each university varied. As we will subsequently focus on the ULB, we will only describe the occupation of that university in detail here.
The occupation of the ULB
At ULB, a group of around 50 pro-Palestinian activists, all of whom chose to remain anonymous, occupied Building B of the Solbosch campus on May 7, 2024, symbolically renaming it ‘Walid Daqqa’ after the Palestinian activist regarded by his supporters as a symbol of resistance, who was convicted in 1986 for planning the abduction and killing of an Israeli soldier (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Occupation of Building B of the Solbosch campus of the ULB by the People’s Université Populaire de Bruxelles. (A) Logo of the Université Populaire de Bruxelles. (B) Demonstration of support in front of Building B of the Solbosch campus at ULB (renamed Walid Daqqa Building) during its occupation. (C) Pro-Palestinian activist speaking in an auditorium of the occupied building. These images were published in 2004 on Instagram of the Université Populaire de Bruxelles (universitepopulairebx).
On the website ‘pourlapalestine.be’, a member of the Samidoun network, they stated that they intended to establish a ‘Université Populaire de Bruxelles’ (People’s University of Brussels) in the occupied building to denounce ‘7 months of genocide’ in Gaza. They demanded that the ULB “immediately and unequivocally break off all forms of collaboration with academic institutions and Zionist companies that participate in the systematic oppression of the Palestinian people” (Université populaire de Bruxelles, 2024). A similar demand was made at all the other occupied Belgian universities.
During the occupation, activists displayed Samidoun flags and organized conferences involving representatives of the Samidoun organization, such as Khaled Barakat and Mohammed Khatib. Khatib, who resides in Belgium as a refugee, has participated in several demonstrations and spoken out in defense of the occupation of the ULB (see Figure 2). Several violent incidents, including anti-Semitic attacks, took place during the occupation and the occupied building was completely ransacked (Muraille, 2024; Zomersztajn, 2025). Samidoun defines itself as a simple network that stands in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners, but it is banned in the USA, Canada (U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2024), the Netherlands (Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), 2024), and Germany (Bundesministerium des Innern, 2023) because of its links with Palestinian terrorist organizations.
Figure 2. Samidoun’s involvement in the occupation of the ULB. (A) Demonstration of support in front of Building B of the Solbosch campus at ULB. The Samidoun flag, along with those of other organizations, is visible. (B) Mohamed Khatib speaking in front of Building B at ULB during its occupation. (C) Poster announcing Khaled Barakat’s lecture, held on 20 May 2024 in the occupied Building. (D) Poster announcing Mohamed Khatib’s lecture, held on 21 May 2024 in the occupied Building. These images were published in 2004 on Instagram of the Université Populaire de Bruxelles (universitepopulairebx).
As early as the first day of the occupation, the Rector of the ULB, Annemie Schaus, announced in a communication to the entire university community that collaborations with Israel would be ended. On May 27, 2024, Schaus submitted a proposal to the Academic Council, which approved it by a majority, to suspend the ULB’s institutional research agreements and projects with Israeli universities as well as with Palestinian universities. In its May 27, 2024 statement (Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2024b), the ULB justified its decision to boycott Israeli and Palestinian universities on the basis of their failure to respect international law and specified that it would continue the boycott “until the clear commitment of their respective university authorities in favor of the demands issued by the International Court of Justice in its order of May 24, 2024 and the unconditional release of the Israeli hostages.” It seems reasonable to assume that this decision is an attempt to preserve a neutral position toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It should be noted that this decision to boycott Palestinian academic institutions is unique in Europe.
The ULB had no partnerships with Palestinian universities ongoing at the time. In contrast, the breakdown of agreements and institutional research projects with Israel meant the end of three high-quality scientific projects funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe framework program, such as the European “Chiral-Induced Spin Selectivity Effect” CISSE project involving European, American and Israeli researchers, which aims to determine why chiral molecules act as electronic spin filters (European Commission, 2022). None of these three projects raised any dual-use issues.
The justification that this was a boycott imposed on the ULB authorities by the occupation hardly stands up to scrutiny. The capacity for real nuisance of the occupation of a small, isolated building by around 50 individuals within a university like ULB extending over several campuses and with more than 40,000 students, researchers, and teachers is negligible. The decision to stop institutional collaborations with Israeli universities was therefore not taken under threat. Instead, it aligns with that taken on December 18, 2023 by the Council of Rectors of French-speaking universities in Belgium (CRef), which included the rector of the ULB, to “suspend institutional collaborations with organizations, whatever their origin, that repeatedly support or are directly involved in violations of international law” (Cref, 2023).
The rapid acceptance of the boycott by the Academic Council of the ULB was made possible through significant internal lobbying by organizations and researchers. During the pro-Palestinian occupation, the Centrale Générale des Services Publics (CGSP) union for education and research and the Union Syndicale Etudiante for students expressed their support for the occupation of the campus and the boycott of Israel in an email sent out to the entire university community. Following the removal of the activists by the police, these union organizations also expressed their support for the activists facing legal proceedings (CGSP Enseignement Recherche, 2024). Some ULB professors expressed their sympathy for the occupiers (Alaluf et al., 2024) and argued for an academic boycott of Israel via opinion pieces published in the Belgian media (ULB members collective, 2024). Of course, other professors spoke out against this attack on academic freedom (Luffin et al., 2024).
The activists were finally evacuated by police from the occupied building on June 25th (Muraille, 2024).
Non-compliance with international law as justification for academic boycotts
The Academic Council of the ULB has gone further than simply decreeing a boycott of Israeli and Palestinian universities. On June 17, 2024, it also decided to reform the university’s risk partnership committee created in 2021. The committee has now been renamed the “Committee on Respect for International Law and Dual Use “(Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2024c). Its mission is defined as follows: “The Committee will advise the Rector and the Academic Council to ensure as far as possible that international institutional collaborations respect international law, fundamental rights and academic freedom. It will also aim to ensure compliance with the regulations on Dual use.” The new committee will include two experts in international law and fundamental law.
On November 21, 2024, the ULB Academic Council decided (Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2024a), on the recommendation of the Committee on Respect for International Law and Dual Use, to maintain the suspension of institutional research projects linking the ULB to Israeli universities. The main arguments for the Academic Council’s decision refer to “the direct or indirect contribution of these universities to the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories as well as to other violations of international law.” The Academic Council also decided to authorize bilateral discussions aimed at developing a collaboration with Birzeit University. This was a surprising decision, because, in its statement of May 27, 2024, the Academic Council made the lifting of the boycott of Palestinian universities conditional on the release of the hostages held by Hamas. As of that date, there was no information suggesting that the hostages held by Hamas would be released soon. However, “after examining the recommendations of the Committee on Respect for International Law and Dual Use relating to Birzeit University, the Academic Council did not identify any element opposing the continuation of institutional discussions with this University” (Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2024a).
The fact that the Committee on Respect for International Law and Dual Use has not identified any problematic elements with Birzeit University is surprising. As reported by the French newspaper Le Monde (Minisimi, 2024), the political faction close to Hamas won the greatest number of votes in the student elections at Birzeit University in 2023. According to the American newspaper The Daily Wire (Akiva, 2024), this university openly supports the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Hamas. The Islamic group itself paid tribute on its website to the Birzeit students who died as martyrs in the armed struggle against Israel. In September 2023, eight Birzeit students were arrested and charged with planning a terrorist attack (The Times of Israel, 2023). And in April 2024, Birzeit University expressed its support for students in the US and Europe who “turned campuses into revolt spaces against fascism” (Birzeit University, 2024). The recommendations of the Committee on Respect for International Law and Dual Use to the Academic Council are confidential, and thus the precise reasons that led to the lifting of the boycott of Palestinian universities remain unclear. However, this decision can be interpreted as an abandonment of the neutrality of the ULB in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The violations of international law by the Israeli government are considered more serious than those of Hamas terrorist movement.
Regardless of its analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this new Committee is cause for concern on several counts:
• First, assessment of the level of violation of fundamental and international rights allowing for blocking cooperation between universities is left up to the discretion of a small number of experts who provide no guarantees that their analyses are unbiased. In addition, they have few means to determine whether or not a university is problematic as they can only rely on freely accessible information. Furthermore, the ULB Committee’s regulations specify that the Committee on Respect for International Law and Dual Use’s recommendations are non-binding. The final decision rests with the Academic Council and ultimately with the University Rector: “Research agreements are submitted, as usual, to the Rector who decides” (Article 5.4 of the CRILDU rules). This gives full power to one single person to decide whether or not to impose an academic boycott.
• Secondly, the Committee’s assessment presupposes that international law and the international institutions on which its opinion is based, such as the ICC, are neutral and not subject to political manipulation. However, as noted by Nouwen and Werner (2010), the ICC “was created by political decisions, it adjudicates crimes which are frequently related to politics, and it depends on a mysterious and seemingly magical ‘political will’ for the enforcement of its decisions.” Thus, although the creation of the ICC has frequently been presented as a triumph of law over politics, many authors (reviewed in Royer, 2019) point out that this legalistic perspective is misleading and stress that the ICC is not only politicized but is also a political actor in its own right. The ICC can pursue its own objectives and fight against what it identifies as its enemies. In support of this view, it has been found that the ICC’s interventions often have a significant impact on the narrative of the conflict and on how the various actors are perceived by the international community, which can affect the dynamics of the conflict. For example, in Libya in 2011, the ICC designated Muammar Gaddafi an enemy of humanity and thereby legitimized the opposition forces, which contributed to his final fall (Kersten, 2016).
• Thirdly, the decision to impose an academic boycott is, as previously discussed, in violation of Article 27 of the UDHR. Thus, it amounts to considering that the decisions of the ICC can serve as a basis for the violation of human rights considered fundamental such as the freedom to contribute to the progress of science.
• Finally, from the AAUP’s recent perspective on the legitimacy of boycotts (American Association of University Professors, 2024), the boycott of a foreign university is only legitimate if the researchers at that university do not have academic freedom that would allow them to distance themselves from the politics of their country. However, this condition is very difficult to demonstrate objectively and falls largely outside the competence of the Committee on Respect for International Law and Dual Use.
The concerted response of Belgian universities to the demands for an academic boycott
As described above, the initial response of academic authorities of Belgian universities to the demands for an academic boycott of Israeli universities by pro-Palestinian activists has varied widely. While ULB and Ugent have approved an academic boycott against Israel, VUB, KU Leuven, ULiège and UCLouvain have refused to do so. However, with the growing mobilization of committed academics and pressure exerted by student organizations and non-governmental organizations campaigning for a boycott, the response of Belgian universities has become increasingly harmonized and academic boycotts of Israel have become the norm.
As early as May 2024, the Cref, and its Flemish counterpart, the Flemish University Council (Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad, VLIR) have been reaching out to the European Commission, asking for clear guidelines regarding Europe Horizon partnerships with Israeli universities. The EC’s official response (Ivanova, 2024) to one such request dated June 20, 2024 was that: “Israeli entities are eligible to participate in Horizon Europe grants under conditions equivalent to those applicable to legal entities established in the European Union.” Furthermore, the EC added that “a termination based solely on nationality would be abusive and would amount to discrimination prohibited by the Association Agreement.” As a result, none of the research projects funded by Europe in partnership with Israel appear to have been interrupted. The EC’s response was deemed unacceptable by rectors. In October 2024, the Cref stated that leaving the responsibility to universities to stop partnerships is untenable and that the European Union must apply the clauses relating to respect for human rights included in European texts (Cref, 2024).
During the same period, several Belgian universities decided to adopt new rules to prevent the submission of new research projects in partnership with Israeli universities. For example, UCLouvain adopted a “Charter of Responsible Partnerships” (Conseil Académique de l’UCLouvain, 2025), reaffirming the following essential principles: respect for human rights, international law, promotion of peace and academic freedom. This charter provides detailed guidelines for refusing or suspending a partnership. A “Commission of Responsible Partnerships” in charge of examining each partnership was also set up at the same time by UCLouvain. For its part, ULiège created a “Guidance and Vigilance Commission for Risky International Relations” (Nyssen, 2024), responsible for raising awareness and supervising researchers regarding the ethical and legal responsibilities related to international collaborations. Thus, Belgian universities seem to have decided to generalize the principle of authorizing partnerships based on both a Dual Use examination of the scientific project and respect for human rights and international law.
Shortly after the January 19, 2025 ceasefire in Gaza, an open letter (Bogaert et al., 2025) signed by 6,700 members of the Belgian academic community, including 1,300 professors, was published in the media. The letter begins by recalling that “a ceasefire does not dismantle apartheid policies, does not end illegal settlements and does not restore Palestinian rights to education, freedom, health, self-determination, and the right of return.” It then denounced the lack of academic freedom in Israel and stressed that “Israeli universities play a key role in planning, implementing and justifying the Israeli occupation and apartheid policies, military violence and support for the Israeli army, and the arms industry through research and development of new weapons.” It alleged that no distinction should be made between problematic research projects and projects that do not violate the rules of “Dual Use” since each project benefits Israeli institutions. The authors asserted that “neutrality is complicity” and that the actions of academics “must always be subject to international law and reflect our principles of justice.” Following this open letter, which takes up the main arguments of BDS in favor of the boycott of Israel, the Cref and the VLIR announced their desire to no longer initiate new cooperations with Israeli universities (Belga, 2025) and announced that joint legal action was being considered to obtain a clear response from the European Commission concerning partnerships with Israel (Cref, 2025).
Finally, in May 2025, the rectors of Belgian universities issued a joint public appeal [entitled “Call for a values-driven European Union. In Word and in Deed” (Cref and VLIR, 2025)] urging the European Union to suspend the EU–Israel Association Agreement (Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie (VRT), 2025). In their statement, they argued that Israel is in breach of the accord due to its “continuous and internationally recognized human rights violations in Gaza and the West Bank.” Since the agreement serves as the framework for political and economic cooperation between the European Union and Israel, the rectors’ demand reaches well beyond academia and directly challenges European foreign policy. Since the rectors’ request was made through the Cref and the VLIR, and not on a personal basis, it is indeed a request involving all Belgian universities. These later are therefore transformed into political actors.
The collective commitment of Belgian rectors to boycotting Israel is unique in Europe
A comprehensive and detailed analysis of the responses of all European universities to boycott calls extends well beyond the scope of this article. Our objective, rather, is to synthesize the media evidence available up to August 2025, to place the responses of Belgian universities within a broader comparative perspective.
• Finland: Among Finland’s 13 research universities, only the University of Helsinki (UH) announced on May 21, 2024, the suspension of all agreements with Israeli universities (University of Helsinki, 2024).
• France: Boycott declarations were limited to two faculties. The Sciences Po Strasbourg severed ties with Reichman University (Israel) on June 25, 2024 (Monde, 2024), but reinstated them in April 2025 (Lecach, 2025). Sciences Po Bordeaux terminated partnerships with Ben-Gurion University in May 2024 (Rue89Bordeaux, 2024). However, no French university has officially adopted a boycott against all Israeli academic institutions.
• Germany: On 11 June, 2024, the Alliance of German Science Organisations issued a statement unequivocally rejecting calls for boycotts of Israeli scholars or institutions, characterizing such measures as “discriminatory,” “misguided,” and “counterproductive” (Alliance of science organisations in Germany, 2024). To date, no German university has implemented an official institutional boycott of Israeli institutions.
• Ireland: Among Ireland’s eight research universities, only Trinity College Dublin (TCD) formally announced on June 10, 2025, its decision to refrain from entering into any future exchange or research agreements with Israeli universities and businesses (Trinity College Dublin, 2025).
• Italy: Among Italy’s 97 research universities, five have formally adopted policies restricting collaboration with Israeli institutions. On 19 March 2024, the University of Turin (UNITO) suspended a research agreement with Israeli partners. Rector Stefano Geuna clarified that the measure was “in the context of a very specific appeal” and did not constitute a boycott, emphasizing that “all agreements currently in force with Israeli universities—and they are numerous—remain valid” (The Times of Israel, 2024). Subsequently, on 18 October 2024, the University of Milan (UNIMI) froze an international agreement with Reichman University (Anadolu Agency, 2024). In mid-2025, similar measures were taken by other institutions: on 1 July, the University of Padua (UNIPD) committed not to enter into new agreements, nor to renew existing ones, with Israeli institutions and entities implicated in serious violations of international law (University of Padua, 2025); on 15 July, five departments of the University of Florence (UNIFI) adopted measures to suspend or terminate their agreements with Israeli universities (Il fatto quotidiano, 2025); on 24 July, the University of Pisa (UNIPI) terminated two framework agreements with Reichman University and the Hebrew University (University of Pisa, 2025).
• Netherlands: Among the country’s 14 research universities, seven suspended or froze collaborations with Israeli institutions in 2025. On 7 May, Tilburg University (TiU) suspended cooperation with Israeli universities (Tilburg University, 2025). Shortly after, on 16 May, Utrecht University (UU) announced it would no longer enter into new collaborations with Israeli organizations (Utrecht University, 2025). On 21 May, Radboud University (RU)‘s executive board suspended its institutional partnerships with Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University (Radboud University, 2025). On 6 June, Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) terminated its collaborations with the Hebrew University, Bar-Ilan University, and the University of Haifa (NL Times, 2025). Ten days later, on 16 June, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) froze all institutional cooperation with Israel (Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), 2025). On 20 June, the University of Amsterdam declared it would no longer participate in new Horizon Europe projects involving Israeli partners (University of Amsterdam, 2025). Finally, on 14 July, Leiden University (LU) suspended its student exchange agreements with the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University (Leiden University, 2025).
• Norway: Of Norway’s 11 public research universities, four have formally declared an academic boycott of Israel. In February 2024, Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet), the University of Bergen, the University of Southeastern Norway (USN), and the Bergen School of Architecture (BAS) terminated their collaborations with Israeli universities (Al Mayadeen English, 2024). Subsequently, on 6 June 2024, the University of Stavanger (UiS) announced the termination of all institutional agreements and cooperative arrangements with Israeli institutions (University of Stavanger, 2024).
• Portugal: Of the 15 research universities in Portugal, only the Centre for Social Studies (CES) at the University of Coimbra (UC) formally resolved, on September 25, 2024, to suspend all institutional cooperation with Israeli institutions (University of Coimbra, 2024).
• Spain: On May 9, 2024, the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE) —an association comprising 76 Spanish universities—announced that it would consider reviewing, and, if necessary, suspending, its collaborations with Israeli universities that fail to comply with international law (Conferencia de Rectores y Rectoras de las Universidades, 2024). This decision specifically targets institutions that have not demonstrated a clear commitment to peace and to respect for international humanitarian law. In response to this call, 18 universities declared partial or total academic boycotts of Israeli institutions: Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 2025), Pablo de Olavide University (UPO) (El León de El Español Publicaciones, 2024), Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) (Universidad Pompeu Fabra, 2024), Public University of Navarra (UPNA) (Universidad Pública de Navarra, 2024), University of Barcelona (UB) (University of Barcelona, 2024), University of Cordoba (UCO) (Universidad de Córdoba, 2024), University of Coruña (UDC) (University of Coruña, 2024), University of Girona (UdG) (Universitat de Girona, 2025), University of Granada (UGR) (Universidad de Granada, 2024), University of Jaén (UJA) (Agencias, 2024), University of La Laguna (ULL) (University of La Laguna, 2024), University of Lleida (UdL) (Benabarre, 2025), University of Malaga (UMA) (Universidad de Málaga, 2024), University of Seville (US) (Universidad de Sevilla, 2024), University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) (Europa Press, 2024), University of the Country Vasco (UPV/EHU) (Universidad del País Vasco, n.d.), University of Valencia (UV) (Universitat de València, 2024) and University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR) (Universidad de Zaragoza, 2024). In May 2025, however, a report by the Red Universitaria por Palestina indicated that nearly twenty Spanish public universities continued to maintain collaborations with Israeli institutions despite repeated calls to suspend such agreements (Gutiérrez, 2025).
• Switzerland: Among Switzerland’s twelve research universities, two have announced partial institutional boycotts of Israel. On June 5, 2025, the University of Geneva (UNIGE) terminated its strategic partnership with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a student exchange program with Tel Aviv University (SWI swissinfo (RTS), 2025). Subsequently, on June 12, 2025, the University of Lausanne (UNIL) announced the partial termination of two general agreements with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Radio Télévision Suisse, 2025).
Based on available public sources—including official university statements and media reports—no university in Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Iceland, Poland, Sweden or United Kingdom has formally declared either a full or partial academic boycott of Israel.
This country-by-country assessment is subject to important limitations. It remains possible that certain universities may have chosen to implement boycott measures internally without issuing an official public statement on their institutional websites or through the media. Moreover, this analysis does not provide evidence regarding the extent to which any declared boycott is being effectively enforced in practice. Nevertheless, two conclusions can reasonably be drawn:
• First, when taking into account the 10 Belgian universities alongside those in the countries mentioned above, only approximately 48 higher education institutions in Europe have formally adopted either a total or partial boycott of Israeli institutions (Figure 3). This represents less than 6% of the roughly 800 higher education institutions across 48 European countries that are recognized by the European University Association (EUA). It is therefore inaccurate to speak of a broad or widespread institutional boycott movement against Israel within the European academic sector.
• Second, the countries with the highest proportion of universities that have declared either a partial or total academic boycott of Israel are Belgium (100 percent), the Netherlands (50 percent), Norway (36.3 percent), and Spain (23.6 percent). Belgium is exceptional in this regard: it is the only European country where all university rectors—both Flemish- and French-speaking—have formally endorsed an institutional boycott through their respective governing bodies.
Figure 3. Belgium is the only country where all universities have declared an academic boycott of Israel. This figure illustrates the percentage of universities in each country that have adopted either a partial or a total academic boycott of Israel. The numbers indicate the total number of universities affected in each country. The dataset was constructed from internet searches conducted via Google and ChatGPT-5, encompassing materials available up to August 15, 2025. To ensure reliability, all identified results were cross-verified, and for each university that has formally announced an institutional boycott of Israel, a corresponding reference link is provided within the article. Nevertheless, as the data relies exclusively on publicly accessible online sources, it is subject to potential limitations, including search engine biases, incomplete reporting, and temporal constraints related to the date of data collection.
The very strong support of Belgian universities for the boycott of Israeli universities is confirmed by the report for June 2025 of the Samuel Neaman Institute which identifies Belgium as the European country with the highest number of BDS incidents (Figure 21 of Golany et al., 2025). For example, 39 incidents were documented in Belgium compared to only 9 in France.
The distinct position of Belgian universities may be explained by several factors:
• Political geography: Belgium hosts the main institutions of the European Union in Brussels, attracting numerous activist organizations seeking to influence European Union policy. Among them are more than 10 pro-Palestinian associations having a network organization, the European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine (ECCP), and access to activist media, such as ZinTV, an independent online media. This very active pro-Palestinian network explains that in 2024 more than half of the asylum applications from Palestinians in Europe were filed in Belgium (Soir, 2024a).
• Demographic and political context: Major Belgian cities such as Brussels, Liège, Antwerp, and Ghent have significant Muslim populations, often of Moroccan and Turkish origin, segments of which have mobilized politically against Israeli policies through community-based, antiracist, or pro-Palestinian associations. Their electoral weight may have encouraged certain political parties, such as the Flemish green party (The Brussels Times, 2024) to publicly endorse academic boycott demands, or to support BDS campaigns against Israel, like the Belgian Workers’ Party (PTB) (ptb Bruxelles, 2021).
• Establishment of activist organizations on campuses: Pro-Palestinian organizations have been active for years on certain campuses. For instance, since 2012 the BDS movement has maintained a student association at the ULB (BDS France, 2012), enabling sustained campus activism through conferences, demonstrations, and campaigns portraying Israel as a colonial oppressor and Israeli universities as structural accomplices.
• Mobilization on campus: Activism by the university community, supported by groups such as BDS and Samidoun, has been intense and well-coordinated through social media, including building occupations and large campus demonstrations. These actions generated pressure on university leadership and were met with a high degree of tolerance from both political authorities and university administrations.
Thus, it emerges from our analysis that the concerted boycott against Israeli institutions organized by all Belgian rectors is unique in Europe and could be explained by a combination of structural (proximity to European institutions), demographic (a large Muslim community) and political (community clientelism) factors, as well as by significant activism supervised by pro-Palestinian organizations established on campuses.
Discussion
The legitimacy of academic boycotts, as well as their compatibility with the principle of academic freedom, remains a deeply divisive issue within the academic community. Currently, two perspectives, which are difficult to reconcile, coexist:
• From the perspective of traditional academic norms forged in Anglo-American and European universities, academic boycotts represent a highly controversial tool for exerting pressure on a country. They appear to be a form of collective punishment that does not discriminate between scientists who support a regime and those who oppose it and, in the long term, they could also harm the entire population by affecting education and healthcare systems. Many authors, such as Popper (1959), Merton (1973), and Polanyi (1951), have stressed the importance of the free circulation of ideas and cooperation between researchers involved in constructing scientific knowledge. By violating the principle of the Universality of Science, academic boycotts present the risk of fracturing the scientific community in a lasting manner. Consequently, many researchers and scientific institutions have therefore opposed academic boycotts on numerous occasions throughout history. They are considered weapons of last resort whose use should only be authorized if there is a broad consensus in their favor and if the chances of successfully influencing the country’s policies are significant (Blakemore et al., 2003).
• In contrast to the traditional conception of academic freedom as a protective shield against religious, political, or popular pressures, a more politically engaged interpretation has emerged in parts of the Global South. Proponents of this perspective argue that the academic community carries a moral responsibility to confront social injustice and violations of international law. From this standpoint, universities are not merely neutral sites of knowledge production and teaching but may legitimately assume the role of political actors. Within this framework, academic boycotts are framed as essential instruments for exerting pressure on governments that contravene international law.
These contrasting conceptions of the university’s societal mission derive from modern and postmodern epistemological frameworks. The modern perspective conceives of scientific research as a pursuit of universal knowledge that underpins social progress, with academic freedom and institutional neutrality considered indispensable for safeguarding the objectivity and impartiality of knowledge production. By contrast, the postmodern approach interprets scientific knowledge as situated, contingent, and entangled with structures of power. From this standpoint, the academic community that produces and transmits knowledge is no longer perceived as independent from government, but rather as complicit with it, thereby rendering social progress dependent on a critical deconstruction of scientific knowledge and active resistance to oppressive and discriminatory power relations.
Thus, the controversy surrounding academic boycotts of Israel cannot be reduced to a simple opposition between supporters and opponents of Israel. Rather, it reveals a deep rupture within academic norms, rooted in divergent—and largely irreconcilable—conceptions of the university’s mission and the very nature of knowledge (see Figure 4 for a schematic overview).
Figure 4. Schematic comparison of the two conceptions of academic freedom and their implications for the university and academic boycotts.
Historically, boycotts have demonstrated limited effectiveness in substantially altering the behavior of targeted regimes (Gordin, 2022). Their impact generally depends on broad academic support combined with significant economic pressure. In the case of Israel, however, as of August 2025, only 48 out of more than eight hundred European higher education institutions have publicly endorsed an academic boycott, and these initiatives have not been accompanied by substantive economic sanctions at the European level. Moreover, Israel continues to benefit from substantial military and economic support from powerful allies, most notably the United States. For these reasons, the decisions of certain European universities to impose full or partial academic boycotts are unlikely to exert meaningful influence on Israeli government policy. That said, the number of European universities endorsing such boycotts could increase in the future should Israel’s military actions intensify and further erode public support. However, it is noteworthy that a movement in favor of institutional neutrality has gained traction within American universities. As of May 2025, 158 institutions have formally affirmed their commitment to the principle of institutional neutrality (Heterodox Academy, 2024). This trend is also visible in Europe, where prestigious institutions, such as the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Science Po Paris, 2025), have likewise declared adherence to a general principle of institutional reserve.
In Belgium, although their official communications do not explicitly invoke this principle, the rectors of both French-speaking and Flemish universities appear to have embraced a conception of “academic freedom with moral responsibility,” inspired by decolonial struggles and postmodern thought. Through the establishment of Committees on Respect for International Law (CRILs), they formalize a new standard whereby decisions on inter-university cooperation are no longer determined solely by the nature of the collaboration and its practical consequences (DUCs and RSCs), but also by an assessment of the political character of the host country—regardless of the degree of academic freedom actually enjoyed by the institutions concerned (see Table 3 for a comparison of DUC, RSC and CRIL). This represents a complete rupture with the principle of the Universality of Science, as promoted by the ISC, which explicitly rejects discrimination against researchers based on nationality. In their call to suspend EU-Israel agreements (Cref and VLIR, 2025), the CRef and VLIR urged the European Union to establish a legal framework that would shield their decisions to impose academic boycotts on Israeli universities—decisions they explicitly characterize as “morally responsible choices.” They further contend that “the European Union can only maintain its moral authority” if it adopts sanctions against Israel. The rhetoric of the Belgian rectors thus clearly reflects an appeal to “moral responsibility,” which they place above traditional academic standards.
The academic authorities of Belgian universities have stressed that their decision to boycott Israeli institutions leaves researchers free to pursue individual collaborations, thus guaranteeing, in theory, the academic freedom of researchers and avoiding violation of the principle of Universality of Science and the human rights of researchers. This position is, however, difficult to defend. European Horizon projects are submitted by consortia of researchers. By interrupting these projects, the academic authorities permanently affect the research work of all researchers involved and prohibit researchers from submitting new applications for European funding in cooperation with Israel. We also see in practice that the decision to boycott Israeli universities deeply stigmatizes researchers who dare to continue to collaborate with Israeli researchers. In May 2024, at the University of Lausanne for example, researchers were black-listed by an anonymous collective of pro-Palestinian students (Skjellaug, 2024). Their names were publicly revealed, exposing them to harassment and potentially acts of violence. At the University of Amsterdam, a conference on the mixture of science and ideology was canceled solely because of the opinion of the researchers on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Boudry and Coyne, 2024). If these “witch hunt” practices become widespread, it will be difficult for universities that have imposed a boycott to credibly defend the academic freedom of their researchers. Unlike the DUCs and RSCs that were created at the request of the EU, the creation of CRILs is a direct initiative of the academic authorities themselves. It is therefore particularly difficult for researchers to oppose the decisions of such a committee because the academic authorities are unlikely to support them. Moreover, the presence of legal experts within these committees, though fully justified considering the committee’s mission, introduces significant asymmetry in the balance of power in case of conflicts with researchers. Dual-use experts can generally only assert presumptions of risk in their arguments. In contrast, legal experts can cite the authority of international institutions, such as the ICC, to support their recommendations. These arguments are difficult to dispute by researchers who do not have expertise in international law.
More broadly, the new standards of cooperation adopted by Belgian universities—as well as by several other European institutions—are likely to encourage academic authorities to take official stances on international conflicts. Such practices risk imposing upon the entire university community a specific political and moral vision, justified through reference to international law. At the same time, numerous models (Burke et al., 2009; Mach et al., 2019; Kemp et al., 2022) predict that climate change will intensify competition over resources and, consequently, increase both the frequency and the severity of conflicts. In an increasingly polarized world marked by territorial disputes, violations of international law may become routine, potentially rendering academic boycotts ordinary rather than exceptional. This dynamic raises the prospect of a lasting fragmentation of the international scientific community and even the resurgence of nationalist scientific movements—an outcome that would represent a profound regression.
A further challenge for universities concerns the growing normalization of governance practices rooted in what Nils Brunsson has conceptualized as “organized hypocrisy” (Brunsson, 1989). This occurs when a gap emerges between the values an institution proclaims, the rules or procedures it formally adopts, and the practices it actually implements. For universities operating in a highly complex environment shaped by multiple and often contradictory pressures, such discrepancies can become a strategic mode of adaptation. Yet the implications are troubling. For instance, if a university declares the defense of international law as a foundational value but in practice refrains from boycotting all states that violate international law and human rights, its moral authority and legitimacy are weakened, reinforcing perceptions of political bias and partisanship. This inconsistency is inevitable: while European universities may afford to boycott a state such as Israel, it is difficult to imagine that they would sever relations with the United States—even though it is Israel’s principal ally and main arms supplier. Furthermore, the promotion of international law by CRILs may directly clash with the security imperatives and strategic interests advanced by RSCs, generating dilemmas that may prove irreconcilable.
Most importantly, the increasing politicization of universities risks fundamentally transforming public and governmental perceptions of academic institutions and expertise. Once universities are regarded as political actors, they also become legitimate political targets, jeopardizing their funding and thus affecting their primary missions of teaching and research. Politicization can further erode trust in graduates who later assume influential roles—such as journalists or judges—thereby fueling popular resentment toward elites and contributing to the rise of populism. Moreover, when scientific knowledge is perceived as politically motivated, its credibility as an objective foundation for public deliberation on urgent challenges—ranging from public health and climate change to biodiversity loss and pollution—is severely undermined. The long-term consequences of universities abandoning neutrality or institutional restraint in favor of political activism—manifested in measures such as academic boycotts or the creation of CRILs that hold researchers collectively responsible for the decisions of their governments—therefore warrant close and sustained scrutiny.
Author contributions
EM: Writing – review & editing, Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Formal analysis, Validation.
Funding
The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Generative AI statement
The author declares that Gen AI was used in the creation of this manuscript. Generative AI was used only to collect boycott statements from European universities. This information was verified, and a web link was provided in the article for each boycott statement.
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Keywords: academic freedom, institutional neutrality, institutional restraint, dual use regulation, academic boycott, Committees on Respect for International Law
Citation: Muraille E (2026) Are Committees on Respect for International Law within universities a new threat to academic freedom? Front. Educ. 10:1617627. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1617627
Edited by:
Peter David Tolmie, University of Siegen, GermanyReviewed by:
Elisa De Carvalho, Sapienza University of Rome, ItalyMeriem Mokdad Zmitri, University of Tunis, Tunisia
Copyright © 2026 Muraille. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Eric Muraille, ZW11cmFpbGxlQGhvdG1haWwuY29t; ZXJpYy5tdXJhaWxsZUB1bGIuYmU=