Academic freedom at risk as Israeli universities ‘politicised’

Academic freedom is under threat in Israel owing to increased politicisation of universities, a former university leader has warned.

Yishai Fraenkel, the director general of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem until 2025, and co-author Annette Bamberger of Bar-Ilan University, have documented how politicians have used legislation and appointments to official bodies to exert greater control over Israel’s higher education sector over the past decade.

Their recently published paper, Beyond the buzz: analysing (re)politicization in higher education, says the country provides an “instructive case” owing to its historically established arm’s-length governance arrangements, which have been subject to “state-driven politicisation through growing political pressure and partisan influence over academia”.

Israel’s higher education sector has gone through different periods of “depoliticisation” and “repoliticisation”, the paper argues, but it says since 2010 its universities have gone through a heightened period of greater political control owing to legislative changes and political appointments at the country’s higher education governing bodies.

It notes that the government has used appointments to the Council for Higher Education (CHE) – the independent state authority that accredits academic institutions, regulates degree programmes and protects academic freedom across Israel – to increasingly assert control over the sector.

University representation in the CHE collapsed from a majority of 67 per cent in the 9th Council, serving from 1997 to 2002, to a minority of 29 per cent in the 14th Council, which was inaugurated in 2022, the paper outlines.

Specifically, representation from Israel’s elite “Old 4” universities – “viewed by many on the hard-right as left leaning liberals” – was cut nearly in half, from 37 per cent to 19 per cent, resulting in a “structural transformation” of arm’s-length bodies overseeing the sector.

Elsewhere, the government has enacted laws which have sought to increase gender segregation in higher education, mandated academic credits for military reserve duty and levied sanctions against students allegedly expressing support for terrorism, which the report says highlights an increasing political control of the sector. 

One law introduced in 2024 compelled institutions to dismiss employees suspected of supporting “terrorism” (as defined by the government) with a threat of budgetary sanctions, and targeted universities for refusing to penalise lawful academic speech. The decision to leverage funding risks “severely undermining both freedom of speech and institutional autonomy”, the paper argues.

Overall, it says: “Our findings demonstrate that recent legislative activity and appointment shifts constitute the repoliticisation of Israeli HE…Through the integration of institutional, rule-based and preference-shaping tactics, HE is being repositioned within the sphere of ‘legitimate’ political intervention. 

“This process moves the sector from a depoliticised, professionalised status toward one of increased executive control,” it says.

It adds that this politicisation has not been “an exclusively partisan practice”, noting that several controversial bills received bipartisan support. Consequently, the “erosion” of independence of bodies like CHE and the rise of executive intervention are a “structural trend”. 

“Once depoliticisation norms are breached, the appetite for political control appears to transcend the left right divide.”

This has been “empirically corroborated” by external metrics, it says, noting that in the Academic Freedom Index, while Israel remains in the top 10-20 per cent tier globally, it is now categorised as a “newly registered decliner”.

Fraenkel, who is now vice-president for advancement and external relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told Times Higher Education there have been “very significant efforts of politicisation”, adding that the current composition of the CHE for example shows that “the fingerprints of political interventions are very, very evident”.

Fraenkel – who wrote the paper as part of his PhD – noted that Israel was still above countries like the US when it came to academic freedom metrics.

“Nonetheless, we are seeing a trend, and if this trend is not stopped or reversed, Israel may be in a position that is not so good in terms of academic freedom, and in terms of our ability as academics to carry out our job to go and do open research.”

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com