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Israel’s Defense Establishment is Becoming Increasingly Embedded in Academic Life

In her 2024 book “Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Freedom to Palestinians,” Israeli scholar Maya Wind argues that Israeli universities have long helped produce knowledge that sustains Israel’s rule over Palestinians while presenting themselves as liberal, democratic institutions. 

Amid an increase in academic partnerships between U.S. and Israeli universities, Wind told +972 last August that the latter “are in fact deeply implicated in Israeli settler colonialism and now in genocide” — not least because entire academic disciplines “subordinate their knowledge production to the needs of the Israeli state.” 

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