Israeli academia is in a maelstrom. This is how we can move forward
Israeli academia is simultaneously one of the strongest research communities in the world – and one of the most vulnerable. That contradiction is not accidental; it is the product of five interacting crises. My perspective on this contradiction comes from work I have done outside Israel, where I have seen how scientific institutions can strengthen – or lose – their societal relevance.
For the past 15 years I have worked in the development of a trans-European research infrastructure whose goal is to monitor the health of ecosystems and the human societies that rely on them. Its goals included not only understanding complex human–environment interactions, but also to design an institution capable of integrating science and policy needs and working with communities to realize these goals collectively. Whether examining the socio-economic impact of our work, advancing gender equity and ethical conduct in our scientific community, evaluating transdisciplinary methodologies, or drafting and revising our strategic vision, my work has always been rooted in the same framework: that science must be integrative, reflexive, stakeholder-engaged, and oriented toward societal transformation. While my experience accumulated through my involvement in the European Long-Term Ecosystem and Socio-Ecological Research Infrastructure (eLTER-RI), developing conceptual frameworks, ethical guidelines, sustainability protocols, and organizational reforms aimed at increasing the societal relevance of science, the lessons learned apply to any scientific research institution.
This experience honed my understanding of challenges facing Israeli academia today – academia which is facing at least five such challenges that are severe enough to challenge the relevancy of the entire enterprise of scientific research in Israel. Individually, each one is tough to confront, but when the five interact, we are facing a maelstrom.
The first challenge is the degradation of global academic publishing, which once served as the stabilizing infrastructure behind scientific rigor and continuity. Today that infrastructure is cracking. Profit motivation inspired a billion-dollar scientific publication industry that benefited at the expense of scientists and governments. In response, an even more faulted system of open access publishing (also for profit) has resulted in a flood of journals that look legitimate but lack meaningful peer review. Predatory outlets proliferate, and early-career researchers needing to ‘publish or perish’ must navigate an ecosystem of perverse motives and faulty scientific processes. The credibility of science itself, and its capacity to guide policy through a fog of contradictory claims, suffer.
The proliferation of artificial intelligence, particularly large language models like ChatGPT, our second challenge, deepens this fragility. AI systems now produce essays and research summaries polished enough to be mistaken for genuine student work (full disclosure: ChatGPT is assisting in polishing this essay). The concern is not only dishonesty – it is that students can bypass the intellectual struggle that transforms information into understanding. When an algorithm can produce a plausible draft of a manuscript, it forces us to examine what our originality still consists of. AI exposes where our routines have drifted from genuine insight, and where human judgment still matters.
These disruptions unfold within a digital social media environment that is uniquely corrosive (challenge #3). Some years ago, in an effort to understand how scientific and political discussions circulate online, I created a fake social-media identity that allowed me to move more freely across Facebook, meeting people (and in retrospect, bots) with whom I would otherwise have no contact. The experience was ultimately terrifying. Conversations that began innocently descended into mean-spirited exchanges, conspiratorial spirals, bullying, and unhinged rhetoric untethered from any recognizable reality. That experiment revealed how easily platforms amplify hostility and confusion – and how quickly thoughtful discourse was drowned out by intolerance, hostility, and bad actors. The consequences spill into policy: vaccine debates warped by misinformation, climate discussions overshadowed by confident falsehoods, and scientific expertise crowded out by nonsense and propaganda. In such an environment, even the most rigorous academic work struggles to find traction. These problems are common to researchers around the world.
Israel, always the special case, has two additional challenges that aggravate the situation even further – the fallout of the brutal Israel-Hamas war and the government’s ongoing deconstruction of democratic institutions.
Into this destabilized landscape came, the Hamas–Israel war, which has intensified the isolation of Israeli scholars (challenge #4). That isolation is especially painful because Israeli universities consistently rank among the world’s leading institutions, attract prodigious amounts of European and international research funding, and have produced one of the highest per-capita numbers of Nobel laureates anywhere. Despite this record, boycotts are proliferating, collaborations have stalled, invitations have lessened, and colleagues abroad increasingly distance themselves – not because of scientific disagreement, but because associating with Israeli institutions has become politically fraught. The message, intended or not, is that identity, especially for Israelis, now outweighs achievement. Inside Israel, meanwhile, campuses operate under the emotional weight of war, making open and inclusive inquiry difficult when thoughtful conversation is most needed.
Political developments, challenge #5, deepen these vulnerabilities. Democratic backsliding in Israel has already shown how quickly academic independence can become a casualty. Recent legislation aimed at curbing dissent on campuses – framed as targeting support for BDS or expressions of concern for Palestinian suffering – signals a willingness to impose ideological boundaries on academic speech. It rests on the same slippery slope that allowed the defence minister to block the promotion of an army officer solely for his past affiliation with Brothers in Arms. These examples make plain that political loyalty tests are no longer hypothetical, and multiple attempts are indeed underway to install sympathizers in key academic and research committees. For anyone familiar with university governance, this is not an abstract threat but a direct warning about how quickly the protections enabling scientific inquiry can erode.
Yet Israeli universities have shown remarkable resilience. They adapted during COVID, persisted through the judicial crisis, and continue teaching and researching through a multiple-front war now entering its second year. These institutions have already proven that they can withstand shocks that would destabilize less cohesive systems. Recognizing the interconnectedness of these crises clarifies the path forward.
The conclusions I draw for Israeli academia today emerge directly from years of work in European research infrastructures: organizational transformation and maintenance of societal relevance require ethical commitments, stakeholder engagement, and sustainability integrated into everyday practice. In eLTER-RI, these principles were formalized through strategic plans, ethical guidelines, and institutionalized transdisciplinarity that expanded the societal impact of science. Applied to Israeli academia, they point toward a future grounded in three reinforcing pillars. Ethics education is essential because the crises we face – AI, democratic fragility, social-media distortions – are not just technical problems but moral ones. Community engagement is essential because universities lose public trust when they retreat into technical expertise; trust is rebuilt only through proximity, humility, and genuine collaboration. And sustainability, in its fullest sense (environmental, social, institutional) is essential because the future of academia depends not only on what knowledge we produce, but on the conditions that allow knowledge to improve people’s lives.
These are not peripheral tasks for calmer times; they are the core of what academic life must become. The challenge now is to align the resilience Israeli universities have already demonstrated with purpose to cultivate an academic culture capable not only of weathering the maelstrom, but of shaping a future worthy of the society we serve.
