SINDRE BANGSTAD

“Combatting antisemitism” and curtailing speech

In his short preface to an edited volume published in 2015, simply entitled ‘On Palestine’, Achille Mbembe wrote the following:

The occupation of Palestine is the biggest moral scandal of our times, one of the most dehumanizing ordeals of the century we have just entered, and the biggest act of cowardice of the last half-century. And since all they are willing to offer is a fight to the finish, since what they are willing to do is to go all the way – carnage, destruction, incremental extermination – the time has come for global isolation.”^{[1]Achille Mbembe (2015). ‘On Palestine’ in Sean Jacobs and Jon Soske (eds.) Apartheid Israel: The Politics of an Analogy (London and New York: Haymarket Books).}

After years of intense lobbying from Israel and the USA and pro-Israeli lobbying organizations, the Plenary Meeting of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in Bucharest in Romania in 2016 adopted what would later become known as the IHRA Non-Legal Working Definition of Antisemitism (hereafter, the 2016 IHRA WDA). By 2025, the definition, which critics (referring to the eleven “illustrative examples of contemporary antisemitism” which accompanies the definition) contend deliberately conflates antisemitism and critique of Israel, has been adopted and endorsed by no less than forty-five countries, most of these in Euro-America.^{[2]Sindre Bangstad (2025). ‘The Palestine Exception to Academic Freedom and the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 53 (3): 689-700.}

Germany has been among the countries most eager in implementing the definition. German political leaders have declared the defense of Israel’s existence as forming part of the country’s “Staatsräson.”^{[3]Pankaj Mishra (2025). The World After Gaza: A History (London and New York: Penguin Press).} In 2019, the German Bundestag adopted a resolution which declares public support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel to be intrinsically “antisemitic.” The original parliamentary motion, which called for an outright legal ban on the BDS in Germany, was proposed by the ascendant far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which has Nazi origins and Holocaust deniers in its midst, but failed to gain the requisite parliamentary support. Armed with and by the 2016 IHRA WDA and the 2019 Bundestag resolution on the BDS, the German newspapers Die Welt and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung publicly smeared Mbembe as an “antisemite” and “Israel-hater.” The Federal Government Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight Against Antisemitism, Mr Felix Klein, pressured the Ruhrtriennale in Bochum, an arts festival, to withdraw their invitation for Achille Mbembe to hold a keynote lecture at the opening of the festival. Klein contended that Mbembe held “antisemitic positions” by virtue of statements that may be read as supportive of the BDS (“global isolation”) and that he “relativized the Holocaust” by referring to Palestine as the “biggest moral scandal of our times.”^{[4]Aleida Assmann (2021). ‘A Spectre is Haunting Germany: The Mbembe Debate and the New Antisemitism’, Journal of Genocide Research 23 (3): 400-11.}

Mbembe was publicly smeared, not only by Klein, but also by the chief editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) in the USA, and the Bna’i Brit. The 2020 smearing of Mbembe in Germany was a harbinger of the German state repression in the name of “combatting antisemitism” in the years to come. After Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Oct 7 2023 and the outbreak of Israel’s ‘war’ on Gaza, which genocide scholars has taken to characterize as a ‘genocide’^{[5]Raz Segal (2023). ‘A Textbook Case of Genocide’, Jewish Currents Oct 13.} hundreds of public events relating to Palestine, whether artistic or academic, were cancelled. Among those affected was the South African-born Jewish artist Candice Breitz, whose exhibition featuring her work on sex worker-activists in Cape Town, TLDR, at the Saarland Museum’s Modern Gallery, was cancelled in 2024 over allegations that she was a BDS supporter. The allegations, refuted by Breitz, stemmed from her having signed a petition protesting the German Bundestag’s designation of the BDS as “antisemitic” in 2019.^{[6]Philip Oltermann, ‘A frenzy of judgement’: artist Candice Breitz on her German show being pulled over Gaza’, The Guardian Dec 7.}

So was the Israeli-born Jewish architect, scholar and founder of Forensic Architecture,^{[7]forensic-architecture} Eyal Weizman, whose invited lecture with the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese at the Freie Universität in Berlin in 2025 was cancelled at the instigation of the Executive Board of the university, citing “security concerns.” The cancellation came after pressure from the Mayor of Berlin, who told the Bild newspaper that he “expect[ed] the FU to cancel the event immediately and [to] take a clear stand against antisemitism.”^{[8]Ben Knight (2025). ‘Second talk by top UN official cancelled’, Deutsche Welle 19.02.25.}

The UN’s Albanese had long been designated by the pro-Israeli Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as an “antisemite.” There is also the case of the Israeli co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land,^{[9]releasing.dogwoof} Yuval Abraham, who upon receiving an award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2024 was designated an “antisemite” by German politicians and received death threats for having declared Israel to be in a state of “apartheid” in his award acceptance speech.^{[10]Amy Cassidy and Chris Stern, ‘Israeli film director receives death threats after calling for ceasefire at Berlin Film Festival’, CNN News Feb 27.} Example seven of the “illustrative examples of contemporary antisemitism” of the 2016 IHRA WDA declares that “claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour” is akin to “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” – and therefore ipso facto “antisemitic.” Never mind the fact that what implicitly being denied here is an equal Palestinian right to national self-determination, and that Israel’s 2018 Basic Law is in fact racially discriminatory, in that it is premised on an ethno-nationalism which establishes superior rights for Jewish citizens and Jewish immigrants, another word for which happens to be – well – “racism.”^{[11] Honeida Ghanim (2021). ‘Israel’s Nation-State Law: Hierarchized Citizenship and Jewish Supremacy’, Critical Times 4 (3): 565-576.}     

South Africa

“Scary Time To Be A Zionist’: Is Africa’s Top University No Longer A Safe Place To Be a Jew?’ asked a Capetonian correspondent of the Israeli left-liberal newspaper Haaretz in 2024.^{[12]Tali Feinberg (2024) ‘Scary Time To Be A Zionist’: Is Africa’s Top University No Longer a Welcoming Place for Jews?’, Ha’aretz Sept 24.} According to the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), the University of Cape Town (UCT) is “the university with the highest recorded number of antisemitic incidents at any university in the country” of South Africa. The SAJBD cites an incredible 640 per cent increase in recorded antisemitic incidents in South Africa in the “first months” after Hamas’ Oct 7 2023 terrorist attacks, and cites US statistics published by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which indicated an increase of 344 per cent in antisemitic incidents from 2023 to 2024.^{[13]SAJBD (2025). ‘UCT Mendelsohn case: SAJBD affidavit’, Politicsweb July 17.}

The problem here is that using the 2016 IHRA WDA that the ADL has long supported has been found to inflates the recorded incidents between 2023 and 2024 by close to fifty percent, and it would therefore seem that the SAJBD both uses and approves of the 2016 IHRA WDA.^{[14]Shane Burley and Naomi Bennet (2024). ‘Examing the ADL’s Antisemitism Audit’, Jewish Currents June 17.} But though the SAJBD claims in its amicus curae affidavit in the Mendelsohn case to not take an opinion on the 2016 IHRA WDA or any other definitions of antisemitism, some of the concrete examples of antisemitic incidents from the UCT campus it cites clearly fall under the 2016 IHRA WDA’s “eleven illustrative examples” as they relate to speech against Israel, including a shout of “F…k Israel!” and the display of a Hizbollah flag on the UCT campus.  But the insecurity also stemmed from the alleged difficulties of identifying openly as an “ideological Zionist” on the UCT’s campus.^{[15]Merlynn Edelstein (2025). ‘UCT a microcosm of South Africa’s take on Israel’s genocide in Gaza’, Mail&Gardian Oct 31.} One may argue here that providing proverbial “safe spaces” which shields students – any student – against forms of critique from tenured staff or fellow students that fails to confirm ideological beliefs that may or may not be deeply held – is not intrinsic to the exercise of academic freedom, but in fact rather contrary to it. Insecurity in this case cuts both ways:

it is a matter of public record that a tenured professor of South African Jewish background at UCT who proposed that the UCT adopt a full academic boycott of Israeli institutions has had to be issued with private security detail due to death threats against her and her family.^{[16]Kevin Bloom (2025). ‘Academic Freedom Reflection: Zionism Untethered – Inside the Legal Battle for the Soul of the UCT’, Daily Maverick June 19.}

South African Jewish academics aligned with South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) have in their amicus curae affidavits also reported to be so fearful of personal retribution that they will not disclose their residential address to the public documents of the Cape High Court.  

But on Oct 24 and 25 this year, the venerable Cape High Court will see the opening of a high-profile case pitting Professor of History and the Director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT), Adam Mendelsohn, against the Council of the University of Cape Town (UCT).

Perched on the slopes of Table Mountain, the UCT is the oldest and internationally most highly rated South African university. Like other universities in Africa, the UCT was the product of what Mahmood Mamdani has referred to as the ‘colonial modern.’^{[17]Mahmood Mamdani (2019). ‘Decolonising Universities’ In Jonathan Jansen (ed.) Decolonisation in Universities: The Politics of Knowledge (Johannesburg: Wits University Press), 16.} As a result of the 2014-15 #Rhodes Must Fall movement, whose impact on the institution itself was uneven,^{[18]Jonathan D. Jansen and Cyrill A. Walters (2022). The Decolonization of Knowledge: Radical Ideas and the Shaping of Institutions in South Africa and Beyond (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press).} the UCT has in the public mind also become a byword for radicalism and activism in the name of decolonization. In the annals of academe, it is relatively rare for a tenured professor to take his own university to court, but that is what Mendelsohn decided to do in the face of two resolutions adopted by the UCT Council, the university’s highest decision-making body, on June 22 2024. The UCT Council has thirty members – a minority on the council voted against the ‘Gaza Resolutions.’ The resolutions had prior to their adoption by the UCT Council been endorsed by the Students Representative Council (SRC) of the UCT and passed the Academic Freedom Committee (AFC) as well as the UCT Senate, the highest academic body of the university. In Adam Mendelsohn v Council of the University of Cape Town WCHC Case No. 18465/24, Mendelsohn seeks to have the resolutions reviewed or revoked. The first of the two ‘Gaza’ resolutions in question states that:

“No UCT academic may enter into relations, or continue relations with, any research group or network whose author affiliations are with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) or the broader Israeli military establishment.”

The second, adopted by the UCT Council, rejects “the IHRA conflation of critique of Zionism and Israel’s policies as antisemitism in favour of the Jerusalem Declaration’s [hereafter the 2021 JDA] more dynamic understanding of antisemitism.”^{[19]news.uct.} UCT faculty and indeed UCT’s Jewish faculty appear divided over the issue of academic boycott of Israel, with the prominent UCT legal scholar Pierre de Vos arguing that an academic boycott of Israel constitutes a “permissible limit” on academic freedom, and the UCT management scholar Jacques Rosseau arguing that the cost of an academic boycott is prohibitive, and will in any case not matter much to Israel in the first place.^{[20]Jacques Rosseau (2025). ‘Boycotting Israel – UCT’s decision should balance moral outrage with long-term costs to the university’, Daily Maverick March 10.} It is noteworthy that faced with three different proposals for academic boycotts, the UCT Council did not opt for a full academic boycott of Israeli universities and academics, but rather the boycott proposal that was most moderate.                     

Mendelsohn argues that the two resolutions adopted by the UCT’s Council violate his academic freedom.

Academic freedom is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights – Section 16 (1) (d) of the South African Constitution of 1996, which stipulates that “everyone has the right to academic freedom and freedom of scientific research”, a provision which in light of the fact that, over thirty years after the fall of apartheid so few South Africans can actually afford a university education, coupled with the increasing neoliberal tendencies in South African higher education, more than anything sounds idealistic.^{[21]Achille Mbembe (2016). ‘Decolonising the University: New Directions’, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 15 (1): 29-45.}

Academic freedom is not absolute, but limited by the so-called ‘Limitation Clause’, Section 36 of the Constitution. But even though Mendelsohn’s case may well end up there, academic freedom appears so far not to have been tested in any case before the South African Constitutional Court.^{[22]Pierre de Vos (2024). ‘The case for an academic boycott of Israeli universities complicit in the Gaza onslaught’, Daily Maverick March 7.} In the relevant section of the Bill of Rights, academic freedom is mentioned in the context of freedom of expression and artistic freedom, which is also guaranteed. In Mendelsohn’s view, the two UCT resolutions violate his academic freedom by first, precluding him from having contact with Israeli citizens that have been conscripted by the IDF (which all Israeli citizens, except for some ultra-orthodox Jews, are) or who remain reservists in the IDF. In his affidavit, Mendelsohn argues that since practically all Israeli citizens are linked to the IDF as former conscripts or reservists, all 7000 staff members at Ben Gurion University in Israel have been called up as reservists in the IDF after Oct 7 2023. The IDF resolution does not explicitly prohibit UCT researchers from co-operating with Israeli academics receiving funding from Israeli authorities, or UCT researchers from receiving funding from Israeli authorities. Mendelsohn’s claim seems disingenuous, in that the UCT Council’s resolution is explicit about the fact that it is Israeli academics that are active in the IDF or have author affiliations with the IDF, that are targeted.

Secondly, Mendelsohn contends that the UCT Council in taking a position on the 2016 IHRA WDA is in fact taking a position on scientific theories, and in so doing limits his own freedom to define antisemitism for the purpose of his ongoing research on antisemitism on social media in South Africa.^{[23]The Dynamics of Racism, Antisemitism, Xenophobia on Social Media in South Africa.} Mendelsohn writes: “As a concrete example, I understand from the Council’s resolution that I, as a member of UCT, may not use the IHRA definition of antisemitism in conducting research. But I currently do so. The team of students and scholars that I work with are presumably barred from using the IHRA definition when collecting data on online hate speech, as we have done for several years.” Mendelsohn writes acerbically: “Adopting a position in a contested academic debate goes beyond “governing” a university. Definitively deciding between definitions of antisemitism is like the Council resolving that legal positivists are wrong, or that Aristotle’s ethics should be rejected in favour of those of Immanuel Kant. “Governing” a university cannot and does not extend to “resolving” debates best left to academics.”^{[24]Adam Mendelsohn (2024). ‘UCT Council resolutions on Israel irrational/unlawful’, Politicsweb Aug 29.}                           

In a supplementary affidavit to the Cape High Court in January 2025, Mendelsohn also claims that the UCT’s Executive Council failed to disclose to the UCT Council that a rejection of the 2016 IHRA WDA has jeopardized an estimated 750 million South African rand (ZAR) in donations.^{[25] Adam Mendelsohn (2025). ‘Israel-Gaza Resolution cost UCT R 750 million in donations’, Politicsweb Jan 19.} For a potential ZAR 400-500 million donation toward a new university hospital from the Donald Gordon Foundation (DGF), one of South Africa’s oldest and wealthiest philanthropic organisations, was premised on the UCT’s compliance with a politics of “zero toleration for antisemitism”, as defined by the 2016 IHRA WDA. A meeting involving the Executive Council (ExCo) of the UCT, the UCT Vice-Chancellor, and the Chair of the UCT Council, Norman Arendse, one month before the UCT Council passed its two resolutions on Gaza is alleged to have informed ExCo that the DGF considered the UCT to be in breach of contract due to the Gaza resolutions passed by the UCT Senate the same month. A May 2025 a letter from the DGF informed the UCT that the donation from the DGF had been cancelled. Mendelsohn furthermore argues that since most of the research funding of the UCT comes from the USA, that funding may also be at risk, given that relevant authorities in the USA and Germany may conclude that the UCT Council’s resolution is “antisemitic.”

Judith Butler has argued that we need to ask ourselves the question as to the “conditions under which academic freedom may be exercised.”^{[26]Judith Butler (2015). ‘Exercising Rights: Academic Freedom and Boycott Politics’ in Akheel Bilgrami and Jonathan R. Cole (eds.) Who’s Afraid of Academic Freedom? (New York: Columbia University Press), 293.} For the right to academic freedom means precious little if institutional conditions for its exercise do not exist. UCT has been hard hit by the current assault on academic freedom in the USA. The Trump administration’s funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), from which the UCT has received much research funding, must be particularly worrisome for UCT administrators. But private donations to the UCT have also decreased significantly since 2023. Yet the UCT Council voted down a motion calling for revoking its 2024 Gaza resolutions in March this year.^{[27]Norman Arendse (2025). ‘UCT Council votes against resolution to rescind Gaza resolutions’, Politicsweb March 17.}          

Reading the legal documents pertaining to the case between Mendelsohn and the UCT provides a prism for current debates on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in South Africa. There are an estimated 52 000 Jews in South Africa, which makes the Jewish community in South Africa, present in the country since the 1820s, the largest Jewish community in any African country. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”: South African Jews stand divided over Israel, and the South African genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague filed in December 2023^{[28]Application instituting proceedings and Request for provisional measures} only seems to have deepened these fractures.

Incensed by the governing ANC and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s actions over Gaza, the Chief South African Rabbi Warren Goldstein, who speaks to the estimated 80 per cent of practicing Jews in South Africa who are Orthodox, has taken to endorsing the far-right white nationalist claims of a purported “white genocide” in South Africa, and offered the view that President Ramaphosa’s “humiliation” at the court of Donald Trump in the White House in May 2025, replete with the spectacle of screening of fabricated evidence of said “genocide”, was “divine retribution” for South Africa taking Israel to the ICJ.^{[29]Steven Robins (2025). ‘Chief Rabbi Goldstein abuses legal and religious concepts in attack on Ramaphosa’, Daily Maverick July 3.} Though more careful with his words than Goldstein, Mendelsohn is also clearly critical of the South African government’s stance with regard to Israel.^{[30]Adam Mendelsohn (2023). ’The SA government uses the language of a no-state solution’, Businesslive Nov 29.} Lined up behind Mendelsohn, we find amicus curae affidavits from the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) and various established South African Jewish scholars supportive of Israel;^{[31]Milton Shain (2025). ‘Milton Shain’s response to Jared Sacks and Steven Friedman’, Politicsweb July 11 2025.} and lined up behind the UCT, amicus curae affidavits from South African Jews For A Free Palestine (SAJFP), as well as prominent South African Jewish scholars critical of Israel.^{[32]Notably, Prof Steven Friedman and Dr Jared Sacks.} The affidavits also spend significant time and energy on pro et contra discussions of the 2016 IHRA WDA. The amicus curae affidavit from the SAJFP describes the 2016 IHRA WDA as “the culmination of a Zionist redefinition of antisemitism”, whereas the amicus curae brief of the SAJBD declares that it will not take a position on either the 2016 IHRA WDA, the 2021 JDA or the 2020 Nexus Document, which all provide different definitions of antisemitism.

As for Adam Mendelsohn himself, part of the paradox in this case as it relates to the second of the two resolutions adopted by the UCT Council in 2024, is that he was among the original signatories of the 2021 JDA, which was formulated in direct response to the 2016 IHRA WDA, due to the latter’s “put[ting] undue emphasis” on speech and action relating to the state of Israel in defining and delineating antisemitism.^{[33]jerusalemdeclaration} Mendelsohn’s view of the relationship between the 2016 IHRA WDA and the 2021 JDA is somewhat peculiar, in that he contends that “acceptance of the Jerusalem Declaration does not preclude acceptance of the IHRA Definition” and that the IHRA Definition does not preclude criticism of Israel.^{[34]Mendelsohn, ‘Israel-Gaza Resolutions’} To accept the latter claim is to take the 2016 IHRA WDA’s claims about its function at face value, and to ignore the overwhelming evidence from its actual application in some of the  countries that have adopted it as a form of ‘soft law’^{[35]Rebecca R. Gould (2018). ‘Legal Form and Legal Legitimacy: The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism as a Case Study in Censored Speech’, Law, Culture and the Humanities 18 (1): 153-186.} – including Germany, the US and the UK. As indicated by his original affidavit, it would seem that Mendelsohn has in the aftermath of signing the 2021 JDA started to apply the much more extensive 2016 IHRA WDA for the purposes of defining and measuring antisemitism on social media in South Africa, research conducted in partnership with antisemitism researchers in Norway, Ukraine and the USA. Of these, only the USA has adopted the definition, and as far as Norway is concerned, Norwegian antisemitism researchers remain profoundly skeptical of the definition.^{[36]Mendelsohn and the Kaplan Centre’s academic partner in Norway is the Holocaust Centre in Oslo, Norway. The research is funded by the Konrad Adeneuer Stiftung in Germany.} As indicated, when this definition is used for statistical purposes, the effect is to inflate statistics on antisemitism. The contradiction of Mendelsohn’s position would appear to be that he is more comfortable with normative definitions of antisemitism being adopted by university administrations if these are introduced as a result of external pressure from philanthropic donors rather than as a result of internal pressure from university academics: both constitute limitations on academic freedom. In his amicus curae affidavit for SAJFP, Prof Steven Friedman, who self-defines as an “anti-Zionist” notes that the Kaplan Centre at the UCT, of which Mendelsohn is the director, has to his knowledge never offered any platform for anti-Zionists.       

Academic freedom

So what is academic freedom? Much of our current thinking about academic freedom has been profoundly influenced by the 1915 and 1940 declarations of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Though often conflated with freedom of speech, also by academics themselves, academic freedom is distinctive from freedom of speech, in as much as it is “not an absolute right of individual professors.”^{[37]David M. Raban (2025). Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), 8.} Speech that “fails to meet academic standards”, according to the 1915 AAUP Declaration “is not the expert academic expression that merits the protection of academic freedom”,^{[38]Raban (2025), 16.} but what those standards are is up to fellow professors to determine.

Academic freedom is a right one enjoys as a member of an academic community.

As conceived by the AAUP in 1915, academic freedom was the right of tenured professors not to have their academic freedom infringed by university administrators and boards, the corporate donors of the university, but also – and arguably most importantly, the state. The current assault on academic freedom in the USA does of course involve all three, often acting in concert to “combat antisemitism” by implementing the 2016 IHRA WDA.^{[39]Sindre Bangstad (2025). ‘Assaulting Columbia University’, American Anthropologist Online May 15.}

In the South African case, apartheid did provide numerous examples of state infringements on academic freedom, most notably in the apartheid government’s threats to cut funding and impose sanctions on the UCT should it appoint the black Marxist anthropologist Archie Mafeje (1936-2007) to a position as senior lecturer at UCT in 1968.^{[40]Bongani Nyoka (2020). The Social And Political Thought of Archie Mafeje (Johannesburg: Wits University Press).}

The AAUP has historically been categorically opposed to academic boycotts – including the boycotts that targeted South African universities under apartheid. In 2006, in a context in which academic boycott of Israeli universities had first been placed on the map through the founding of the BDS in 2005, the AAUP issued a blanket condemnation of academic boycotts.^{[41]AAUP (2006). ‘On Academic Boycotts’, AAUP.} This statement was opposed by Prof Njabulo Ndbedele, who in his capacity as the first black vice-chancellor of the UCT and no doubt recalling the international boycott against apartheid, in a letter to the AAUP declared it to be too categorical.

By 2024, the AAUP had modified its position in a 2024 AAUP Statement on Academic Boycotts. Here, the AAUP argued 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.” A proviso of the revised statement is that “academic boycotts should target only institutions of higher education that themselves violate academic freedom or the fundamental rights upon which academic freedom depends.” Enter the Israeli case, where the Israeli war on Gaza has entailed a virtual scholasticide^{[42]Henry A. Giroux (2025). ‘Scholasticide: Waging War on Education From Gaza to the West’, Journal of Holy Land an Palestine Studies 24 (1): 1-16.} through obliteration of all Palestinian universities in Gaza through bombing; the obstructions put in place for Palestinian staff and students at Birzeit University in the occupied Palestinian territories; and the curtailing of academic freedom and freedom of speech about Palestine for students and staff at Israeli universities.^{[43]Maya Wind (2024). Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom (London and New York: Verso).}  

But in the conception of the AAUP, the right to engage in an academic boycott should primarily be the individual right of faculty and students, not their institutions as such, so the 2024 AAUP statement does not offer conclusive arguments in favour of the UCT Council in the Mendelsohn case.^{[44]AAUP (2024). ‘Statement on Boycotts’, AAUP.} The AAUP’s reversal of its long-standing policy does of course come in the context of the Israeli war on Gaza, and was severely criticized by pro-Israeli scholars as reflecting “activism” and a “move towards anti-Zionism”,^{[45]Ryan Quinn (2024). ‘AAUP faces criticism for reversal on academic boycotts’, Inside Higher Ed Aug 16.} the latter in the US already declared as equivalent of antisemitism by virtue of widespread federal interpretations of Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13899 of 2019, which enshrined the 2016 IHRA WDA as a grounds for Title VI claims of discrimination under the 1965 US Civil Rights Act.^{[46]federalregister}

Codas

South Africa ranks highly among African countries when it comes to academic freedom. But if anything, the Mendelsohn case demonstrates how enmeshed the politics of academic freedom are in a globalized world. For behind the seemingly arcane scholarly debates about definitions of antisemitism and suchlike lurks the question about what academic freedom may mean in today’s dark world, and how to best protect and defend it against the interests of corporate donors, lobbying groups, and the state. The submission of several US elite universities to the intertwined demands of the state and corporate donors acting in the purported name of ‘combatting antisemitism’, whilst shutting down academic speech and freedom on Palestine is a bad omen – and not only for universities in the USA.

As Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon understood so well, what happens under a state-supported settler colonialism in Gaza or elsewhere does not remain there. 

In the submitted affidavits to the Cape High Court in the Mendelsohn case, there are relatively few references to decolonization of universities,^{[47]Suren Pillay (2024). Predicaments of Knowledge: Decolonisation and Deracialisation in Universities (Johannesburg: Wits University Press).} let alone to any African canon on academic freedom.^{[48]Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua (2024). Coloniality and Contestations over Academic Freedom in Africa (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press).} It sometimes gives the impression of the case being an arcane internecine conflict between the proverbial ‘white male’ academics.

The amicus curae affidavit of South African Jews For a Free Palestine in the Mendelsohn case features the affidavit of a leading international scholar of academic freedom, who has published extensively on the topic. That scholar bears the name of Joan Wallach Scott, a professor emerita at the Institute For Advanced Studies (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey. Scott has for more than thirty years been a member of the AAUP Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, and is the author of the 2019 Knowledge, Power and Academic Freedom.^{[49]Joan W. Scott (2019). Knowledge, Power and Academic Freedom (New York: Columbia University Press).} Scott was a prominent signatory of the AAUP’s 2006 blanket condemnation of academic boycotts. But by 2013, she had changed her mind, and it is probably not a wild guess that she has also influenced the AAUP’s change of policies on academic boycotts.^{[50]Joan W. Scott (2013). ‘Changing My Mind About the Boycott’, AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom 4 (1): 1-4.} In her affidavit to the Cape High Court, Scott does not mince her words, arguing that “the IHRA [Definition] has become a tool for political repression rather than one to help protect Jews from hatred and discrimination” and that “it is not an exaggeration to say that the imposition of the IHRA definition of antisemitism has resulted in a political hysteria that recalls the worst days of McCarthyism in the US.” The Mendelsohn case may well prove to be the first case relating to academic freedom to come before the Constitutional Court. Much is at stake, and the academic world far beyond South Africa will be watching.