The Israeli war on Gaza, now exceeding 18 months, has laid bare more than the relentless continuity of military aggression – it has revealed the complicity of institutions once regarded as bastions of liberal values. Among these, Western universities have emerged not as defenders of justice but as active participants in its suppression. Far from fostering critical inquiry, they have become instruments for enforcing ideological conformity, particularly in the context of pro-Palestinian advocacy. This complicity is neither accidental nor superficial; it is deeply embedded in a structural transformation within liberal democracies, where the repression of dissent is executed through legal, bureaucratic and discursive mechanisms that masquerade as neutrality.
From the prohibition of terms like “apartheid” and “genocide” to the persecution of scholars such as Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, the academic landscape in the West is undergoing a profound shift. This is not merely a crisis of academic freedom but a fundamental erosion of the university’s epistemological foundations. What we are witnessing is the rise of a new form of governance: Zionist authoritarianism, which operates not from the political margins but through the very heart of liberal-democratic institutions.
Erosion of academic integrity
Historically envisioned as spaces for dissent and rigorous intellectual engagement, universities have increasingly become tools of ideological regulation. This transformation is starkly evident in their response to Israel’s war on Gaza, where institutions have chosen silence, disciplinary actions and the strategic deployment of anti-Semitism allegations to stifle critique. These responses signal a shift toward a new mode of governance – Zionist authoritarianism – where liberal values are weaponized to serve the geopolitical interests of the Israeli state and its allies.
This authoritarianism operates not through overt censorship but through proceduralism, reputation management, legal ambiguity and the suppression of specific terminologies. Universities avoid direct censorship, instead employing tactics such as visa denials, contract terminations, student group suspensions, and appeals to “campus safety” or “community standards” to justify repression. The result is a chilling effect on discourse, reclassifying legal and scholarly critique, particularly the invocation of terms grounded in international law, as dangerous, destabilizing or inciting.
Zionist authoritarianism thrives on the fusion of state power, institutional dependence on elite donors and internal ideological alignment. This creates a regime where certain forms of knowledge, specifically those that challenge Israeli impunity, are rendered inadmissible. Faculty hiring, curriculum design and research funding are increasingly acts of ideological curation rather than academic judgment. In this context, Zionism is no longer one political position among many; it has become institutionalized as common sense, enforced not only by state power but by the very bureaucracies of academia.
Mechanisms of repression
The enforcement of Zionist authoritarianism within academic institutions is carried out through highly systematized and bureaucratized forms of silencing. The cases of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk exemplify this architecture of repression. Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student in the U.S., was detained by immigration authorities based on vague allegations tied not to criminal activity but to his peaceful political advocacy. Öztürk, a Turkish Fulbright scholar, faced deportation for co-authoring a legal opinion characterizing Israeli actions in Gaza as genocide – a conclusion reached by many international organizations such as Amnesty International.
These cases highlight a troubling trend: Critique is not punished for its form but for its very existence. When scholars employing rigorous legal discourse or organizing non-violent campus events are criminalized, it becomes evident that academic freedom is not being incidentally suspended but structurally revoked. This suppression occurs not through overt decrees but through visa denials, institutional investigations, funding withdrawals and public smear campaigns – tools cloaked in democratic language but directed toward suppressing epistemic dissent.
The suppression is neither isolated nor spontaneous; it is coordinated and normalized. Universities increasingly equate pro-Palestinian discourse with hate speech or incitement, framing student solidarity as a threat to campus safety. Academic associations such as the International Studies Association (ISA) have mirrored this pattern, blocking Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)-related panels and censoring their own committees on academic freedom. In this system, the boundaries of acceptable thought are redrawn to exclude critique of Zionism while maintaining the illusion of pluralism.
This collapse of institutional neutrality is not a deviation – it is a deliberate outcome. Antonio Gramsci’s concept of ideological hegemony is instructive here: Dominant narratives become so naturalized that contestation is perceived as irrational, dangerous, or even criminal. In this new terrain, dissent is no longer suppressed from above but managed from within.
Reconfiguration of rights
One of the most insidious aspects of this repression is its masquerade as liberal governance. Universities banning protests cite student safety. Deportation decisions invoke procedural neutrality. Committees are silenced in the name of technical compliance. However, this legal and bureaucratic theater conceals a clear political function: to preserve Israeli impunity and to delegitimize Palestinian solidarity as a security threat. This exposes a fundamental contradiction within liberal democracies, where rights are proclaimed as universal but applied conditionally, especially when they intersect with sacred geopolitical alliances.
Legal instruments once used against organized crime are now repurposed to monitor and discipline dissenting scholars. Programs like Project Esther, backed by conservative think tanks, advocate using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) laws and immigration mechanisms to dismantle pro-Palestinian advocacy. This convergence of surveillance, lawfare and academic repression constitutes a new form of necropolitics – where state institutions, in collaboration with universities, determine who may speak, who may remain, and whose political presence is tolerable.
This reconfiguration of rights creates a zone of exception at the threshold of Palestine. Within this zone, liberalism suspends itself. The epistemic crisis that emerges is not merely academic – it is political and existential. The university, once conceived as a bastion of critical thought becomes an extension of geopolitical enforcement.
Toward coordinated resistance
The response to this condition cannot remain at the level of symbolic protest. While statements of solidarity and campus demonstrations are vital, they are insufficient in confronting the infrastructures of repression. What is needed is coordinated resistance: legal advocacy to challenge discriminatory enforcement, international alliances to apply external pressure, and internal mechanisms – whistleblowing, faculty resistance and governance reform –to expose institutional complicity.
This is not merely about defending pro-Palestinian speech. It is about defending the university itself from becoming an agent of authoritarian consensus. The stakes are not peripheral – they are central to the survival of academic freedom, the legitimacy of knowledge production, and the very idea of democratic pluralism. Confronting Zionist authoritarianism is thus not a marginal political cause but a core intellectual responsibility.