As academic institutions across the world are rethinking their relations with Israel, a number have moved toward cutting off ties completely. In the United States, this call has not gained much traction and, in fact, many states have forms of anti-BDS laws that could potentially dictate public universities’ actions.

This might change.

If the current proposed legislation requiring the immediate firing of academics for their speech passes, denying faculty their tenure protections and making a mockery of academic freedom, it may expose Israeli academia to repercussions that were hitherto unthinkable.

While Israeli academia is often presented as a bastion of democracy in a country with an increasingly shrinking public sphere, others have highlighted the many ways in which the academia is complicit in the occupation and the current crisis in Gaza.

But the role of student activists as the foot soldiers of the current right-wing government has not been well-known among the American public. This trend might be due to the privatization of education in Israel, the increasing radicalization of the public and the demographics of the student body – Israeli students are older and significantly more likely to have military background than their counterparts in the U.S.

Their activism reflects a lack of understanding of the meaning and value of humanities or a liberal education. If they succeed, they will ensure that their educational deficits will now be shared by Israeli academia at large.