Dr. Maya Wind Book Tour - Israeli Universities and Palestinian Oppression: Higher Education in the Maintenance of Apartheid.

Dr. Maya Wind, University of British Columbia will discuss her new book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom (Verso Press), exploring how Israeli institutions of higher education are enlisted in Israel’s settler-colonial project. From campuses strategically built to anchor Israeli territorial expansion and Palestinian dispossession, through tailored degree programs for the military and secret police, to dominant paradigms in academic disciplines subordinating their research agendas to service military rule, Israeli universities are imbricated with the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

Challenging the widespread understanding of Israeli universities as bastions of democracy, the book shows how Israel’s most vaunted liberal institutions are also sites where colonial expertise is reproduced and where Palestinian critical scholarship, pedagogy, and student dissent are stifled.

The talk will be followed by audience questions and discussion of academic boycott.