CAPE TOWN – High on the slopes of storied Table Mountain, the University of Cape Town has for decades been the school of choice for South African Jews.
The Jewish links to this school – repeatedly ranked the top university in Africa – run so deep that its celebrated rugby team is called the “Ikey Tigers.” Not many South Africans are aware that “ikey” was once used as an epithet for Jews, and it was the school’s unusually large Jewish student population that inspired the team name.
It now has another mark of distinction: It is being sued by one of its own professors for adopting resolutions that come close to an all-out boycott of Israeli academia, while rejecting a widespread definition of antisemitism.
In a suit filed in the High Court of South Africa last month, Prof. Adam Mendelsohn, director of the university’s Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies, said the resolutions could jeopardize his ability to conduct research and infringe on his academic freedom.
The resolutions, adopted in June by the university’s council (its highest decision-making body), stipulate that “no UCT academic may enter into relations, or continue relations with, any research group or network whose author affiliations are with the Israel Defense Forces or the broader Israeli military establishment.”
Given that most Israelis are required by law to serve in the IDF and, therefore, have some sort of affiliation with the army, this could effectively disqualify collaboration with the vast majority of Israeli academics.
The resolutions also reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism – the most widely used in the world – for its “conflation of critique of Zionism and Israel’s policies as antisemitism.”
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The University of Cape Town is not the only South African institute of higher education to introduce such a boycott, but it is the best-known and most prestigious – and the only one with a comparatively large Jewish student population. It has about 400 Jewish students, out of a total of about 29,000.
“We believe that the council of the university – effectively its trustees – did not act rationally in passing these poorly-worded resolutions,” Mendelsohn told Haaretz. “In South Africa, academic freedom is a constitutionally protected right. The university’s council has simultaneously overstepped by passing resolutions that infringe this right and neglecting their statutory obligation to safeguard the interests of the university.”
In his affidavit, Mendelsohn, who is also head of the university’s Department of Historical Studies, says that his research – which focuses on modern Jewish history and often relates to or involves Israeli citizens who may have served in the IDF – may be impacted by these sweeping, “irrational” resolutions.
“Given the ill-considered phrasing of these resolutions, we are left to guess at their impact on scholars who partner with Israeli colleagues, or are members of larger research consortia that include Israelis,” he says.
Mendelsohn is the principal investigator in a project tracking antisemitism on social media in South Africa. “Central to this research is the freedom to define antisemitism,” he says. “The decision to reject the IHRA’s definition potentially imposes restraints.”
Fraught relations
The resolutions passed at the university, which have yet to be implemented, should be seen within the broader context of South Africa’s fraught relations with Israel.
Since 2018, when South Africa recalled its ambassador from Israel, diplomatic relations between the two countries have been limited. Tensions flared in December when the African state brought a case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, alleging that it was perpetrating genocide in Gaza. The ruling African National Congress has long backed the Palestinians.
Indeed, there are few other countries in the world with such a sizable Jewish community – numbering about 50,000, according to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research – whose government is as hostile to Israel.
As a result, Jewish faculty and students at the University of Cape Town say they have faced a harsh reality over the last year. An indication of how vulnerable many of them feel is that most of the students who agreed to be interviewed did not want their names published.
“It’s a scary time to be a Zionist Jew at UCT and in South Africa in general,” says graduate student Esther (not her real name). “When the war broke out [on October 7], I felt like I couldn’t turn to any non-Jewish staff or students at the university for support, for fear that they would accuse me of supporting ‘genocide’ and label me a racist. Even wearing something with Hebrew writing must be considered before stepping onto campus.”
She worries that the new resolutions could potentially expose Jewish students like her to further targeting.
“If someone assaulted me for wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Am Yisrael Chai‘ [‘The people of Israel live’], it wouldn’t be seen as antisemitic. It would be ‘anti-Zionist.’ The overlap between the two is no longer allowed to exist.”
When the war broke out, I felt like I couldn’t turn to any non-Jewish staff or students at the university for support, for fear that they would accuse me of supporting ‘genocide’ and label me a racist.Esther
Gideon (not his real name), a business student from Johannesburg, recounts sitting in a class earlier this year when a professor opened the lecture condemning the Israeli occupation and referring to the IDF as the IOF – the Israel Occupation Forces. “It was very uncomfortable,” he relays.
During the annual “Israel Apartheid Week” event held on campus in March, a group of Jewish students held their own counterdemonstration and carried photos of the Israeli hostages in Gaza in order to create awareness of their plight.
“We were surrounded by a thousand people calling us names and screaming at us,” recounts the business student. At that protest, a Jewish student had his kippa ripped off by a pro-Palestinian protester.
The following month, an installation replicating the Auschwitz memorial plaque and describing Israelis as Nazis was set up by an art student in the center of campus.
In June, a non-Jewish law professor, Anton Fagan, who had taken issue with the university’s anti-Israel stance, was forced to resign following uproar over a question he included in an exam about a fictitious terrorist attack on a Jewish school.
The university does not prohibit students from waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags on campus, or from inviting representatives of these organizations – which are categorized as terrorist groups in many Western countries – to address students.
Nor has it taken action against the Palestinian Solidarity Forum, a student organization that openly celebrated the October 7 massacre and continues to call for the destruction of Israel through violent means.
‘More polarized than ever’
“It’s been a hard year, and in my role I have faced more of the heat,” says Ruby Kapeluschnik, a law student at the university who also serves as vice chair of the South African Union of Jewish Students in the Western Cape.
She says she has lost friends because of her political beliefs, but it has not silenced her. “If we don’t continue to be proudly Jewish, our voices will be drowned out,” she says. “We must continue to fight.”
Given this atmosphere, Esther, the graduate student, says she welcomes Prof. Mendelsohn’s decision to challenge the university in court.
“We have tried to weather this storm,” she says. “However, the council’s recent anti-Israel resolutions struck a nerve in many of us. Suddenly, the university holds the power to differentiate between what is anti-Zionist and what is antisemitic. I don’t know what they expected to happen – that we would go quietly, without trying to defend our century-old beliefs and values simply because they voted on it?”
Suddenly, the university holds the power to differentiate between what is anti-Zionist and what is antisemitic. I don’t know what they expected to happen – that we would go quietly, without trying to defend our century-old beliefs and values simply because they voted on it?Ruby Kapeluschnik
David (not his real name), an undergraduate humanities student from Johannesburg, is also happy about the legal action being taken against his own university.
“It was refreshing that someone who is part of the institution is calmly standing up and saying: ‘There are holes in the logic,'” he says.
Although he says he feels safe on campus, David is distressed by the increasingly toxic nature of the discourse concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “I think students are more polarized than ever, and that results in people not speaking to each other,” he says.
“I think it’s very upsetting that I’m not speaking to people who I disagree with, as that’s not what university should be,” he adds. “It’s a big disappointment, because I really did expect a space which was more open to debate, more open to different ideas.”
Another undergraduate student, speaking anonymously, says it is not so much “physical safety” that is the problem for Jewish students on campus, but “ideological safety.”
“As a very progressive university, UCT welcomes every single person however they identify. But it really seems that the only people that are not welcome are Zionists,” says this student, who wears a kippa. Because he is visibly Jewish, he often hears antisemitic comments directed at him.
“I think that just shows the link between anti Zionism and antisemitism very strongly,” he says. “I think that it’s scary that a lot of students feel that Zionists aren’t welcome, and now it’s backed by the council and UCT staff.”
Another first year humanities student, who would not agree to be named, shares this sentiment.
“I’ve only been at UCT in a post-October 7 world, so I’ve never felt entirely safe as a Jew, and I’ve never felt safe as a Zionist on campus,” she says. She notes that many of her professors refer to Israel as a “genocidal” and “apartheid” state, and she is “relieved” that Mendelsohn is challenging the boycott resolutions.
This hostile atmosphere could explain why growing numbers of Jewish students are gravitating toward nearby Stellenbosch University, in the Western Cape. Over the past five years, the Jewish student population of this school, which had never been a top choice in the past for Jewish students, has tripled to 150.
“As a very progressive university, UCT welcomes every single person however they identify. But it really seems that the only people that are not welcome are Zionists,” says one Jewish student who wears a kippa.
Rabbi Chananyah Duthie, who recently became Stellenbosch’s first Chabad rabbi, attributes the uptick to the “political” and “antisemitic” environment at the University of Cape Town.
“Jewish students want to go where they can just be themselves,” he says.
‘Great pity’
Mendelsohn’s lawsuit includes five supporting affidavits from his colleagues.
“The council is not an international court able to rule on contested and divisive conflicts in the Middle East,” says organizational psychology Prof. Jeffrey Bagraim, who co-signed on one of them.
“Neither is it appropriate for it to adjudicate ongoing academic debates by rejecting the most widely accepted working definition of antisemitism. Upholding the resolutions will tarnish the reputation of UCT, have a chilling effect on academic cooperation and funding, and undermine the academic project.”
Still, says Bagraim, he feels comfortable being Jewish on campus and does not believe it to be an unsafe place for Jewish students and staff despite the “growing pockets of hateful, anti-Zionist ugliness.”
Mark Blumenthal, an associate professor of physics at the university, says that if implemented, the resolution would directly impact his research.
“The resolution as its stands is poorly defined and given that there is conscription in Israel, it could be read that no collaboration could take place with any Israeli citizen who has ever served in the IDF,” says Blumenthal, who also submitted an affidavit.
He is part of a group of UCT scientists that has been collaborating with a team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is also engaged in a project linked to the European Council for Nuclear Research, of which Israel is an active member.
“This resolution therefore could be used to prevent my group from continuing with such projects,” he says.
Another affidavit was submitted by Trevor Norwitz, a UCT graduate who was chairperson of the UCT Fund – an international fundraising body that has raised more $60 million over the years for the university. Last year, he stepped down in protest of what he called the university’s anti-Israel stance.
Speaking to Haaretz from New York, he said: “UCT has a long and proud association with the Jewish people. Unfortunately, South African politics being what they are, there has long been a pro-Palestinian bias among some faculty and impressionable students. In my 20 years as chair of the UCT Fund in the United States, I often had to contend with alumni who were revolted at what they perceived as a growing anti-Israel and antisemitic tendency at UCT.
“But in all those years, the leadership of the university never allowed those sentiments to affect the safety of Jewish students, undermine academic freedom or overwhelm the university’s core purposes of education and research. It is a great pity that a small cadre of anti-Israel activists opportunistically hijacked the university’s governance process to do just that,” he charged.
Norwitz said he hopes the council will “see the light – or the courts compel them to – before true harm is done to this wonderful and vital institution.”
Asked for comment, University of Cape Town spokesperson Elijah Moholola said: “UCT has noted the review application filed in the Western Cape High Court by an academic staff member at the institution. UCT is considering the matter and will respond through the relevant processes.”
