Israeli Middle East Studies: 82% Call Gaza a War Crime

Middle Eastern Studies professors signed the Black Flag letter, which calls Israel's Gaza campaign a war crime, at 82%, the highest rate of any discipline Olam audited. Engineering professors signed at 15%, the lowest. Both figures come from Olam's audit of 2,844 Israeli faculty across eight universities.

Olam published the original audit on August 17: 50% of Israeli Professors Signed a Letter Calling Gaza a War Crime. That study covered 2,844 faculty and counted 1,434 signers, a 50.4% participation rate. Nearly all of them, 96.9%, signed the Black Flag letter, which states that Israel's Gaza campaign is "a horrifying litany of war crimes and even crimes against humanity" and calls on university leaders to help stop the war. This piece breaks that same signer pool down by academic discipline instead of by university.

82% of Middle East Studies Faculty Call Gaza Campaign a War Crime

Twenty-five academic disciplines show Black Flag letter participation ranging from 82% in Middle Eastern Studies to 15% in Engineering, more than a five-to-one gap between the highest and lowest fields Olam audited.

Most Humanities Faculty Say War Crimes, Few in STEM Do

The 25 disciplines split into three tiers by Black Flag letter participation, running from normative fields at the top to technical fields at the bottom.

Tier 1 (above 55%): Middle Eastern Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Philosophy, Political Science, Law, Literature. All humanities and social sciences that engage with normative questions, what should be, not what is.

Tier 2 (30 to 55%): History, Education, Communication, Social Work, Geography, Economics, Psychology, Architecture, Mathematics. A mix of normative and descriptive fields. Participation falls as disciplines become more quantitative.

Tier 3 (below 30%): Computer Science, Physics, Materials Science, Chemistry, Electrical Engineering, Biology, Mechanical Engineering, Medicine, Engineering. All STEM fields focused on technical problem-solving rather than political questions.

How Much Wider Is the Gap Across Related Fields?

The participation gap between humanities and STEM shows up in every direct discipline comparison. A Middle Eastern Studies faculty member was approximately five times as likely to sign as one in Engineering (82% vs. 15%). A Sociology faculty member was approximately three times as likely to sign as one in Computer Science (70% vs. 28%). A Philosophy faculty member was approximately four times as likely to sign as one in Medicine (66% vs. 16%). Across the full ranking, participation drops roughly 5.5 percentage points per tier as disciplines move from normative to technical.

65% of Humanities Faculty Say Israel Committing War Crimes

Average Black Flag letter participation falls in four steps from humanities down to medicine.

Middle Eastern Studies Faculty Say War Crimes at Every Top University

Signing rates within the top disciplines are consistent across the three largest institutions in the audit: Tel Aviv University (TAU), Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI), and the University of Haifa.

Middle Eastern Studies signed at 82% overall: TAU 88% (14 of 16), HUJI 77% (10 of 13), Haifa 80% (4 of 5). High across all three institutions, consistent with scholars who study Israel/Palestine politics participating at the highest rates.

Sociology signed at 70% overall: TAU 75% (15 of 20), HUJI 67% (12 of 18), Haifa 67% (8 of 12). Yael Hashiloni-Dolev, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Ben-Gurion University, was among the named Black Flag signatories. She told Middle East Monitor the war put the hostages at risk and described the moment as a moral collapse for Israeli society.

Philosophy signed at 66% overall, with TAU and HUJI both showing high participation. Law signed at 56% overall, with TAU at approximately 58% and HUJI at approximately 55%; international law scholars led one of the documented petitions in that field. Literature and Languages signed at 56% overall; Ayelet Ben-Yishai, chair of the English department at the University of Haifa, was a named Black Flag signatory who told Al Jazeera the letter was built to center Palestinian suffering rather than any single political grievance.

Engineering signed at 15% overall, the lowest of any discipline at every institution audited. Medicine signed at 16% overall, also among the lowest, with clinical practice and medical research rewarding technical publication over public political engagement.

What Olam Can and Cannot Conclude From the Discipline Gap

Olam can confirm four patterns directly from the data: participation concentrates in humanities and social sciences, STEM disciplines show consistently low participation, the pattern holds across all eight audited universities, and the gradient runs consistently from normative fields to technical fields.

Olam cannot confirm why any individual signed or did not, whether non-signers disagree with the letter's content, or whether this pattern will persist. Plausible but unverified explanations include discipline-specific incentives (humanities reward public intellectual engagement, STEM rewards technical publication), subject-matter fit (ethics courses invite political discussion, physics courses do not), and selection effects (people drawn to political disciplines may already hold strong political views before they ever sign anything).

How Do These Numbers Compare to US Faculty?

This discipline breakdown is one slice of Olam's Israeli faculty petition audit. The next piece in the series compares these findings to Olam's audit of 2,499 American Jewish Studies faculty.