Anthropology under Apartheid

Bureaucratic Violence and the Complicity of German Institutions

In this event, we will kick off Israeli Apartheid Week, a week of events taking place in universities across Germany, which seek to raise awareness of Israel’s apartheid regime and the necessity for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions. On Monday, April 20, we will hear from three different anthropologists about their experiences and research relating to Israeli apartheid.

The first speaker, Thayer Hastings, will speak about the violence Israel’s bureaucracy has inflicted upon Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem. He has investigated the forms of governance which emerge from bureaucratic processes intended to create a Jewish majority in the land of Palestine, and analyzed the use of the term “apartheid” in its legal and historical dimensions.

The second guest, Fadi Bardawil, will speak about the role of Western and Zionist anthropology in the erasure of Palestinians historical presence on the land of Palestine. Our third guest will be a member of the Decoco collective who will speak about the complicity of German academic institutions in Israel’s apartheid system and how they punish anti-Zionist dissent.

Finally, we will connect the discussion to our campaign for an institute-wide boycott in the Anthropological Department at the Free University of Berlin and explain why it is important to build a grassroots movement to advocate for severing ties with Israeli academia.