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Can Academics Change the World?

An Israeli Anthropologist's Testimony on the Rise and Fall of a Protest Movement on Campus

Moshe Shokeid author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Berghahn Books

Published:1st Oct '24

Should be back in stock very soon

Can Academics Change the World? cover

Moshe Shokeid narrates his experiences as a member of AD KAN (NO MORE), a protest movement of Israeli academics at Tel Aviv University, who fought against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, founded during the first Palestinian Intifada (1987-1993). However, since the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin and the later obliteration of the Oslo accord, public manifestations of dissent on Israeli campuses have been remarkably mute. This chronicle of AD KAN is explored in view of the ongoing theoretical discourse on the role of the intellectual in society and is compared with other account of academic involvement in different countries during periods of acute political conflict.

“Shokeid often implies that academia’s moral voice is more unified, coherent, and enlightened than the forces outside the ivory tower, a perspective one might take issue with. But the greater value of this book lies in the deep questions it forces us to ask of ourselves.”• Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

“…a contribution to the understanding of contemporary Israeli society and an example of academic, not least anthropological, engagement with public affairs”• Ulf Hannerz, University of Stockholm

“This book is interesting at least in three ways: it gives insight into the fraught political/ideological situation in Israel; it shows how academics can make a difference (and where they fail to do so); and it gives a portrait of a prominent Israeli anthropologist’s intellectual and political itinerary.”• Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo

ISBN: 9781805397212

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

214 pages