The administration of Hebrew University in Jerusalem is facing fierce criticism these days from a group of its faculty, for allowing students to receive academic credit for volunteering with the right-wing group Im Tirtzu. This organization works on several fronts and is especially known for “identifying” professors with left-wing opinions in a campaign it calls “the politicization of the academy.”

This critique has been issued by professors who aren’t necessarily politically identified, such as Michal Frankel, head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, who is now signing on her colleagues to a request for an urgent meeting of the university senate in order to discuss the matter. In addressing the faculty, Frankel wrote Feb. 13, “I believe that our role as academics and members of the senate of Hebrew University is to defend the freedom of expression and academic freedom from those who seek to curtail it and surveil it, especially as this is done, frequently, by violent means. I believe that the university will have no ability to supervise the activities of the volunteers and that the legitimacy it grants to the activities of Im Tirtzu, whose primary goal to limit the academic freedom of the faculty constitutes a threat to the continued existence of the Israeli academy as a stronghold of free thinking.”

Law professor Ruth Gavison in an internal communication among the faculty wrote that the lack of academic supervision over the activity leads to the conclusion that there is no justification to grant academic credit for such activity, and that it seems that on the list of organizations that received similar permission there is no other political group, certainly not from the left.

Attorney Eitay Mack, a graduate of the university, in a letter to Rector Barak Medina, who was behind the decision, offered an array of examples for the political activities of Im Tirtzu. He claimed that Im Tirtzu is waging an incitement and delegitimization campaign against human rights activists and organizations in Israel, including a personal campaign against employees and activists of these organizations, calling them “enemy agents” (or "planted") and defining them as backers of terrorism. He further claims that Im Tirtzu’s campaign resembles anti-Semitic campaigns and that the organization is conducting a campaign of incitement and delegitimization against faculty in institutions of higher education that it identifies as leftists and human rights activists. The messaging of this movement matches those of political parties from the right and the extreme right, he writes, and a significant part of its activities are shared with political parties on the right, including advancing legislation.