Center for Israel Studies Vienna

08/06/2026

REMINDER – TONIGHT

Evening Panel Discussion
8 June 2026, 18:00

Academic Cooperation in a Time of Crisis – The Case of Israel in International Perspective

If you intend to attend, please complete your registration if you have not yet done so.
[email protected]



The Center for Israel Studies Vienna, supported by the Future Funds of the Republic of Austria, invites you to an evening panel discussion with

Emmanuel Nahshon, Coordinator of the Task Force for Combatting Academic Boycotts, Association of Israeli Universities
Dr. Eric Zimmerman, former CEO German Israeli Society
Prof. Dr. Milette Shamir, Vice President for International Relations Tel Aviv University

Welcome and Moderator:
Prof. (em.) Dr. Mitchell Ash

Date: 8 June 2026, 18:00h
Venue: University of Vienna, Aula am Campus, Hof 1.11 (Altes AKH), 1090 Vienna

Description of the event
Public debate about international academic cooperation involving Israeli scientists and scholars or their supporting institutions has sharpened since the horrific events of October 7, 2023. Efforts to boycott Israeli institutions or to prevent Israeli colleagues from participating in scientific or scholarly events have gone far beyond public statements by fringe groups, despite frequent warnings that such efforts are harmful to science and scholarship and a threat to the freedom of teaching and research. What is the current state of play? Are boycott efforts becoming institutionalized? Is this issue limited to the social sciences, humanities, and cultural studies, or are boycott activities also taking hold in the natural, biomedical, and technical sciences, and even at the level of universities themselves? What is the possible or actual impact of all this on academic work in Israel, and on international science and scholarship? Is this issue best seen as an example of a growing influence of politics on academic cooperation worldwide? And how does this look at the local level - have efforts to improve cooperation among Jewish and non-Jewish students in Israeli universities been successful?

We look forward to welcoming you this evening.

31/05/2026

Invitation
“Academic Cooperation in a Time of Crisis –
The Case of Israel in International Perspective”

The Center for Israel Studies Vienna, supported by the Future Funds of the Republic of Austria, invites you to an evening panel discussion with

Emmanuel Nahshon, Coordinator of the Task Force for Combatting Academic Boycotts, Association of Israeli Universities
Dr. Eric Zimmerman, former CEO German Israeli Society
Prof. Dr. Milette Shamir, Vice President for International Relations Tel Aviv University

Welcome and Moderator:
Prof. (em.) Dr. Mitchell Ash

🔴Date: 8 June 2026, 18:00h
➡️Venue: University of Vienna, Aula am Campus, Hof 1.11 (Altes AKH), 1090 Vienna

👉Please register: [email protected]

Description of the event
Public debate about international academic cooperation involving Israeli scientists and scholars or their supporting institutions has sharpened since the horrific events of October 7, 2023. Efforts to boycott Israeli institutions or to prevent Israeli colleagues from participating in scientific or scholarly events have gone far beyond public statements by fringe groups, despite frequent warnings that such efforts are harmful to science and scholarship and a threat to the freedom of teaching and research. What is the current state of play? Are boycott efforts becoming institutionalized? Is this issue limited to the social sciences, humanities, and cultural studies, or are boycott activities also taking hold in the natural, biomedical, and technical sciences, and even at the level of universities themselves? What is the possible or actual impact of all this on academic work in Israel, and on international science and scholarship? Is this issue best seen as an example of a growing influence of politics on academic cooperation worldwide? And how does this look at the local level - have efforts to improve cooperation among Jewish and non-Jewish students in Israeli universities been successful?

19/05/2026

TONIGHT
18:00h

Invitation - Einladung - הַזמָנָה

The Institute for Political Science, CeSCoS,
University of Vienna and the Center for
Israel Studies Vienna, supported by the New
Israel Fund and the Future Funds of the
Republic of Austria, invite you to an evening
lecture and discussion with

Prof. Dr. Yael Hashiloni-Dolev
“Choosing What to See: Collective Trauma
and Denial in Wartime Israel."

Welcome and Moderator:
Prof. Dr. Barbara Prainsack, University of Vienna, Director of CeSCoS
Date: 19 May 2026, 18:00h

Venue: Main Building, University of Vienna, Erika Weinzierl Saal
(Stiege 1, 1st Floor), Universitätsring 1, 1010 Wien

The lecture examines a specific phenomenon in Israeli liberal discourse: the silencing of people who
publicly condemn Israeli actions in Gaza by others who themselves recognise that these actions are wrong. Combining autobiographical experience with analysis of online discourse and activist testimony, the talk portrays a "sorry, but" mechanism. The "sorry" acknowledges moral awareness of wrongdoing, while the "but" denies the implications. A key driver of this dynamic is the collective trauma following October 7th. Trauma leads to emotional withdrawal, limits engagement, and prevents acknowledging the suffering of others. Trauma and denial thus reinforce each other.

Yael Hashiloni-Dolev is Full Professor of Sociology at the
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She has been the university President's advisor on gender equity (2023-2025), Co-president of the Society for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science (2018-2021), a member of the National Council on Bioethics (2013-2021), and a member of the Committee for the Promotion of Gender Equity at the Council for Higher Education. She works at the complex interface of sociology, family, bioethics, health and illness with gender and repro-technologies, and recently edited, with Sharon Orshalimy,
the collection: "A Body of One's Own: Medicine, S*x and Gender" (2025) published by Lambda, Open Uni. 2025.

07/05/2026

Invitation - Einladung - הַזמָנָה

The Institute for Political Science, CeSCoS,
University of Vienna and the Center for
Israel Studies Vienna, supported by the New
Israel Fund and the Future Funds of the
Republic of Austria, invite you to an evening
lecture and discussion with

Prof. Dr. Yael Hashiloni-Dolev
“Choosing What to See: Collective Trauma
and Denial in Wartime Israel."

Welcome and Moderator:
Prof. Dr. Barbara Prainsack, University of Vienna, Director of CeSCoS
Date: 19 May 2026, 18:00h

Venue: Main Building, University of Vienna, Erika Weinzierl Saal
(Stiege 1, 1st Floor), Universitätsring 1, 1010 Wien

The lecture examines a specific phenomenon in Israeli liberal discourse: the silencing of people who
publicly condemn Israeli actions in Gaza by others who themselves recognise that these actions are wrong. Combining autobiographical experience with analysis of online discourse and activist testimony, the talk portrays a "sorry, but" mechanism. The "sorry" acknowledges moral awareness of wrongdoing, while the "but" denies the implications. A key driver of this dynamic is the collective trauma following October 7th. Trauma leads to emotional withdrawal, limits engagement, and prevents acknowledging the suffering of others. Trauma and denial thus reinforce each other.
Yael Hashiloni-Dolev is Full Professor of Sociology at the
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She has been the university President's advisor on gender equity (2023-2025), Co-president of the Society for
the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science (2018-2021), a member of the National Council on
Bioethics (2013-2021), and a member of the Committee for the Promotion of Gender Equity at the
Council for Higher Education. She works at the complex interface of sociology, family, bioethics,
health and illness with gender and repro-technologies, and recently edited, with Sharon Orshalimy,
the collection: "A Body of One's Own: Medicine, S*x and Gender" (2025) published by Lambda, Open
Uni. 2025.

01/04/2026

Chag Pessach Sameach.

11/03/2026

02/03/2026

Invitation I Einladung I הַזמָנָה

Public Lecture by Derek Penslar

“THEY WILL BE WITH THEIR OWN, AND WE WILL KNOW WHERE THEY ARE:”
GERMAN REACTIONS TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL, 1947-1949

Monday, 9 March 2026, 17:30 at the
Central European University
CEU Jewish Studies; Quellenstraße 51-55, 1100 Wien

Room Nr. C419

To attend, please sign up through this link (see QR Code)
by 6 March 2026

Lecture:

ABSTRACT | Between 1947 and 1949, international debates about Palestine and the war that raged within it received substantial attention from the German press and evoked strong opinions among the German public. This talk shows how Germans employed the 1948 Palestine war to deflect responsibility for the Holocaust and construct an image of Israel as both a solution to and continuation of what was still called “the Jewish Question.”

BIO | Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History and the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. He previously taught at Indiana University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Oxford, where he was the inaugural holder of the Stanley Lewis Chair in Modern Israel Studies. Penslar has published a dozen books, most recently Zionism: An Emotional State (2023).

15/12/2025

TONIGHT!

Invitation I Einladung I הַזמָנָה

Lecture
Prof. George Wilkes, University of Birmingham

„Strength and Peace:
What drove the Israeli religious peace movement after 1967?“

After the 1967 war, Religious Zionist peace activists mobilised to counter the nascent settler movement and to promote diplomacy in favour of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement. They soon created a distinctive peace movement, Strength and Peace (Oz veShalom), designed to counter extremism within the Religious Zionist population. The pioneers of the Religious Zionist peace movement have been overshadowed by the successes of their adversaries, and narrative histories have suggested they failed to win the argument against messianism that was always the focus of their activity. But Oz veShalom was also a remarkable initiative whose strengths and motivations are marked by the influence of the Religious Kibbutz movement, and particularly by a cohort of intellectual German Orthodox Zionists who set out in Weimar Germany to renew Orthodox political culture. This lecture reviews their history, raising questions of relevance to the challenges their grandchildren face in seeking to build a politics and a society drawing on their values and commitments.

Welcome
Univ. Prof. (em.) Dr. Mitchell Ash, President Center for Israel Studies Vienna

Dr. Stephan Wendehorst, Senior Scientist, Universität Wien, Juridicum, Institut für Rechts- und Verfassungsgeschichte

Moderator: Dr. Stephan Wendehorst

Where: University of Vienna, Juridicum, Seminarraum SEM20,
Schottenbastei 10-16, 1010 Wien
When: Monday, 15 December 2025
19:00h
The lecture will be delivered in English.

Please register: [email protected]

In cooperation with: Universität Wien, Juridicum, Institut für Rechts - und Verfassungsgeschichte, Team Wendehorst

Supported by: Zukunftsfonds der Republik Österreich

07/12/2025

Invitation I Einladung I הַזמָנָה

Lecture
Prof. George Wilkes, University of Birmingham

„Strength and Peace:
What drove the Israeli religious peace movement after 1967?“

After the 1967 war, Religious Zionist peace activists mobilised to counter the nascent settler movement and to promote diplomacy in favour of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement. They soon created a distinctive peace movement, Strength and Peace (Oz veShalom), designed to counter extremism within the Religious Zionist population. The pioneers of the Religious Zionist peace movement have been overshadowed by the successes of their adversaries, and narrative histories have suggested they failed to win the argument against messianism that was always the focus of their activity. But Oz veShalom was also a remarkable initiative whose strengths and motivations are marked by the influence of the Religious Kibbutz movement, and particularly by a cohort of intellectual German Orthodox Zionists who set out in Weimar Germany to renew Orthodox political culture. This lecture reviews their history, raising questions of relevance to the challenges their grandchildren face in seeking to build a politics and a society drawing on their values and commitments.

Welcome
Univ. Prof. (em.) Dr. Mitchell Ash, President Center for Israel Studies Vienna

Dr. Stephan Wendehorst, Senior Scientist, Universität Wien, Juridicum, Institut für Rechts- und Verfassungsgeschichte

Moderator: Dr. Stephan Wendehorst

Where: University of Vienna, Juridicum, Seminarraum SEM20,
Schottenbastei 10-16, 1010 Wien
When: Monday, 15 December 2025
19:00h
The lecture will be delivered in English.

Please register: [email protected]

In cooperation with: Universität Wien, Juridicum, Institut für Rechts - und Verfassungsgeschichte, Team Wendehorst

Supported by: Zukunftsfonds der Republik Österreich

04/12/2025

Zum Nachhören: Eva Illouz "Der 8.Oktober"
Im Gespräch mit Doron Rabinovici
Veranstaltung am 15.11.'25 im Jüdisches Museum Wien@, eingeladen vom Center for Israel Studies Vienna zur Buch Wien
Einführung: Barbara Staudinger, Dir. des Museums und Mitchell Ash, Präsident des Centers.

Listen to Veranstaltung 15.11. by Doron Rabinovici on