Genocide. Apartheid. Starvation of civilians. These are all markers of what UT Provost William Inboden called “one of the world’s most remarkable nations,” while announcing a new Israel program on campus.
Despite declining approval of Israel and calls for divestment across American college campuses, UT announced a pair of new programs further entrenching its ties to the apartheid state. The Ackerman Program on Jewish and Western Civilization will start in the fall at the right-wing School of Civic Leadership. In tandem with the Rosenthal-Levy Scholars Program, students will receive a full-ride scholarship and living stipend to take courses on “the history of Zionism” and study abroad in Israel.
The new program at UT will forge stronger connections with Israeli businesses and bolster a white-washed version of history focused on Israeli military strategy and “economic dynamism.” The program boasts access to “high-level internships and career mentorship,” including science and technology opportunities in Israel.
The key pillars of the program refer to Israel as a “remarkable civilizational story” with innovation in “weapons technology, cyber-security and artificial intelligence.” Similarly, Provost Inboden described the state of Israel as a “singular story of political refuge, economic growth and strategic influence.”
Invoking a message about refuge and rebirth while sidestepping the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the underclass of displaced refugees is an act of brazen hypocrisy and erasure by university administators. In a newly released statement, the Palestine Solidarity Committee at UT described the new program and the School of Civic Leadership as “western-suprmacist and anti-intellectual projects intended to produce the next generation of Zionist war criminals.”
According to the university press release, the Ackerman Program on Jewish and Western Civilization and the Rosenthal-Levy Scholars Program were brought about by a $12.5 million donation from Tomas and Abby Ackerman, Gary and Lee Rosenthal and Paul and Karen Levy. Neither the School of Civic Leadership nor the Scholars Program responded to questions about the curriculum, future faculty, or potential overlap with the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies.
That’s right, UT already has a center on campus to learn about Jewish history, including Israel Studies, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Hebrew language classes. Therefore, the Ackerman Program is wholly redundant and offers nothing new but propaganda. Within the Schusterman Center, students can take classes like “The Arab-Israeli Conflict” and “Arab Citizens of Israel,” to better understand how the British Mandate and the Zionist movement led to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and a modern apartheid state.
On the other hand, the Rosenthal-Levy Scholars Program is “a private scholarship wholly administered by Tikvah,” its website states. Tikvah describes itself as an organization that promotes the next generation of “Jewish, Zionist and American leaders” through academic programs and publications.
Some of Tikvah’s monthly essays include titles like, “There Will Never Be A Palestinian State. So What’s Next?” and “Why the Two-State Solution is Dead – And What Comes Next.” These articles are fraught with propaganda, delegitimize Palestinians’ right to existence and statehood, and contain a conservative bent against academia. One article, for example, refers to professors in ethnic studies as “radical feminists, Afro-centrist blacks and Marxists,” as well as “tenured radicals.”
This kind of rhetoric aligns perfectly with Provost Inboden’s prior statements attacking multiculturalism in academia, so Tikvah’s scholar program fits right at home within the right-wing School of Civic Leadership. Ironically, although Inboden plans to consolidate ethnic studies departments, he supports the addition of these new Zionist programs at UT and the University of Florida, where he directed the right-wing Hamilton Center.
“It is not lost on any of UT Austin’s students that our university is launching these new Zionist/Imperialist programs while concurrently consolidating and eliminating gender and ethnic studies,” wrote the Palestine Solidarity Committee. They added that the new program constituted “political weaponization of Jewish identity.”
Ethnic and gender studies are integral to understanding the world and making it a better place for everyone, from the Department of Mexican and Latino Studies to the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies. People of all backgrounds deserve accurate understanding and representation of their history and culture. For that same reason, it is imperative to distinguish between scholarship on the history of the Jewish people versus a propaganda program that glosses over the war crimes of a modern apartheid state.
Before the United Nations partitioned the land in 1947 – allocating over half of it to a Jewish minority – Palestine already had all the marks of a modern, urban society. Palestinians proliferated their own newspapers and broadcasting services, founded political parties and published historical textbooks in defiance of British suppression during the mandate period. Arabs desired an independent and democratic state, while a growing number of Zionist settlers talked openly about establishing a Jewish state. In 1948, settler militias took the majority of the land by ethnically cleansing Palestinian villages. The new state of Israel incorporated many of the repressive British laws and inflicted a harsh system of military rule upon the Palestinians.
To this day, Israel’s system of apartheid, occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza continue the process of ethnic cleansing. The Israeli economy is largely upheld by weapons manufacturing and new technologies that are often used on Palestinian civilians. For example, drones and AI surveillance technology have been used to target people during the Gaza genocide. Divesting from Israeli companies and weapons manufacturing is one of the most impactful ways to express dissent and prevent more bloodshed.
“We call on our classmates to boycott the Ackerman and Rosenthal & Levy Scholars Programs to show that we, the students of UT Austin, refuse to engage with the University’s pitiful attempts to whitewash and romanticize the genocidal state,” wrote PSC.
Ultimately, these new programs may aspire to create students “dedicated to strengthening our civilization,” yet they seem more likely to normalize systems of surveillance, suppression and slaughter that are antithetical to a peaceful and prosperous society. Although it’s deeply angering and disheartening to see the university embrace a program dedicated to Zionism, it isn’t surprising. After the administration suppressed pro-Palestinian protesters in 2024, they’ve doubled down on their support for Israel. Our slogan “What starts here changes the world,” slips further into irrelevance every day. As the rest of the world reckons with decades of Israel’s propaganda and crimes against humanity, the university devises curriculum to cover its tracks.
Disclaimer from the program website: “The Rosenthal-Levy Scholars Program is a private scholarship wholly administered by Tikvah. While Rosenthal-Levy Scholars operates in partnership and coordination with The University of Texas at Austin, Rosenthal-Levy Scholars and The University of Texas at Austin maintain independent operations and administration. Any views, opinions, or recommendations expressed by the Rosenthal-Levy Scholars program do not reflect the official position of The University of Texas at Austin.”
