The Dan David Prize and Liberal Zionist Academic Washing: An Explainer

By: Boycott Dan David Prize Campaign (BDDPC)

The Dan David Prize (DDP) is an international award that recognizes “the work of historians, art historians, archaeologists, digital humanists, curators, documentary filmmakers and all those who deepen our knowledge and understanding of the past.” As historian Ussama Makdisi notes, “no Palestinian has ever been awarded this prize and no topic relating to Palestinian history has been recognized,” raising the crucial question of whose “knowledge and understanding of the past” the DDP recognizes.

The DDP is just one of many high-profile prizes connected to Israeli academia that the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement has explicitly condemned as part of coordinated efforts to secure “a place for Israel in the global academic and cultural arena as part of its untiring efforts to make Israel appear as a normal state and society.” Other prizes include the Wolf Prize, awarded to scientists and artists for their “achievements in the interest of mankind and friendly relations amongst peoples,” and the Jerusalem Prize, awarded to writers promoting “freedom of the individual in society.”¹ In previous years, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), which oversees the academic and cultural boycott aspects of BDS, has called on Wolf Prize and Jerusalem Prize recipients to reject these awards.

In 2022 when the DDP was relaunched as “the largest history prize in the world,” PACBI immediately urged recipients to reject the award. PACBI’s initial call to reject the DDP emphasized that the Dan David Foundation (DDF) and Tel Aviv University (TAU), which respectively endow and headquarter the prize, are “two institutions that are deeply complicit in Israel’s regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.” Since 2022 as more and more scholars and communities in solidarity with Palestine have learned about the DDP, calls to reject the prize have been gaining momentum, especially in the midst of Israel’s ongoing genocide of Gaza.

The DDP and DDF’s Ties to Tel Aviv University

Dan David himself initiated multiple philanthropic projects at TAU both during and after his death. During his lifetime, Dan David also served as a member of TAU’s Board of Governors. In 1996, the DDF funded the building of the Dan David Building at TAU “to provide the university with additional classroom space as it faced a major increase in enrollments, following the mass immigration to Israel from the Soviet Union during the early 1990s.” In 2022, the DDF also contributed to major renovations of the Dan David Building. In 2018, the DDF opened the Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research as part of the Natural History Museum at TAU. Since 2021, the DDF has allocated $300,000 USD in DDP endowment funds to TAU annually to fund the Dan David Society of Fellows to attract international postdoctoral scholars.

The DDP is headquartered at Tel Aviv University (TAU), an institution that is deeply enmeshed in both the military-industrial complex that continues to perpetrate Israeli settler colonial violence upon Palestinians, as well as the liberal normalization of the Israeli settler colonial state. TAU’s campus stands on the lands of the Palestinian village of al-Shaykh Muwannis, whose residents were displaced in 1948. This spatial transformation—replacing a Palestinian village with a modern Israeli university whose activities continue to support Israeli settler colonialism—embodies the erasure of Palestinian presence and history that Zionist state and institution building necessitates.

The TAU’s Collaborations with the Israeli Military-Industrial Complex

Since 1999, TAU has been one of the Israeli universities participating in the Israel Ministry of Defense’s Directorate of Defense Research & Development’s (DDR&D) Psagot program, a combined B.Sc.-M.Sc. “elite reserve program training for defense-tech service … with military training.” TAU continues to host a range of similar academic-military joint training programs, such as the Erez program since 2023, which TAU receives approximately $4,000,000 USD annually for, provides intertwined “military and academic training” for Israeli soldiers, and stipulates that TAU “allow the cadets and their accompanying officers to carry weapons” on campus and “ensure that the academic staff refrain from offensive statements toward the IDF soldiers studying at the institution.” TAU has also regularly hosted recruitment events for the Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet. The Shin Bet has engaged in decades of documented “systematic torture of Palestinians in Israeli detention,” which has been repeatedly condemned by the United Nations Committee Against Torture and international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International.

TAU houses the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), which has played a key role in formalizing the “Dahiya Doctrine” of disproportionate force—used during the 2006 Lebanon War and named after the Shi’ite residential quarter of Beirut that Israel bombed to rubble—as a common sense standard in Israeli military operations. In late 2008, senior INSS researcher and fellow Giora Eiland produced an INSS strategic document defending the Dahiya Doctrine, stating that “the destruction of the national infrastructure, and intense suffering among the population” is justified because “the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people are consequences that can influence Hizbollah’s behavior more than anything else.” Gadi Eisenkot, who joined INSS as a Senior Research Fellow in 2019 after completing his service as the 21st Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, stated in an October 2008 interview that “What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on,” adding that the Israeli military “will apply disproportionate force” on such villages “and cause great damage and destruction there,” because “From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.” The Dahiya Doctrine has been the guiding logic of the Israeli military, from its ongoing genocide of Gaza to the US-Israeli joint-military operations against Iran earlier this spring.

TAU has multiple ongoing partnerships with the Israeli military and defense industries. In 2018, TAU established The Xcelerator program with the Shin Bet to fund startups in “the domains of artificial intelligence, natural language progressing technologies, data science, and robotics.” In 2022, TAU joined hands with the Israeli Air Force (IAF) to establish the Elrom Center for Air and Space Studies. In the words of TAU’s own press release, research “bringing together experts from academia and the Air Force” carried out at the Center is expected to “help in the development and adaptation of the Air Force's operational concepts, combat doctrines, and power- building processes.” Since December of 2024 in the midst of Israel’s ongoing genocide of Gaza, TAU has hosted the inaugural International DefenseTech Summit, which was led by the Israel Ministry of Defense’s DDR&D in collaboration with TAU’s Cyber Research Center.

The DDF and TAU’s Liberal Attempts to Morally Recuperate Zionism

Despite decades of willing and enthusiastic collaboration with the Israeli military-industrial complex, TAU administration continues to offer empty words of sympathy to the Palestinian suffering that their university directly facilitates. In late July of 2025, TAU President Ariel Porat signed an “Open Letter from University Presidents” addressed to Prime Minister Netanyahu calling on him “to intensify efforts to address the severe hunger crisis afflicting the Gaza Strip” in the spirit of “upholding Israel’s ethical and humanitarian obligations.” The Open Letter further calls on Netanyahu to issue “a clear and unequivocal condemnation” of Israeli government official statements “advocating for the intentional destruction of Gaza and the forced displacement of its civilian population.” Refusing to acknowledge Israel’s ongoing genocide of Gaza and emphasizing “the heavy responsibility borne by Hamas and other culpable parties” for Palestinian suffering, the Open Letter is but one example of how liberal Israeli institutions attempt to recuperate a sense of “moral duty” despite direct involvement in training Israeli soldiers, developing Israeli weapons, and promoting the use of the Israeli military doctrine of disproportionate force.

While the DDF does not actively support Israeli military-industrial complex initiatives, it nevertheless participates in the erasure and displacement of Palestinian culture, history, and peoples. As PACBI’s first call to reject the DDP in 2022 explains, “The Dan David Foundation counts among its partners the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority (NPA), both government organizations actively involved in Israel’s gradual ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” The IAA has carried out excavations throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, displacing Palestinians through the designation of their lands as “off-limits.” The NPA, too, participates in the displacement of Palestinians off of their lands by designating said lands as “national parks.”

In August of 2023, the DDF “allocated $1 million to support education programs and other activities run by civil society and non-governmental organizations that seek to promote democratic, liberal and secular values in Israel” through its Dan David Democracy Grants program. In November of 2025, the DDF established $2 million USD in Dan David Support Grants “to support humanitarian aid, civil society, democracy and peace-building initiatives in the wake of the Israel-Gaza war.” The establishment of the Dan David Support Grants program came in the wake of the DDF’s “Statement on the Need to End the War in Gaza,” which was issued on May 30, 2025. The statement, a mere four sentences long, called for “an immediate end to this conflict, which is causing unbearable suffering and a terrible loss of life,” as well as unrestricted “humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza.” The DDF’s statement paradoxically yearns “for a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians” while obfuscating the acts of genocide committed by the Israeli government against the people of Gaza as “unbearable suffering” and “terrible loss of life.”

The DDF and TAU have never recognized Palestinians’ right of return. Their condemnations of the Israeli government furthers a liberal Zionist agenda that imagines the Israeli settler state as redeemable through criticism and the promotion of liberal democratic values, but remains unable to imagine or contribute to substantive justice for the Palestinian people. Both institutions reject the global BDS movement; support “humanitarian aid” and “peace-building initiatives” that consolidate rather than dismantle settler colonial power relations that insist on the permanence and legitimacy of the Israeli state, as well as the unassailable beneficence of Israeli institutions attempting to bring about “justice” and “peace” from the river to the sea on Israeli settler terms; and promotes cultural and academic initiatives as proof of Israel’s “shared values” with Western liberal democracies.

As sociologist Muhannad Ayyash explains, “Liberal Zionism is at best located in a multicultural liberal politics that sees the foundations of settler-colonial polities as perhaps tragic, but fundamentally sound and geared towards progress and civilization.” It is “an ideology that provides cover for and advances the settler-colonial conquest of Palestine in the name of rationality, progress, equality, tolerance, democracy,” and in the case of the DDP, “academic excellence.” The DDF, DDP, and TAU ultimately promote a liberal Zionist politics that offers no real solutions, but instead shrouds the Israeli settler colonial status quo in the garb of humanitarian sympathy and, in the words of Hamze Awawde, “the indefinite management of the conflict” where liberal Zionist “tears appear to prove that the people administering violence remain humane, conflicted, and fundamentally decent.”

From Palestinian perspectives, Israeli universities are not neutral havens of free inquiry. They are deeply integrated into systems of occupation, apartheid, and genocidal violence. Accepting the DDP therefore crosses an academic picket line established by those most affected by Israeli state violence. Furthermore, recognizing the DDP as anything other than it truly is—a liberal Zionist bribe—contributes to the normalization of Israel’s international standing at the same time that Palestinian lives, homelands, archives, and universities are being systematically destroyed through genocide and scholasticide.

History of the DDP and Its Dissidents

2000: The Dan David Foundation (DDF) was established in Liechtenstein by Israeli businessman and philanthropist, Dan David.

2001: The DDF established the DDP at Tel Aviv University (TAU), with Henry Kissinger agreeing to serve as a DDP Board member.

2001-2021: During the first two decades of the DDP’s operations, the prize was primarily given to established public figures—senior scholars, artists, public intellectuals, and sometimes celebrities—rather than early‑career researchers. Awards were given in three broad periodized categories (“Past,” “Present,” “Future”), covering topics from archaeology and history to medicine and technological innovation. During this time, the DDP awarded three laureates per year with $1,000,000 USD each.

2010: Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSACBI)—the student arm of PACBI which was composed of Gazan students from over 10 academic institutions in Gaza at the time—issued the first call to reject the Dan David Prize, which was directed at Canadian author and 2010 Dan David Prize co-recipient for literature Margaret Atwood. “By accepting the prize at Tel Aviv University, you will be indirectly giving a slight and inadvertent nod to Israel’s policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide,” PSACBI wrote, adding that TAU as a “university has refused to commemorate the destroyed Palestinian village on which it was built.” Shortly after the PSACBI call went out, 50 public intellectuals from India called on Indian writer and 2010 Dan David Prize co-recipient for literature Amitav Ghosh to also reject the prize. A coalition of organizations composed of “scholars, writers and activists of South Asian origin and those working on South Asia and on anti-racist, anti-colonial, anti-imperial politics at large” mostly based in the United States also issued their own statement calling on Amitav Ghosh to reject the DDP. Neither Atwood nor Ghosh rejected the award. In their joint acceptance speech, Atwood and Ghosh accused those who called on them to reject the DDP as wanting to “bully us into being their wholly owned puppets” and offered the reassurance that “We are not against fairness and the creation of a long-overdue Palestinian state.” Afterwards, Scottish-Syrian writer Robin Yassin-Kassab and British academic Claire Chambers condemned Atwood and Ghosh’s acceptance of the prize and “diatribe against the BDS strategy.”

2016: British feminist historian Catherine Hall, while initially accepting the award upon notification in February, became the first person to publicly decline the DDP in May after “many discussions with those who are deeply involved with the politics of Israel-Palestine.”

2019: Reporters Without Borders (RSF) was awarded the DDP, with RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire accepting the award on behalf of the organization. Deloire described receiving the DDP as “an honor” that will aid in finding “concrete solutions for a free, independent and pluralistic journalism.” Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah sharply criticized the RSF for accepting “a prize from a regime that murders journalists.”

March 2021: Over 330 academics, researchers and students signed an open letter calling on Australian historian Alison Bashford to reject the DDP, as did other groups such as BDS Australia and the University of Sydney Staff for Palestine. Bashford refused to reject the award.

2021-2022: The DDP was radically restructured with the help of New York PR firm DKC to exclusively focus on awarding nominees in the fields of history and adjacent disciplines. The DDP Board announced that it would relaunch the prize in May of 2022 as “the largest history prize in the world.” Each year, nine early- to mid-career scholars (no more than 15 years beyond their PhD) working in the “historical disciplines” (historians, art historians, archaeologists and the like) are awarded $300,000 USD each, with another $300,000 USD in DDP endowment funds donated annually to Tel Aviv University to fund the Dan David Society of Fellows (established in 2021) to attract international postdoctoral scholars. Awarding nine prizes each year to early- to mid-career scholars as opposed to three established awardees increases the scope of the DDP’s international reach, as well as preys on the precarity of early career historians without the financial security of tenure and who are under enormous pressure to secure external grants and recognition. DDP awardees grant the DDF and university PR teams the rights to deploy their images and words widely through promotional videos, interviews, award ceremonies, and quotes about the importance of history. The DDP’s rebranding was largely successful, with The Washington Post describing the DDP as “A new MacArthur-style ‘genius grant’ for history.”

2022: In response to Mirjam Brusius, Bart Elmore, Tyrone McKinley Freeman, Verena Krebs, Efthymia Nikita, Nana Oforiatta Ayim, Kristina Richardson, Natalia Romik, and Kimberly Welch receiving the DDP, PACBI issued a first statement, “Palestinians Urge Recipients To Reject Dan David Prize Over Its Complicity in Israeli Apartheid.” None of the 2022 DDP awardees rejected the award.

March 2023: In response to Saheed Aderinto, Ana Antic, Dr. Karma Ben Johanan, Elise K. Burton, Adam Clulow, Krista Goff, Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, Anita Radini, and Chao Tayiana Maina receiving the DDP, PACBI issued a second statement, “Palestinians Urge Dan David Prize Recipients To Help Dismantle Israeli Apartheid by Rejecting Complicit Award.” None of the 2023 DDP awardees rejected the award. Historian Esmat Alhalaby also published “No Palestinians Involved: An Open Letter to My Colleagues” providing further context on why historians should reject the DDP.

Fall 2024: In response to founder of the African American Intellectual History Society Keisha N. Blain receiving the DDP, Hammer & Hope magazine published an “open letter from writers, teachers, scholars, and activists” titled “The Leaders of the African American Intellectual History Society Cannot Remain Silent About Palestine,” which had a total of 69 signatories, including but not limited to: Moya Bailey, Cathy J. Cohen, Ashon Crawley, Angela Davis, Roderick Ferguson, Robin D. G. Kelley, Tiffany King, SA Smythe, C. Riley Snorton, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Blain refused to reject the award. No organized response demanding the other 2024 DDP awardees—Benjamin Brose, Cécile Fromont, Cat Jarman, Daniel Jütte, Stuart McManus, Kathryn Olivarius, Katarzyna Person, and Tripurdaman Singh—to reject the prize was made. None of the 2024 DDP awardees rejected the award.

Fall 2025: In response to Asian American historian Beth Lew-Williams receiving the DDP, Asian American studies scholars published an open letter titled “The Dan David Prize Amid a Genocide?” calling on “colleagues in Asian American Studies and all scholars of conscience to honor the BDS movement and to refuse the appropriation of our fields of knowledge in service of Israel’s campaign to legitimize its regime of genocidal warfare, colonial occupation, and racial apartheid” by rejecting the DDP. The Asian American Studies open letter garnered a total of 117 signatories, including but not limited to: Iyko Day, David Eng, Inderpal Grewal, Dorinne Kondo, Lisa Lowe, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Kamala Viswesaran, and Lisa Yoneyama. While the open letter called on “all scholars of conscience” and hence all of the 2025 DDP awardees to reject the prize, no organized response calling directly on other 2025 DDP awardees Fred Kudjo Kuwornu, Dmitri Levitin, Abidemi Babatunde Babalola, Mackenzie Cooley, Bar Kribus, Hannah Marcus, Alina Servan, and Caroline Sturdy Colls to reject the prize was made. None of the 2025 DDP awardees rejected the award.

Summer 2026: In response to Howard Chiang, Andrew Lipman, R. Isabela Morales, and Verena Meier receiving the DDP, the Palestine Solidarity Action Network (PSAN) and Taiwan Alliance for a Free Palestine (TWAFP) published a Chinese-English bilingual statement on June 23 titled “華語酷兒女權主義者敦促姜學豪及其他獲獎者拒受丹・大衛獎 Sinophone Queer Feminists Urge Howard Chiang and Other Awardees to Reject Dan David Prize.” In response to historian Matthew Champion receiving the DDP, Australian academics published an open letter on June 24 titled “Associate Professor Matthew Champion – Please reject the Dan David Prize,” which had a total of 164 signatories.

Fall 2026: Building on the increasing momentum of efforts around the world to expose the liberal Zionist foundations of the DDP and call on DDP recipients to reject the award, the Boycott Dan David Prize Campaign (BDDPC) issued a general call to all scholars and activists to “Honor PACBI and Reject the Dan David Prize!”, calling out in particular five 2026 DDP awardees—Howard Chiang, Verena Meier, R. Isabela Morales, Max Bergholz, and Andrew Lipman— “whose work explores themes such as colonialism, empire, violence, race, gender, and sexuality” for accepting the DDP “when one claims to espouse social justice in their work.” PSAN and TWAFP also issued an “An Open Letter to the Society of Sinophone Studies (SSS) regarding Howard Chiang's Acceptance of the Dan David Prize” demanding that SSS hold Chiang accountable to its own 2021 “Solidarity with Palestine” statement—which committed SSS “to the international Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement, including the Academic Boycott,” and was issued under Chiang’s tenure as SSS Founding Chair. None of the 2026 DDP awardees rejected the award.

Last Updated: 2026/09/29

Frequently Asked Questions

We understand that you may agree that the Dan David Prize is problematic, and something has to be done about it. But at the same time, you may have some hesitations… So, let’s talk about these hesitations.

What about Academic Freedom?

The institutional boycotting of the DDP called for by Palestinian civil society aligns with the values of PACBI, and PACBI subscribes to the internationally-accepted definition of academic freedom as adopted by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (UNESCR):

Academic freedom includes the liberty of individuals to express freely opinions about the institution or system in which they work, to fulfill their functions without discrimination or fear of repression by the state or any other actor, to participate in professional or representative academic bodies, and to enjoy all the internationally recognized human rights applicable to other individuals in the same jurisdiction. The enjoyment of academic freedom carries with it obligations, such as the duty to respect the academic freedom of others, to ensure the fair discussion of contrary views, and to treat all without discrimination on any of the prohibited grounds.

Anchored in precepts of international law and universal human rights, the BDS movement, including PACBI, rejects on principle boycotts of individuals based on their identity (such as citizenship, race, gender, or religion) or opinion. If, however, an individual is representing the state of Israel or a complicit Israeli institution (such as a dean, rector, or president), or is commissioned/recruited to participate in Israel’s efforts to “rebrand” itself, then her/his/their activities are subject to the institutional boycott that the BDS movement is calling for. For these reasons, both the DDP and its ambassadors (i.e. DDP award recipients and DDP board members) should be met with critical pressure and calls to accountability to the struggles of the Palestinian people.

It is important to note, though, that mere affiliation to an Israeli academic institution is not sufficient grounds for boycott.

But the DDF and DDP didn’t make any weapons to kill Palestinians. Are they really that bad?

As a general rule, all Israeli academic institutions, unless proven otherwise, are subject to boycott because of their decades-old, deep and conscious complicity in maintaining the Israeli occupation and denial of basic Palestinian rights, whether through their silence, actual involvement in justifying, whitewashing, academic washing, or otherwise deliberately diverting attention from Israel’s violations of international law and human rights, or indeed through their direct collaboration with state agencies in the planning and implementation of projects that contravene international law and Palestinian rights. Accordingly, these institutions, all their activities, and all the activities they sponsor or support must be boycotted. Projects with all Israeli academic institutions should come to an end, as was the case with all South African academic institutions under apartheid.

Should I still condemn a DDP ambassador if they use the award money to establish a research fund in academia which Palestinians can also apply? Or should I condemn a DDP ambassador if they visit Palestinian institutions and groups in the future?

Using DDP award money to establish “Palestinian friendly” research grants constitutes a coercive form of normalization that is rejected by the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), PACBI, and the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE). Such moves contribute to covering up the complicity of Israeli institutions and enhancing their legitimacy as centers of excellence, instead of directly and independently strengthening the research capacity of Palestinian institutions and supporting Palestinian scholars.

International academics who insist on crossing the BDS “picket line” by pursuing activities with boycotted Israeli institutions and then visiting Palestinian institutions or groups for “balance” also violate BDS guidelines and contribute to the false perception of symmetry between oppressor and oppressed within the larger system of Zionist settler colonialism. The BNC (including PACBI) rejects this attempt at “fig-leafing” and does not welcome such visits to Palestinian institutions.

If the DDP is awarded to a Palestinian scholar one day, should we still boycott it?

The institutional boycott of all Israeli academic institutions should continue until these institutions fulfill two basic conditions:

1. Recognize the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law, including the three basic rights outlined in the 2005 BDS Call, which includes dismantling the apartheid wall, recognizing the fundamental rights of Palestinian citizens of the apartheid state, and recognizing the right of Palestinians refugees to return to their homes.

2. End all forms of complicity in violating Palestinian rights as stipulated in international law. This complicity includes discriminatory policies and practices as well as diverse roles in planning, implementing and/or justifying Israel’s human rights abuses and violations of international law such as collaborating with Tel Aviv University.

Anything less than the fulfillment of these two basic conditions only perpetuates the illusion of co-existence based on the false premise of symmetry/parity between the oppressors and the oppressed. Without addressing the root causes of injustice and the requirements of justice, settler moves to symmetry still serve to normalize Israel’s colonial occupation, apartheid, and genocide.