Israeli universities have long enjoyed a reputation as liberal bastions of freedom and democracy and they enjoy warm relationships with their counterparts in north America and Europe - including the University of Columbia. However, as Maya Wind explains in today's episode, contrary to the depiction of Israeli universities as centres of pluralism and free inquiry these institutions are directly complicit in the project to dispossess Palestinians of their land and rights.

In her new book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom. Maya reveals how academic disciplines, degree programs, campus infrastructure, and research laboratories all service Israeli occupation and apartheid, while universities violate the rights of Palestinians to education, stifle critical scholarship, and violently repress student dissent.