Palestine unit launch raises doubts over university motives

A Palestine centre has been launched on the University of Indonesia (UI) campus by Rector Heri Hermansyah amid a row over freedom of expression and academic neutrality after the university invited a pro-Israel activist and academic to speak on campus.

The new UI Palestine Centre, launched on 19 September, is seen by many as an attempt by the university to convince the public of its support for the Palestinian struggle and dampen a strong public backlash against its decision to invite the pro-Israel American political scientist and legal scholar Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, as a speaker at its 2025 postgraduate orientation programme in August.

At a graduation ceremony last week, some people shouted “Zionist” at Hermansyah, while the UI has been widely referred to as a “Zionist campus” in social media. In Indonesia, calling a person or organisation “Zionist” is considered slander and a gross insult.

After a wave of criticism on social media, UI’s Director of Public Relations, Media, Government, and International Affairs, Arie Afriansyah, admitted the university had been “insufficiently careful” in conducting a background check on Berkowitz, who served in the US State Department as director of policy planning during the first Trump administration.

“With utmost humility, UI acknowledges its lack of caution, and for that we extend our deepest apologies to the Indonesian people for the oversight in verifying the background of the individual concerned,” he said in a written statement in Jakarta early last week.

While some academics said the controversial invitation showed the campus was an area of free speech, Dodi Faedlulloh, a member of the executive council of the Indonesia Caucus for Academic Freedom, or KIKA, said academic freedom did not mean “free of values”.

“When it comes to humanity, the university should be strict about the selection of its partners, (based) mainly on their academic record.

“Academic freedom should be in line with human rights, justice and the fight against oppression. Academic freedom cannot become a tool to legitimise oppression and occupation,” Faedlulloh stressed, adding UI was “seemingly obsessed with its international image”, wanting to invite a foreign professor, but that had meant it failed in making a critical decision.

Some questioned the need for the new centre beyond placating the public. UI already has the well-regarded student-run UI Students for Justice in Palestine centre, which some say reduces the significance of the new centre.

The student centre takes part in humanitarian action for Palestinians together with other organisations. Hermansyah has said the new centre will be managed by Students for Justice in Palestine together with lecturers specialising in Middle Eastern studies, geopolitics, geoeconomics, and relevant fields, “to conduct research and studies”, going beyond the existing student centre’s humanitarian role.

Launch ceremony

At the launch ceremony Hermansyah said the new centre represented the university’s support for Palestinian independence in line with the UI’s core values of truth and justice, saying it would be a forum for educational, research and community activities, including studies “on strategic issues related to Palestine from various experts, both at UI and outside UI, both nationally and internationally.

“This centre will serve as a platform for academic communities across disciplines and institutions to continue voicing support for Palestinian independence,” the rector said at the Masjid Ukhuwah Islamiyah mosque on the UI Campus in Depok, West Java. The choice of the Muslim religious venue for the launch was itself seen as symbolic.

“UI is not alone but is working with the Indonesian Professors Forum, which consists of representatives from various universities,” Hermansyah added, after hundreds of professors from various universities in Indonesia delivered a statement of support for Indonesia’s foreign policy for an independent Palestine during the launch event.

Indonesia officially recognised Palestine in 1988.

Rissalwan Habdy Lubis, senior lecturer in social sciences at UI, said providing space for different opinions was acceptable in an academic setting.

“In the academic tradition, we have to listen to the opinion of even the people we don’t like. And we can express our own opinion [and] then engage in [an] exchange of academic and intellectual debate,” he told University World News on 21 September.

“I think UI’s reason for inviting Berkowitz is purely academic, free from a political motive and agenda,” he said, more so than inviting “government officials and politicians to speak on campus as it has often done before”.

But Lubis admitted the public and even some academics in Indonesia were not prepared for such open debate because of the sensitivity of the Palestine issue.

Backlash

Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat, director of the Jakarta-based Center of Economic and Law Studies, said UI seemed to have learnt from its blunder in inviting Berkowitz, whom he described as “not an independent, or neutral academic”.

“He (Berkowitz is a staunch defender of Israeli occupation in Gaza,” he told University World News on 21 September.

“His books and articles defend the Israeli bombing and killing of the Palestinian with the clichéd pretext, ‘the Israeli right to defend itself’. Ironically, he was invited to UI to speak about – as the academic orientation theme read – ‘Education for Freedom and Democracy’.

“Some may argue that the university, under the ‘academic freedom’ banner, should be open to different perspectives. But academic freedom can never legitimise ethnic cleansing propaganda,” he added.

In a recent commentary in which he described the new centre as an “act of repair”, Rakhmat wrote: “The outrage over Berkowitz was not a passing storm. It revealed a profound disconnect between UI’s values and its choices. Students immediately mobilised, civil society groups denounced the invitation, and the public demanded accountability. That backlash seems to have jolted the university awake.

“It does not erase Berkowitz’s speech, but it does signal that UI has absorbed the backlash, recognised its failure, and chosen a different trajectory,” he said.

Scepticism over invitation

Public scepticism about the university’s genuine motives behind the new centre has been heightened by UI’s plan to invite Ronit Ricci, a professor in Asian studies and comparative religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, to a symposium on Nusantara culture scheduled for mid-October.

It was reported to be jointly organised by the UI’s Culture Sciences Faculty, the Nusantara Manuscripts Society known as Manassa, and Indonesia’s National Library.

Event materials initially included the UI logo. But UI’s Dean of the Faculty of Humanities (FIB), Bondan Kanumoyoso, said his office was not in collaboration with Manassa and the National Library in organising the international symposium.

“The FIB UI leadership has never received a request for permission to hold the event within the FIB UI,” he said in an official statement on 16 September, adding the faculty was committed to ensuring activities taking place on the UI campus are “in line with academic principles, ethics, and governance.

“FIB UI emphasises that academic institutions have a moral responsibility to remain neutral, independent, and uphold human values in dealing with global issues,” he said.