Two of Israel’s leading academic institutions have expressed growing concern over a sharp drop in the number of overseas doctoral and postdoctoral students since the Gaza war began on October 7.

The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot and Tel Aviv University warn there has been a worrying decline over the past nine months, with anecdotal evidence also suggesting a brain drain among faculty members.

Ranked first among academic institutions in Israel, the Weizmann Institute usually welcomes 70 percent of its postdoctoral students from abroad. But since the war with Hamas began, it says it has experienced about a 60 percent fall in the number of international postdoctoral students arriving compared to the previous four academic years.

Additionally, the number of international applicants signing up to study at the institute next year has slumped since the beginning of the year by over 40 percent (compared to the average number of applications between 2019 and 2023).

“If this phenomenon continues, it could be a strategic blow to Israeli science that will be difficult to recover from, losing so many people at once,” says Prof. Gilad Perez, dean of the institute’s Feinberg Graduate School and a faculty member of the Department of Particle Physics and Astrophysics. “It’s hard to quantify the impact: we’re losing people in laboratories researching cancer, physics, mathematics.”

According to the dean, “The science we do at the institute relies on international diversity, a variety of opinions. International students are of great importance beyond their large numbers at the institute. Everyone who comes from abroad brings knowledge, experience and a cultural approach that greatly enriches us. The advancement of science places a very high value on internationality in order to progress.”

He explains that countries like China or Iran, “which have become uniform in their science, have been significantly harmed. Postdoctoral researchers are one of our most important groups. They are relatively independent researchers and also reinvigorate the research laboratories. Along with their partners, they are also the ones who enrich the high-tech industry.

“We have made tremendous efforts over the past 20 years to create a rich international scientific culture at the institute,” Perez says, noting that the number of overseas researchers had grown in recent years. “But since the war, we are seeing a collapse in all dimensions.”

The Weizmann Institute also told Haaretz it expects a significant percentage of its international faculty members to leave. It said it was “very concerned about the trend we are seeing,” blaming the current situation in Israel.

Tel Aviv University is experiencing a similar problem. Its vice president, Prof. Milette Shamir, who is in charge of international academic collaboration, says recruiting overseas students has become much more complex.

“We’re having real difficulty recruiting new postdocs,” she says. “People who used to be happy to come to Israel are thinking twice since the war began.”

She believes doctoral and postdoctoral students are opting to stay away for two reasons: the war and attendant security concerns, and pressure from the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

“These are people who are in the process of building a significant academic career, and they are now thinking twice about whether to add an Israeli institute to their résumés when they’re aiming for an academic position later, at a time when there are so many boycotts,” Shamir says. “This includes all fields of knowledge in the university. We’re talking about hundreds of internationals who come each year, and for the next academic year the numbers are down by dozens of percentage points.”

Additionally, she acknowledges a significant trend of faculty members leaving the university since January 2023 – affected, among other things, by the political unrest in Israel.

“We’ve begun to see a wave of faculty members leaving. The change is significant enough for all of us to notice. In every faculty, there are several members who have left and chosen to teach abroad. These are people whom we deeply regret losing, in whom we’ve invested heavily, and who would normally have likely stayed at the university for many years.

“Why are they leaving? Most of what we’ve heard from departing faculty members is a combination of factors: the political situation, the high cost of living and the desire for a more secure future for their children. We’re losing the next generation of academics.”

Shamir also voices concern about a government bill that would require institutions of higher education to fire teaching staff who express “support for terror.”

The proposed law won preliminary approval in the Knesset earlier this month. “One of the things the boycott movement uses against us is the false claim that in Israel there is no clear separation between the government and academia, which we clarify is not true,” she says.

However, “the new bill endangers that separation between academia and politics. If the Council for Higher Education can order an institution to fire a member of the teaching staff for political remarks, this would be a death blow to our efforts. We would not be able to claim we have full academic freedom.”

Prof. Itay Halevy is chair of the Israel Young Academy, an incubator for ideas and initiatives to leverage Israel’s academic abilities. He says his academy conducted a survey in January to assess the effects of the war on research in Israel. In it, companies and faculty members expressed serious concern about damage to aspects of research that have an international component. These include international collaborations, training courses and further training abroad, and the recruitment of students and postdoctoral students from leading institutions overseas.

“In the data now coming from the institutions, it seems that this fear is being realized,” says Halevy, who works in Weizmann’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. “Beyond that, every researcher at universities in Israel knows colleagues who have decided to emigrate abroad. The loss of academics who simply can no longer sustain their professional and private lives here is increasing. Along with the expectation that postdoctoral students who are in training courses abroad will simply find jobs in academia and industry there, there is a significant brain drain with potential damage to research and development in Israel that will take years to recover from.”

Conversely, some Israeli higher education institutions are opening new programs for international students and faculty who have found themselves facing antisemitism and anti-Israel attacks abroad.

At the end of April, the Technion Israel Institute of Technology launched a new initiative following the surge in campus antisemitism in many Western countries. They invited undergraduate and graduate students, and faculty residing overseas, to come to their Haifa campus to carry out their research, teaching and learning.

Researchers with a PhD are sought for the institute’s postdoctoral program under the guidance of Technion faculty or joint guidance with a mentor from their home institution. Students, meanwhile, are joining research projects in Technion’s labs under the guidance of faculty for a period of two months to a year on student exchange or study abroad programs. The Technion says it has received “dozens” of inquiries from students and faculty interested in the opportunity.

The Technion adds that, unlike the Weizmann Institute and Tel Aviv University, it has not suffered declining numbers over the past year, and that there is currently no sign of increased cancellations for the next academic year.

Ramat Gan’s Bar-Ilan University reports experiencing a 20 percent increase in the number of new immigrants who have signed up to study at the institution next year, totaling 600 students. However, it is seeing a decline in visiting international students.

“There are challenges regarding international students for next year, but there is still a trend of interest that improves month by month,” a spokesperson says. “At our open days for master’s and doctoral degrees, there were hundreds of interested non-Jewish applicants from East Asian countries, Europe and the United States. Like everyone else, they’re waiting to see how the security situation here develops.”

Elsewhere, the Open University says it has experienced only a few cancellations from overseas graduate students. Herzliya’s Reichman University, meanwhile, says it is not experiencing any changes. And Be’er Sheva’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev says its enrollment numbers are actually on the rise.