Professor sacked by Max Planck Society over Israel comments

A leading anthropologist has been sacked by one of Germany’s Max Planck Institutes after he was accused of making antisemitic statements while criticising Israel’s military occupation of Palestine.

In a statement published on 7 February, the Max Planck Society said it had “ended its working relationship” with Ghassan Hage over what it called a “series of posts on social media expressing views that are incompatible with the core values of the Max Planck Society”.

The Lebanon-born academic, who is a professor of anthropology at the University of Melbourne, had been a visiting professor at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology since April.

He has previously held visiting professorships at Harvard University, the University of Copenhagen and the American University of Beirut.

His dismissal from the two-year post follows an article in Germany’s centre-right newspaper Die Welt over the weekend titled “Max Planck Institute employs Israel haters”, which highlights the professor’s support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

It drew attention to a lengthy thread on X on 14 January, alluding to the situation in Palestine, in which Professor Hage discusses “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing” and “misery, racism, inhumanity and concentration camps”.

The paper also references his criticism of “ethno-religious states” and a poem written on Professor Hage’s personal blog, published on the day of Hamas’ attack on Israel, which refers to Palestine’s “capacity to resist”, “dig tunnels” and “fly above walls”. In it, Professor Hage describes how “Zionists decided to teach [Palestinians] a lesson by upgrading their occupation and make it a hard, unyielding, strict, brutal, severe, unrelenting, ferocious, callous, merciless and heartless occupation”.

Responding to the article’s claims, Professor Hage tweeted that it was “full of half-truths, outright lies and slimy innuendo. I would never dignify such people with a response,” describing its authors as “right-wing German journalists” and “ideological assassins”.

“I am being moralised on how not to be antisemitic and what I should do to love ethno-religious states. It doesn’t make sense but we know that certain political views don’t have to make sense in order to thrive,” he added.

A petition set up in support of Professor Hage describes a “smear campaign” by “right-wing journalists and pro-Israel activists for his stance condemning war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli army and settlers against Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem”.

Professor Hage’s dismissal is likely to focus attention on Germany’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which some academics claim has inhibited free speech while discussing Israel.

The IHRA working definition provides examples of antisemitism such as “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg, by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour”.

In an additional statement, the Max Planck Society said “freedoms enshrined in the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany for 75 years are invaluable to the Max Planck Society” but “these freedoms come with great responsibility”.

“Researchers abuse their civil liberties when they undermine the credibility of science with publicly disseminated statements, thereby damaging the reputation and trust in the institutions that uphold it. The fundamental right to freedom of opinion is constrained by the mutual duties of consideration and loyalty in the employment relationship,” it continued, adding: “Racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, discrimination, hatred, and agitation have no place in the Max Planck Society.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com