The Minister for Strategic Cooperation, Gilad Erdan, referred this morning to a study released this week stating that in the last decade the joint academic publications of American and Israeli researchers had increased by 45%.
The study which was performed by the ICC (Israel on Campus Coalition) ,an umbrella group for Israel advocacy at American campuses in conjunction with the Shmuel Neeman Institute at the Technion, found that 4,979 academic publications were joint Israeli-American publications in 2015, as opposed to 3,439 such joint publications in 2006.
Even in universities where the BDS was active it was apparent from the study that the collegial cooperation of academics had grown markedly in the past decade. In New York University for example, the average amount of joint publications doubled (191 in 2011-2015 as opposed to 83 in 2006-2010). In Stanford the number of publications had tripled by 2015 and in Berkeley there were 1697 joint publications over the last decade.
Erdan said he was gratified by the results of the study and added that "despite attempts by BDS elements to harm Israel via academia, we can see that they are failing in this arena as well. In the realm of academia as well as in other realms, Israel is a trailblazer. The cooperation between us and other countries around the world is continuing to grow and deepen. Whoever tries to hinder Israel's success will suffer a crushing failure."