Hilla Dayan is an Israeli-Dutch political sociologist and a lecturer at Amsterdam University College (AUC). Born and raised in Israel, her perspective is deeply informed by her research on the Israeli regime and her Mizrahi heritage.
Dayan focuses on Israel’s “regime of separation” and the evolution of Neozionism. She is a prominent scholar of Mizrahi memory politics and the global authoritarian turn. As a first-generation academic, she centers her work on social justice and the deconstruction of power hierarchies.
Dayan is a co-founder of gate48 and Academia for Equality, organizations dedicated to democratizing Israeli society and academia. In a co-authored article, she wrote::
“And yet those Jews and Palestinians who work together for equal rights in Israel/Palestine are accused of antisemitism. Right now, it is more urgent than ever to shift the focus from the rhetoric surrounding antisemitism to the de facto annexation of the occupied territories, the existing legal inequalities within Israel, and the plans of the current government. Even under these extreme circumstances, the question is whether the international community has the power to stop Israel from pursuing its most extremist and destructive fantasies and set it on another, entirely different path.”