Executive Committee

Geoffrey Pleyers [1]
September 22, 2025

A shortened version of this article was published in German in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on September 23, 2025 under the title “Zwei Logik”. 

On September 4, 2025, the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an article entitled “Role reversal of activists and anti-academics”, by Alexander Bogner and Caspar Hirschi. They denounce an “increasing politicisation of science” and present the “expulsion of the Israeli Sociological Society” by the International Sociological Association (ISA) as an example of the politicisation of research by “activist academics”. They argue that too many social scientists pursue political or activist goals and call for greater rigour and objectivity in the social sciences. 

I share Alexander Bogner and Caspar Hirschi’s call for rigour in social sciences, notably when they write that “what matters is that researchers confront the political dimension of their work with the same organised scepticism they apply to all truth-claims.” Scientific rigour, fact-checking and the rejection of false information are the foundations of sociology and science. They must be defended with even more energy in an era when fake news has become so powerful. This requires correcting some false statements and misrepresentations concerning the ISA decision. 

Factual Corrections

1. The ISA Executive Committee decision

• Contrary to what the claim made in the article states, the Israeli Sociological Society (ISS) was not expelled but suspended from the ISA, which is, by definition, a temporary measure. 
• At no point did the ISA prohibit or discourage Israeli colleagues from participating in its Forum of Sociology in Rabat. On the contrary, Israeli sociologists remain welcome at ISA meetings and activities, even after the suspension of their national association. In a letter sent on August 21st to ISA members and national associations, I made it clear: “Our priority has been to maintain a space for individual sociologists from all countries to participate fully in the ISA Forum and in other ISA and Research Committee activities. We do not reduce individuals to their nationality and are aware that many Israeli colleagues have mobilised against their government’s inhumane policies. Israeli sociologists remain welcome in the ISA as individual members”. To this date, I maintain regular contact with members of the ISS and with Israeli colleagues, whose perspectives I deeply value.
• Bogner and Hirsch complain that “the expulsion was decided solely by its executive board, without consulting national members”. In fact, eight of the 21 Executive Committee members are delegates elected by national associations. The discussion on the suspension of the ISS began following formal requests from several national associations. The debate is ongoing: the ISA National Association Liaison Committee is currently examining the issue, and national associations will vote on whether to maintain the suspension at the next meeting of the Council of National Associations that will take place in December.

2. The Moroccan local organisers

In a provocative passage, Bogner and Hirschi allege that “just days before the opening, the Moroccan organisers declared that participation in the Forum required ‘respect for Moroccan values’.” What they meant had been coordinated with Morocco’s BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement: all participants had to denounce the “systematic genocide” of Palestinians, and no one from the “Zionist entity was allowed”. “The ISA honoured these ‘Moroccan values’ by promptly expelling the Israeli Sociological Society (ISS).” 

This passage mixes false claims, misinterpretations, and unverified assumptions.

• No Moroccan sociologist or local organiser was involved in the decision to suspend the ISS. The ISA Executive Committee made the decision in full independence.
• The Forum participants were not requested to take a stance on the massacres in Gaza by the Israeli Army.
• While the Moroccan section of the BDS movement campaigned against the participation of Israeli researchers, the Forum’s Local Organising Committee opposed the boycott of individual colleagues. As a result, the Moroccan BDS movement boycotted the Forum altogether.
• Equating “respect for Moroccan values” with mandatory denunciations of Israel shows a lack of knowledge of Moroccan politics. The Moroccan state normalised relations with Israel in 2020 and has since maintained open cooperation, including some military collaboration.

Science and Democracy

1. Avoiding the confusion of two logics

Bogner and Hirschi accuse the ISA Executive Committee of politicising science when it suspended the Israeli Sociological Society. They present the decision as the work of “activist academics” [who] openly align research with political causes” and make political demands “in the name of science”. 

This critique rests on a false conflation. In any research or scholarly association, two logics coexist: the scientific and the political. Research, panels and publications are processes that must follow the scientific ethos with rigour, methods, and analysis and must be discussed on this basis, with scholarly openness. 

Both the ISA decision to suspend or to maintain the ISS as a regular member and the ÖGS decision to withdraw from the ISA are not scientific decisions. All research institutions and associations take decisions that have a political dimension. Claiming that this was done “in the name of science” reflects a confusion between two different logics and corresponding ethos and contributes to fuelling attacks on science. As all decisions taken by the ISA, it should be ruled by a democratic ethos. To be legitimate, such political decisions must be grounded in an assessment of accurate facts, consistent with the statutes, rules and values of the association, and democratic deliberation and voting processes.

That is precisely what happened within the ISA. Following requests from National Associations and Research Committees, given the increasingly unbearable situation in Gaza, and faced with the precedent of suspending the Russian Society of Sociologists after the invasion of Ukraine, a majority of the Executive Committee members supported the suspension of the ISS, while acknowledging that suspending a national association is never a desirable decision and the need for continued debate and deliberation. The deliberation concerning the suspension of the ISS has been informed by the expertise of historians and social scientists, including Israeli scholars. The question of whether the ISA should suspend any national association at all is currently debated within the ISA Executive Committee.

Acknowledging that scholarly institutions inevitably operate in both spheres allows actors to hold higher standards in each and prevents confusion when evaluating decisions. While science and democracy refer to different ethics and must follow different rules and evaluations, they nevertheless share a crucial grounding: accurate facts, rigorous reasoning, and open and respectful debate.

2. A legitimate debate

In a context where over 200.000 Palestinians have been killed or injured by the Israeli Army in Gaza and 40 Israelis are still being held hostage, any decision on Israel and Gaza will trigger both support and opposition. Bogner and Hirschi rightly note that the ISA decision “provoked protests from, among others, the German and Austrian sociological associations”. An honest assessment would also have mentioned that several other national associations and several research committees expressed their support for the ISA’s decision, notably the French Sociological Association. Some Israeli colleagues expressed their legitimate opposition to the suspension; others welcomed it as a way to raise awareness of the unbearable abuses committed by the Israeli Army in Gaza and the growing international isolation of the Israeli government. Over 200 Israeli colleagues signed a statement denouncing crimes committed in Gaza and the West Bank, urging the international community to put pressure on the Israeli government, and calling for greater support for the Palestinians. 

The objections expressed by the Austrian and German Sociological Associations are legitimate. They must be taken seriously, just like the stances adopted by some of the 68 other National Associations that are members of the ISA. Stances that dominate the public space in German-speaking countries may be minority perspective in other countries or world regions. The diversity of responses expressed in the debate on the ISA’s position is a sign of our vitality and not of our weakness. 

The Austrian Sociological Association’s (ÖGS), that is currently presided over by Alexander Bogner, decided to withdraw from the ISA. This is an isolated move that I deeply regret. Its leadership did not contact the ISA before announcing the withdrawal, a missed opportunity that would have allowed us to clarify the process and correct factual errors. My regret is threefold. First, collaboration between the ISA and the ÖGS has long been productive and should not be overshadowed by disagreement on a single, albeit important, issue. Second, perspectives such as those expressed by Bogner and Hirschi are welcome in the ISA’s internal debates. I hope the ÖGS will reconsider its self-suspension and participate actively in the forthcoming deliberations of the Council of National Associations on the suspension of the ISS. Third, it is a paradox that the president of the ÖGS criticises the ISA Executive Committee for a lack of consultation while at the same time, the ÖGS took the decision to withdraw from the ISA without consulting its own members. This provides a worrisome example of considering different standards for oneself and for criticising others.

Conclusion: Correct facts and scientific rigour

The ISA's decision to suspend the collective membership of the Israeli Sociological Society has indeed triggered a broad debate. Differing positions on such a sensitive topic are not only legitimate but also indispensable for a lively discussion in scholarly organisations. However, such arguments cannot be based on inaccurate facts.

Distorting facts to fit one’s arguments has become a widespread practice among a sector of political actors. We must resist the expansion of this logic in debates among sociologists. The distortion of facts to fit one’s argument is in direct opposition to the ethic of sociologist as scientists and of democratic citizens. As sociologists, our first duty is to maintain high standards of scientific rigour, fact-checking and the rejection of false information. This has become even more crucial in a time when populist leaders target social sciences and use fake news to build their narratives and gain support for their policies. 

The same populist actors often combine the distortion of facts with the dismissal of dissenting positions as “activist” or “ideological”, while presenting one’s own as "common sense" or "self-evident". Such rhetorical tactics undermine democratic debates. We must resist mimicking it in debates among sociologists. Advances in social science epistemology over the past decades have unveiled the mechanisms of domination behind the presentation of one’s own perspective as “objective” and “neutral” while dismissing different epistemological or analytical perspectives, or studies with different outcomes, as “activist” or “ideologically driven” rather than scientific, without even considering the methodology used in these studies. 

To break with this polarisation trend, the debate on the stance to be adopted on Israel and Gaza should start by acknowledging valid arguments both for and against the suspension of the Israel Sociological Society, that differing stances are valid and welcome, and that the integrity of our decisions should rest on facts, consistency and respect.

Although science and democracy follow different ethics, rules and judgements, they have one crucial thing in common: decisions should be made based on facts, rigour in argumentation, and open and respectful debates on values. To defend the social sciences against attacks by populist actors, we must remember that scientific rigour, fact-checking and the rejection of false information are the pillars of the social sciences and the ethos we are committed to upholding. 

Geoffrey Pleyers is the current president of the International Sociological Association. He is an FNRS Research Director at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. Geoffrey.Pleyers@uclouvain.be

[1] I write this reply as a sociologist and in my capacity as the current President of the International Sociological Association. This text is neither a reply by the ISA itself, nor by its Executive Committee, just as Alexander Bogner co-signed his article as President of the Austrian Sociological Association but not in the name of this national association.