ABSTRACT
Critical discussions about mizrahanut have so far been mainly concerned with colonial practices, structural dichotomies and orientalist representations. It is, therefore, essential to open the interrogation of ideology in an Israeli academic field with contextualising notes on historical changes in its mode of production. Simultaneously, stressing the number of publications as a measurement of scholarship quality is also charged with a particular meaning in academic mizrahanut, where undertaking non-scholarly work, especially for the security apparatus, was relatively common and controversial, as the people saw, to which these comments are also consequent reactions. One of the most notable particularities of academic mizrahanut is that the demand for it in the expanding Israeli academia is bigger in comparison to other places, and bigger than ever, in numbers of students, academic units and faculty. Conclusively, through popularity and desire relations, the broader cultural and political phenomena make Israeli academic institutions themselves interested parties in the field.
