Israeli academia’s complicity in the occupation of Palestinian territories has received increased interest in the past decade. More recently, questions regarding the relationship between academia, the civil sphere, and the military have come to the fore of Israeli public discourse, following a right-wing campaign against a Hebrew University professor for purportedly ‘scolding’ a uniformed student and a sycophantic response from the institution itself. In this paper, I examine a landmark moment in the history of the relationship between university and state: the Hebrew University’s decision in the aftermath of the 1967 War to rebuild and expand its pre-1948 campus, now in occupied East Jerusalem, and thus to take upon itself a role as a major colonizing body in the city. Earlier critical examinations of the Hebrew U’s return to Mount Scopus have focused on the planners of the new campus and its nationalistic and moribund architecture. Building on their insights, this paper focuses on the university’s leading academics and their part in the transition. By examining internal university discussions, communications with government agencies, and contributions by academics to Israeli political discourse in the 1960s and 1970s, I aim to show the willing and active role the leading academics of the Hebrew U undertook in securing Israeli control of East Jerusalem, and their understanding of the political and demographic implications of their move to Mount Scopus. Based on a close reading of the arguments made within the university regarding the move, I argue that much of what was at stake in these discussions – for supporters and opposers alike – was the very ideal of the intellectual and of the academic mission. Thus, I suggest understanding the university’s move to East Jerusalem not as a decision to forsake academic considerations in the name of national interests, as it is sometimes presented; but rather, as the implementation of a (contested) vision in which the institutional-academic interest and the national one are inherently intertwined.