Open letter from TiU staff members: ‘Suspend ties with our Israeli university partners’

Open letter in support of our students and calling for an academic boycott of Israeli universities and corporations that are complicit in apartheid, occupation, persecution of the Palestinian people, and the violation of international law.

To the Deans and Board of Tilburg University:

On Wednesday 22 May, our students have joined the global student encampment movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza, by starting an encampment on our campus. With this letter, we, lecturers, researchers, and staff members of Tilburg University, express our full support of their protest and demand to immediately suspend all our institutional ties with Israeli universities and companies that are complicit in apartheid, the ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory, the persecution of the Palestinian people, and egregious violations of international law: an established risk of genocide, and the starvation of civilians as method of warfare and constituting a situation of genocide. On Friday 24 May, the International Court of Justice viewed the risk of genocide to be so imminent that it took the historic decision ordering Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah.

We call for the suspension of ties with our Israeli university partners due to their complicity with the Israeli State’s ongoing atrocities against the Palestinian people, not because they are Israeli. And we affirm the possibility for institutional collaborations to be resumed the moment that our partner universities end their complicity and acknowledge the inalienable rights of Palestinians as recorded under international law.

The students rightly insist that what we urgently need now is not an evaluation of specific projects but an immediate suspension of all institutional ties with Israeli universities that are complicit in apartheid, persecution, occupation, and egregious violations of international law.

The complicity of our partner universities is multifaceted and well-documented, including in Jewish-Israeli anthropologist Maya Wind’s book Towers of Ivery and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom. It includes hosting military bases on university campuses, contributing to the development of military and surveillance technologies and strategies, training active duty military and intelligence officers, compensating active duty soldiers during their deployment in Gaza, producing and disseminating State propaganda that seeks to legitimate the humanitarian atrocities in Gaza, building and maintaining campuses in the Occupied Territories, and suppressing dissent and academic critique of Israel’s actions that perpetuate this conflict.

While the Israeli forces have destroyed all of the universities and educational infrastructure in Gaza, no single administration of Israeli universities have spoken out against these acts. On 1 November 2023 the Association of Presidents of University Heads in Israeli charged that universities in Europe “…have become breeding grounds for anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments, largely fueled by a naïve and biased understanding of the conflict … the very halls of enlightenment in America and Europe, ostensibly the bastions of intellectual and progressive thought that are your campuses, have adopted Hamas as the cause celebre while Israel is demonized.” This malicious accusation has been repeated by Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose government in its public statements to international courts and foreign diplomats, has made clear that the recognition of Palestinian rights is to be met on campuses and in public discourse with defamation, intimidation and violence. In doing so, the administrations of complicit universities, in conjunction with the Israeli State, have consistently sought to foreclose the possibility of open debate about the lawfulness of Israel’s actions.  

Following the well-established guidelines of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, this boycott is not directed at individuals, and we encourage our colleagues to remain engaged with and supportive of scholars at Israeli universities who critique Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza and pressure their universities to end their complicity. The boycott is not based on the identity of individuals, but on the universities’ complicity. It is therefore solely directed against collaborations with Israeli higher education institutions. We do not wish to prevent universities or scholars in the Netherlands from working with Israeli scholars on an individual basis, as long as the collaboration does not encompass institutional ties with the Israeli State or complicit institutions. To the contrary, we must persist to support and dialogue with our critical Israeli colleagues despite the attempts by the Israeli State and universities’ administrations to foreclose both dissent and peace.

Concretely, we demand the immediate suspension of all institutional relations with complicit Israeli institutions, including: institutional exchange programs for students, scholars and administrative staff; grant-funded collaborative research projects, such as through the ERC and NWO; and our participation in international academic organizations that continue to include Israeli universities as members.

Furthermore, we demand the rapid disclosure and subsequent suspension of TiU’s procurement tenders, contracts (whether for products or services) with, and investments in, companies found to be complicit in violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, beginning with companies that appear in the UN database of companies that are implicated in Israeli business in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the list of Israeli research group Who Profits, and the list of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).

Finally, we demand the creation of an independent committee to monitor the implementation of the above boycott measures, a committee which should include: human rights specialists, academics with expertise in the human rights situation in Palestine/Israel, and student representatives of the protest solidarity movement.

This letter and public expression of support follows eleven weeks of dialogue with university leadership, during which it has consistently refused the demands listed above. The Executive Board’s insistence on maintaining institutional ties and exercising science diplomacy gravely trivializes the humanitarian suffering caused by the Israeli State and our partners’ complicity in it. The Board’s purported prioritization of academic freedom and open dialogue rings hollow amid their continued silence towards our partner universities’ defamation and intimidation of those who seek to critique Israel’s war in Gaza.

Our students are demonstrating the academic leadership we need more than ever.

We hence release this public letter demanding actions which amount to an academic boycott of complicit Israeli universities and companies.  

Michiel Bot, Associate Professor, Department of Public Law and Government, TLS

Phillip Paiement, Professor, Department of Public Law and Government, TLS

And 76 other Tilburg University staff members.

_Advertentie.