TEHRAN: A growing number of universities and academic bodies worldwide are severing formal links with Israeli institutions over concerns about their complicity in military actions in Gaza, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported.
The movement, which has gained momentum over the past year, reflects deepening unease within the global academic community about ties between Israeli universities, the military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies.
In 2023, the Federal University of Ceara in Brazil cancelled a planned innovation summit with an Israeli university.
Similar actions followed in Norway, Belgium and Spain.
The trend has continued this year, with institutions such as Trinity College Dublin in Ireland also cutting links.
Most recently, the University of Amsterdam terminated a student exchange programme with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Separately, the European Association of Social Anthropologists announced it would cease all collaboration with Israeli academic institutions and urged its members to do the same.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel said Israeli academic institutions were complicit in “Israel’s decades-long regime of military occupation, settler colonial apartheid and now genocide.”
“There is a moral and legal obligation for universities to end ties with complicit Israeli universities,” said Stephanie Adam, a representative of the campaign.
– Bernama-IRNA
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