Dear [],
We, as a community of students and employees at those institutions, are calling for an end to our universities’ connections to the genocide and ongoing occupation in Palestine. This is a call which has intensified in the year 2024 in light of the relentlessness of the violence in Gaza, condemned by several UN bodies, the International Court of Justice and the international community more broadly.
We ask that you seriously discuss how to investigate and end the Danish universities’ relationships to complicit institutions in Israel and around the world. We ask to be included in this process to defend the case and give answers to common misconceptions. The steps we propose include divestment, as KU has begun, but also, and most crucially, review of academic and professional partnerships, including but not limited to: exchange programs, careers service partnerships, and cooperations in research grant schemes. This is already mandated by the Uddannelses- og Forskningsministeriet, whose guidelines for international research and innovation cooperation state: “if there is a risk that your partner has close relations with the military, or political parties of a foreign state, you should be extremely cautious and tread extremely carefully when initiating any cooperation”.
These guidelines should beyond doubt apply to Israeli universities, who have an exceptionally close relationship to the Israeli military and arms industry. Universities have played a key role in developing the weapon systems and military doctrines deployed in the current assault on Gaza, including the so-called “Dahiya doctrine”, which prescribes disproportionate use of violence and the systematic targeting of civilian infrastructure. Israeli universities also play a key role in planning, implementing and justifying Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and its ongoing system of apartheid, which constitutes a crime against humanity.
In light of the involvement of Israeli universities in these crimes, it should be clear that suspending all collaborations with them is a matter of human rights due diligence.
Urgent global pressure is needed to intervene against the violent injustice committed against the Palestinian people. For our universities, this is a question of finding ourselves on the right side of history as well as maintaining integrity in our own policy frameworks. This requires that such relationships with complicit institutions should not exist. We are concerned that these questions are not being taken seriously enough within the university management. Little evidence is being shown of the “extreme caution” which the UFM requires. The conversation around ending these relationships, and how Danish universities can collectively move to do so, must begin now, and accelerate rapidly.
There are already many examples to follow from universities around the world. Universities in Belgium, Spain, Norway, Slovenia, Finland, Italy, the USA, and South Africa, among others, have cut ties with Israeli institutions, on account of their complicity in crimes committed in Palestine. Particular actions stand out from these examples:
1. Transparency: we need an up-to-date system for tracking existing collaborations and investments between Danish universities and third parties such as private companies and academic institutions. The University of Geneva already provides such a system for tracking collaborations, and the University of Barcelona committed to establishing an online portal based on this model in its comprehensive commitment to ethical academic conduct. This cannot but account for and examine our actual or potential cooperation with third parties that support or conduct genocidal wars.
2. Cutting existing ties: given the immensity of violence documented by UN bodies in Palestine (see war on children, scholasticide and genocide), our existing relationships with Israeli institutions and third parties should, at minimum, be cut pending thorough ethical review.
3. Rigorous ethical screening: the review process for establishing academic ties must be strengthened and made transparent, such that problematic relationships, like those presently with Israeli universities, cannot be instituted in future.
It is now more than time to discuss how we as institutions can undertake due diligence to ensure that Danish universities do not collaborate with institutions complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity and other human rights violations.
Thank you for your attention. We look forward to hearing the results of these conversations.
Yours sincerely,
