Protest at Flemish universities increasingly ‘radical’: how close are our universities’ relations with Israel?

At least a hundred students have already registered to occupy a university building at Ghent University. “We feel forced to take more radical actions, because we have been asking the same thing for months,” says a student who acts as spokesperson and calls herself Siska. “The rector has already announced that he does not give permission for an occupation, but security is informed, so that everything can proceed safely.”

The students had presented Rector Rik Van De Walle with a choice on Friday: a phasing out of “all collaborations with Israeli institutions that are complicit in the genocide”, or occupation. They also have climate requirements.

They demonstrated before the meeting of the board of directors. On Friday, he had to consider an advice from the Human Rights Policy and Dual Use Research Committee. From the confidential documents that The morning was able to inspect, it appears that the committee wants to tighten the policy “given the seriousness of the situation in Gaza, which is characterized by systematic and large-scale human rights violations by the Israeli security services.”

The committee proposes that Ghent University temporarily refrain from concluding bilateral agreements with Israeli universities. For new multilateral agreements, the committee asks that universities be excluded that are directly involved in certain violations.

She explicitly mentions The Hebrew University, with which researchers from Ghent University would collaborate. That university is located on occupied Palestinian territory and, according to its own communications, allegedly provided ‘military units with logistical support’ during the attacks on the Gaza Strip.

The advice does not immediately have a major impact, because there are currently no bilateral collaborations and it will not suspend existing multilateral collaborations. However, according to information from De Morgen, the Board of Directors rejected the advice by a majority after hours of discussion.

The reasons for this are that some members of the council believe that separate treatment of Israel is not appropriate and that you would sever ties with certain universities and researchers who are critical of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

The Board of Directors also saw correspondence between Rector Van de Walle and the head of Tel Aviv University, in which the latter praised his own university as a bastion of freedoms and critical thinking. He explicitly writes that his university does not blindly follow the government, but rather took the lead against the legal reforms of the Israeli government. Professor Ariel Porat calls a possible exclusion from his university ‘incorrect, uncollegial and a violation of the core principles of academic cooperation’.

The advice of the Human Rights Commission was therefore not successful. Chairman of the board of directors Geert Bourgeois (N-VA) refers to rector Rik Van de Walle for a response. He confirmed late on Friday evening that there will be “no deviation from the human rights policy for one specific country, in this case Israel”.

However, from now on there will be transparent communication about the positive and negative decisions of screened collaborations with Israeli partners. More communication about these decisions will follow after the weekend.

Should we expect a situation from Monday like in New York, where buildings at Columbia University were occupied for two weeks, until the police intervened violently and arrested students?

“The situation is very different,” says Koen Bogaert, lecturer at the Conflict and Development Studies department at Ghent University and one of the initiators of protest by academics. “In the US, both the Democratic government and the Republican opposition are blindly behind Israel, and so students are becoming more confrontational. That will not happen in Ghent.”

Ghent University also communicated a script of fourteen rules in which the occupation is tolerated. This means, for example, that the activists themselves provide stewards, do not hinder academic activities, do not bring drugs or alcohol into the buildings, or make open fires.

One of the organizations behind the protest in Ghent, End Fossil, occupied the Blandijnberg campus for several days last year and that went without any problems.

Iron Dome

There are also protests at other Flemish universities, because there too Flemish researchers work together with Israeli colleagues. The simple reason is that Israel is part of the European academic network. Israeli researchers can thus participate in consortia within the Horizon Europe program, giving them access to a pot of 95.5 billion euros. That explains the many multilateral collaborations.

For example, VUB researchers have collaborations with the Technion Institute, the self-proclaimed ‘backbone of the nation’. This highly regarded technology campus provides knowledge for drones, defense systems and other weapons to Israeli military companies and the army.

Technion prides itself on the fact that the Iron Dome missile shield was invented by its alumni. After the terrorist attacks by Hamas on October 7, the university offered a bounty of 1,500 euros for students who were called up for military service.

VUB students have taken action in recent months and are now considering further steps. An occupation such as in Ghent is not excluded. “The time for empty words is over,” says VUB student Emma Desmet.

Researchers from KU Leuven collaborate with seven Israeli universities, including the aforementioned Hebrew University, but also Technion.

Leuven students take a symbolic action. They take turns occupying a chair in front of the university halls, after an earlier hunger strike on that chair by student Hanna De Boe. Members of COMAC, the student section of PVDA, are also present.

On Thursday, KU Leuven published an extensive text by rector Luc Sels in which he denounces human rights violations in Israel and the Gaza Strip and explains an advice from the ethics committee. That committee “recommends that as long as the Israeli government maintains its hard line, the necessary care and restraint should be exercised when planning new collaborations.”

Nadia Fadil, anthropology professor at KU Leuven, is positive about her university’s decision. In February she called on KU Leuven to break all partnerships with Israel. “I hope it sets a precedent for other European universities to at least show restraint in their collaborations with Israel and refrain from doing so where possible and where necessary,” Fadil writes on X.