UU support for Palestine
Dear Prof. Pijpers (President of the Utrecht University Executive Board), Drs. van der Starre (Vice President), Prof. Kummeling (Rector Magnificus), and the wider Utrecht University community,
We, as students from Utrecht University, are writing this letter to express our strong disapproval of Utrecht University’s lack of response to the ongoing crisis, escalated by the actions of the Israeli regime towards the Palestinian population, especially in Gaza. The extended silence is a clear sign of biassed framing of losses, thereby contradicting the university’s policy of political neutrality. As students, we take our responsibility as an ethical academic community to critique institutional hypocrisy.
We are deeply concerned about the Israeli occupation, backed by Western governments, the Israeli apartheid system, ongoing acts of ethnic cleansing, and the latest alarming genocidal tactics by the Israeli government aimed at displacing Palestinians from Gaza. These actions include the disruption of essential supplies such as water, food, fuel, and medical supplies. We are witnessing an extensive and ongoing bombing of the Gaza Strip, collective punishment, targeting residential areas, hospitals, schools, and places of worship. This involves the forced displacement of 1.1 million Palestinians, including those receiving medical care, misleadingly labelled by the Israeli government as an “evacuation”. Human Rights Watch has documented Israel’s use of white phosphorus along with the deliberate targeting of journalists. The university’s silence undermines its credibility as a centre for knowledge production that is independent of the Dutch government’s political agenda. The university’s failure to address Israel’s ongoing transgressions against international law impedes its standing as an institution committed to upholding international legal principles. Therefore, we must acknowledge these actions as constituting war crimes. Refusing to do so discredits the university's so-called position of neutrality and engenders an insincere and dissatisfactory learning atmosphere, particularly for those engaged in the humanities, social sciences, and law faculties, but indeed for all academic disciplines.
Our experience of the academic non-response within Utrecht University is one of significant discomfort. The university is renowned for its distinguished Memory Studies department, which serves as a prominent platform for scholars engaged in the realm of cultural memory. This department’s core objectives, as found on the Utrecht Memory Studies website, encompass the complex history of memory cultures and the examination of the role of memory practices in international conflicts and conflict resolution. We are taught that memory is never a site of innocence. It signifies how the past is remembered in the present and how institutions contribute to the political struggle for memory, dictating whose losses are not voiced and whose deaths are not marked. Yet, at a time when these theories are made manifest in the world, the politics of neutrality this institution adheres to delegitimize the education it offers. Especially when the university's non-neutral stance in political conflicts became apparent two years ago upon Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Moreover, Utrecht University stands as the only institution in the Netherlands that offers a comprehensive minor program entirely dedicated to (Post)colonial Studies and the haunting effects of imperialism today. This study program, as stated on the website of the Postcolonial Studies Minor, delves into multifaceted issues within a historical and theoretical framework — ‘Europe’, borders, privilege, violence, religion, and migration, to list a few. We are taught decolonization is not merely an abstract theory and that it is imperative to position ourselves in our research, yet our university refrains from addressing ongoing colonial settlements, prompting reflection on the integrity of the teaching we receive. What does it mean to study at an institution which refrains from characterising political Zionism as a settler-colonial ideology and Israel as a settler-colonial state? An institution which ignores the fundamental right of Palestinians to undertake processes of decolonization within their homeland, while concurrently providing courses on past colonial practices and resistance movements. Promises to encourage debate, create awareness, and provide education on its own colonial past ring hollow. This compels us to regard Utrecht University’s engagement in the academic discourse surrounding (post)colonial, decolonial, and memory studies as being hypocritical and of a fundamentally paradoxical nature.
The silence of the university regarding the Israeli occupation is beyond distressing. How are we, paying students, ought to earnestly and ethically position ourselves within this institution? How can we preserve our sense of academic integrity while remaining enrolled at Utrecht University? Thereby, implicitly supporting and condoning UU’s affiliations with Israeli academic institutions and the potential contribution of Israeli research partners in facilitating the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
These questions become increasingly pressing when critique of the university's silence is met by actions of silencing. Classmates observed the removal of dissenting flyers by a Utrecht University official. These flyers were advocating for the university to discontinue its associations with Israeli institutions and encouraged people to participate in the Palestine Solidarity protest scheduled in Amsterdam on October 15, 2023. On the 20th of October, we were informed that there was no official authorization for these materials. Upon reviewing the university's guidelines about posters and flyers, we found that political and religious posters and flyers are prohibited, presumably to maintain neutrality and protect the interests of both the university and its students. Can one, however, delink political organisation regarding identity from political discourse and decolonization? Are flyers against racism, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, islamophobia, and ableism also prohibited within the university as they too are political? The university's attempt to maintain a stance of neutrality, in fact, maintains a partisan silence(ing) which is inherently unneutral in this critical moment of the ongoing ethnic cleansing through the Israeli occupation of Palestine. One that is funded and proliferated by the Dutch government and other European and North American governments at large, yet denounced as human rights violations by independent non-governmental organisations such as the Human Rights Watch. The university's silence can only be interpreted as a rejection of international law and human rights and as an implicitly explicit alignment with a Western-sponsored colonial regime, further invalidating the university's claims of neutrality.
The “news article” posted on the university’s website on October 11, 2023, addressing the ‘intense events in Israel’ (translated from Dutch), raised multiple concerns. First, this article is, at the time of constituting this letter, the only form of communication from the university regarding the most recent intensification of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. Despite the university’s news section practice of publishing articles in both Dutch and English, this communication was solely published in Dutch, and thereby disregards the diverse international student population at Utrecht University. Furthermore, it is essential to underscore that the aforementioned news article, as it remains the only update to this date, makes no mention of the 75 years of Israeli occupation in Palestine, or any discernible condemnation of the ongoing intensified atrocities perpetuated by Israel on Palestinian territory. The article does nothing but refer us to web resources discussing strategies for engaging in conversations related to the “Israeli conflict”. Words matter. In phrasing the ongoing acts of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Israeli regime as ‘a conflict’ which needs to be ‘strategically engaged in’, the University reaffirms the erasure of Palestinian oppression. As a prestigious academic institution, it is disconcerting that Utrecht University lacks the capacity and the willingness to produce a comprehensive statement that does justice to the violence and loss of Palestinian lives. Especially given our internal resources and the funding which goes into enriching the expertise of our esteemed faculty members in the fields of memory-, genocide-, conflict- and postcolonial studies. Funding knowledge accumulation and dissemination while ignoring the responsibility to uphold human rights begs the question: What is the importance of academia today?
We call upon the university to recognize its academic integrity and credibility as an institution of knowledge production and to condemn the violence carried out by the Israeli regime on Palestinians. Not doing so negates the progress this university has made in denouncing the violent colonial regimes it has historically been implicated in and profited from. It is of equal importance that the university joins in the educational discourse surrounding Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine by facilitating opportunities for lectures and constructive dialogues. Such initiatives would enable us, students, to navigate our roles within an increasingly interconnected global academic landscape, characterised by complex historical legacies that persistently influence our present circumstances. While Utrecht University aspires to maintain neutrality, the failure to condemn present-day colonial violence raises substantial doubts on claims of this “neutrality”. Neutrality in the context of oppression is merely a palatable form of complicity, which casts suspicion on the integrity of knowledge produced from a biassed stance within our “neutral” academic walls.
As students, we feel obliged to critique the university’s prevailing non-impartial tendencies that manifest in practices of concealment, selective indifference, the perpetuation of a colonial mindset, a deliberate claim of innocence, and its recurrent inability to speak, which can be termed as colonial aphasia. This notion of colonial aphasia is characterised by the institution’s failure in three aspects: firstly, the deliberate restriction of knowledge dissemination, secondly, the incapacity to formulate a lexicon that effectively connects the appropriate terminology with the respective phenomena, and finally, the inability to recognize the significance of pre-existing discourse.
We, therefore, demand that the university redress its silence by assuming an active role in generating knowledge regarding the ongoing illegal occupation of Israel on Palestinian land. As well as, acknowledging its accountability in the enduring dynamics of the Israeli colonial settlement project. UU must cease its collaboration with Israeli institutions and companies as the first step towards a university that refuses to be complicit in the violent act of settler colonialism again. These include, but are not limited to: the current exchange partners in Israel — Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Reichman University, and University of Haifa — which are persistent accomplices of the unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory and the Israeli apartheid regime. In previous research and exchange collaborations, university partners such as Hebrew University, Technion University and the water company Haginoh were also directly involved in illegal land occupation, education, military research, and water dispossession. It is the absolute responsibility of Utrecht University, students and faculty alike, to address its unethical involvement with these programs by terminating these connections and rectifying the harm caused by these collaborations.
Additionally, the responsibility for condemning the actions of the Israeli government should not rest solely on the shoulders of Palestinians. We express our unwavering support for all Palestinians within our institution who may be hesitant to voice their concerns due to potential repercussions, exhaustion, anguish, and mourning. We all ought to unequivocally condemn all forms of racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia. In our pursuit of addressing the societal tensions arising from the intensification of the ongoing occupation, we urge all professors and educators to drown out the university’s silence by joining the call for accountability with your students.
Lastly, we call upon all students, teachers, and alumni from Utrecht University to show solidarity by condemning Utrecht University's policy of non-innocent neutrality, and by endorsing and signing this letter. Your support is essential to ensure that our University reflects our values: that academic integrity goes beyond plagiarism checks, that critical thinking is practised in the real world, not limited to the “ivory tower” of academia, and that we rigorously oppose current colonial practices, as the curriculum has taught us.
Sincerely,
Sophie Bunink - RMA Gender Studies, Graduate School of Humanities
Tamarah de Haan - RMA Gender Studies, Graduate School of Humanities
Merel Hermans - RMA Gender Studies, Graduate School of Humanities
Dušan Janković - RMA Comparative Literary Studies, Graduate School of Humanities
Rosa Oomen - RMA Gender Studies, Graduate School of Humanities
Prerana Pai Bhande - Alum BA Liberal Arts and Sciences, University College Utrecht
Cate Zanardi - RMA Comparative Literary Studies, Graduate School of Humanities
Check out:
Utrecht in Solidarity w/ Palestine
Contact: [email protected]
To read the original statement: Click here
