UvA: no renewal of exchange with Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The UvA will stop student exchange with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for now due to the risk of human rights violations by the Israeli university. The UvA came to this decision after a recommendation from a special, independent committee.
The exchange of UvA students with the Israeli Hebrew University of Jerusalem will be halted because of alleged “human rights violations” and “restriction of academic freedom”.
Rector magnificus Peter-Paul Verbeek said this on Thursday afternoon. “There is a risk that students will come into contact with these violations or end up in an environment where academic freedom is not sufficiently honoured,” Verbeek said. The exchange cooperation had been running since the 1980s.
Protesters at the UvA have long been demanding that the UvA sever ties with Israel. The UvA specifically says it does not want to end cooperation with any country. “That is something the government can do, but not us as a university,” Verbeek said. “We look at collaborations and whether we are involved in unethical things based on them.”
The committee reviews university-wide collaborations or exchanges. There are also collaborations at faculty level, on which the committee also issues advice. These are not public, due to the sensitivity of their content. For example, they include names of researchers.
There are currently eight collaborations with Israel at faculty level, says a UvA spokesperson. Two have been submitted to the committee and were given the green light this year.
Hungary and China
Two more collaborations were reviewed by the special advisory committee: PhD training with the China Scholarship Council (CSC) and cooperation with Hungarian institutions on the EU sanctions list.
The latter will now also be discontinued. “This is because of the restriction of academic freedom in Hungary, which goes very far,” Verbeek said. “It would also be very crazy if we as UvA pass the EU's decisions and do continue to collaborate with these institutions ourselves.”
The paused PhD training with China Scholarship Council is because of a mix of issues: human rights violations, data privacy and the safety of people themselves. In addition, the committee writes reasons to believe that “some returning CSC-funded PhD students who conducted their PhD research in the Netherlands may be forced to provide their state inside information, including data obtained through academic research.” However, according to the committee, it is not clear whether this is already happening to UvA PhD students.
This cooperation with China can be extended, however, is the advice, provided “risk mitigating measures” are taken. These measures include, for example, that each individual PhD project of a Chinese student must be submitted to the committee. According to the UvA, this would involve “dozens” per year.
New review framework
The decision follows the UvA’s new guidelines for assessing collaborations with other parties more comprehensively, the so-called assessment framework for external collaborations. Education and research collaborations must not contribute to human rights violations, misuse of knowledge for undesirable military purposes or serious damage to the environment.
Until now, the assessment framework only covered cooperation with fossil industry and knowledge security. The UvA decided to revise it after the demonstrations and occupations in spring 2024, during which students protested against the universities’ cooperation with Israeli institutions.
The new framework is still formally before the co-decision board for advice. The three cases around Israel, Hungary and China were already subjected to the review framework because the collaborations were expiring and a decision had to be made on their continuation. Should the participation council advise to adjust certain matters, this will be taken into account in subsequent cases, the UvA said.
