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Success at the University of Sussex: Academic Boycott in Action

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18 December 2024

The decision of the University of Sussex to host a joint conference with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on its campus was an act of breathtaking insensitivity.   The conference, on “Displacement, Forced Migration and Reparation: Comparisons and Controversies”, co-organized by the Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex and the Hebrew University, was advertised to take place at the University of Sussex over December 12-13.

Not surprisingly there was a powerful reaction to a joint event with a complicit Israeli academic institution. The University of Sussex received many letters of protest from national and local organisations and individuals, including one from BRICUP. Locally students, staff and the wider community protested the event on the Sussex campus.  On the first day of the conference, its intended venue was occupied by protesters. The event was then moved to a different room on campus where it faced more chanting and disruption.  Due to this disruption and the prospect of more, the conference was moved off the Sussex campus entirely to an unknown location.

The organisers of the protest, Sussex 4 Palestine, issued a statement saying that they had occupied the room where the conference was due to take place, and then followed up with further disruptive activity, because the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was an Israeli institution complicit in apartheid and genocide.

Ahead of the Conference the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) had urged all registered participants to withdraw from the event, as participation would amount to complicity in the crimes being perpetrated by Israel. All Israeli universities play an active role in Israel’s settler colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is no exception. It is partially built on confiscated Palestinian land in occupied East Jerusalem, in direct violation of international law. The University has established a military base on its premises for Israeli soldiers receiving academic training; has allowed Israeli police to operate from its campus for operations against neighbouring Palestinian communities; and has bragged about providing “diverse logistics equipment to military units” committing the genocide in Gaza.

In September the UN General Assembly passed a resolution affirming the ruling of the International Court of Justice that Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal. On the same day dozens of UN human rights experts issued a statement declaring that States must “Cancel or suspend economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory.” [Emphasis added]

When states fail to fulfil these obligations, it becomes our collective responsibility as citizens to act and demand that these obligations be respected. Protesters stated, “While our university is complicit, there will no ‘business as usual’. Not on our campus, not in our name. We will disrupt, we will resist. Free Palestine.”

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