Over 4,500 students and academic staff in Belgium have published an open letter calling on universities and colleges across the country to immediately cease all scientific and academic cooperation with Israel. The appeal is based on accusations including occupation, apartheid, and collective violence against Palestinians.<\/p>\n
According to a report by The Brussels Times, among the signatories of the letter are approximately 1,100 university professors. The letter is endorsed by academics, students, and several public figures, including prominent philosopher Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, journalist Rudy Vandendaele, and writer Ish Ait Hammou.<\/p>\n
This initiative follows the honorary doctorate awards granted in April by the University of Antwerp, Ghent University, and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel to Francesca Albanese and Professor Noura Erakat. The signatories stated that conferring such titles reflects the universities’ commitment to international law and human rights but emphasized that this commitment should not remain merely symbolic during ceremonies and honors.<\/p>\n
The letter asserts that universities must demonstrate institutional responsibility in response to what they describe as occupation and widespread human rights violations in a practical manner. They stressed that continuing scientific cooperation could be interpreted as normalizing the current situation.<\/p>\n
In addition to demanding an immediate halt to academic collaborations, the signatories call for the suspension of all new agreements with Israeli institutions. The letter also requests a review and termination of cooperation contracts with certain companies, including Dell, Tova, and Microsoft.<\/p>\n
This appeal emerges amid ongoing debates in several European countries over the responsibility of academic institutions concerning the developments in Gaza and the Palestinian territories, which have become serious and contentious issues in recent months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over 4,500 Belgian academics urge universities to immediately stop all scientific collaborations with Israel over alleged human rights violations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}