To the executive boards of all Dutch institutions of higher education,

We, faculty, employees, researchers and alumni of various public universities, academies of applied sciences and research centres across the Netherlands, write this open letter to implore you

a) to recognise the ongoing genocide on the Palestinian people and fulfil the ethical obligation ensuing from it to cease ties with all complicit institutions, projects and corporations;

b) to commit to ending police violence on Dutch campuses.

It is not the first such plea to you in the past excruciating twenty months. Students and faculty at nearly all Dutch higher education institutions have been protesting incessantly, trying every conceivable strategy to get through to you: teach-ins, lectures, petitions, articles, opinion pieces, silent sit-ins, loud sit-ins, walkouts, disruptions, rallies, encampments, demonstrations, occupations, strikes and more. We have navigated all the proper channels and followed due process. We have taken all the dialogue sessions that you’ve proposed seriously and come to every possible meeting and public forum that you called for. Yet, none of these dialogues were held in good faith. As universities defend themselves with the language of academic freedom and neutrality, students and staff speaking in protest have been met with violence, as well as ostracised and criminalised. In the name of ‘safety’, we enter an increasingly unsafe environment due to undercover policing, electronic surveillance and hyper-vigilance around academic events.

We acknowledge the important first step taken by numerous institutions in suspending ties with a handful of Israeli partners. Yet these come too late, undermine themselves with cop-out measures, are contradictory and are most certainly not enough. Retaining ties with Israeli institutions means turning a blind eye to their implications in the ongoing genocide and thus effectively legitimising the actions of the Israeli state.

The urgency and gravity of the ongoing atrocity crimes on Palestinians have exceeded our imaginations and have repeatedly crossed every single red line. Israeli universities and research institutes contribute to this genocidal onslaught in numerous ways: through directly aiding and conducting military research, through supporting practices of apartheid and ethnic discrimination, through their presence on occupied territory, through producing revisionist discourses and justifying war crimes. All this has been extensively documented and researched, including by scholars at Dutch universities and research institutions. By ignoring these you are delegitimising the expertise of your own institutions.

We are further gravely concerned about the escalating circumstances in which students in particular are being confronted with police violence on campus. We feel an urgent responsibility for the safety of our students, who enact their rights to protest and disrupt. They have been beaten up, bitten by dogs, detained, harassed, refused medication and counsel and subject to racialised discrimination, all of which come with long-term physical and mental health consequences. This is unacceptable. We reject how our instititutions of higher education are normalising police surveillance. We call on you to respect and safeguard the right to protest, including the right to disruptive actions, blockades and assemblies, as enshrined in European law. Wherever protests are restricted by the institution, they must be necessary and proportionate. This is often not the case.

Institutions of higher education in the Netherlands present themselves as spaces for ethical leadership and progressive social development. Given the absence of ethical political leadership on a national level, these institutions must act with courage and integrity. We cannot afford to wait till the genocide has ended. We must act now in the interest of human life and human dignity.