On Wednesday, September 4th, 2024, in the early morning, students from the network Students against the Occupation (Studerende mod besættelsen) peacefully occupied the museum building of the University of Copenhagen, where the rector’s office is located, demanding the administration to engage in academic boycott of Israeli universities complicit in the ongoing Israeli war crimes, which include apartheid, blockade, targeting civilians, imposed famine and destruction of civil infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, universities and housing.
Almost immediately upon their arrival to the building, the students were brutally removed from the premises by heavily armed police, with assault rifles and attack dogs, resulting in six arrests. Among those arrested was the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. The university management is now threatening all the student activists with administrative sanctions that can go as far as an expulsion from the university.
We, employees of Danish universities, including KU, would like to express our complete support of the students, both regarding their mode of action and the cause they defend. Never in the history of this university have we seen such brutal repression of social movements, including during the various long blockades that happened in the past, such as the Psychology Department in 2022. We denounce this round of announced sanctions that are taking place in a context of increasing repression of pro Palestinian voices among students and university employees. The consequence of this repression is the silencing of voices that do not align with the foreign policy of the current government.
On the same day of the student protest, university management called the police once again to a different section of campus to follow and surveil students wearing keffiyehs inside university buildings. We want to state very clearly that police surveillance has no place in an environment of learning and free inquiry. Neither is it illegal to wear a keffiyeh. If the university management desires to avoid future blockades such as the one they experienced at the rectorate, they can start by accepting the students’ entirely legitimate demands, not by bringing armed police into our university hallways. Both the urgency of the situation in Gaza and on the West Bank right now, and the refusal by this largely non-elected administration to comply to the students’ very simple demands over several years, justify the action that was taken.
Indeed, the International Court of Justice recognized in January 2024 the genocidal risk of the conflict in the Middle East, and every day of inaction is paid with dozens of Palestinian casualties. Besides the terms of Genocide and Apartheid, United Nations experts use the term “scholasticide” to describe the systematic destruction of the schools and universities in Gaza. Since January, all the Universities in Gaza have been flattened to the ground. As of April, more than 5,479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors have been killed in Gaza. At least 60 per cent of educational facilities, including 13 public libraries, have been damaged or destroyed and at least 625,000 students have no access to education. It is the duty of universities to take position in such a context. We expect the same solidarity than the one shown rightfully in support of Ukraine since February 2022.
One measure in particular was undertaken immediately in March 2022 by management at all Danish universities: all institutional ties between any Russian and Belarusian university on one side and any Danish university on the other side were stopped. In the Israeli case, the complicity of all eight Israeli public universities in military recruitment, the weapon industry, the repressive state policies and Israeli state propaganda have been carefully documented over decades by various researchers and activists, both inside and outside the Israeli society.
As a result, we demand:
- that all sanctions faced by the students are cancelled
- that the administration refuses any police intrusion on campus in the future
- that all Danish universities commit to academic boycott of complicit Israeli universities, following the precepts of the BDS campaign and the call initiated from PACBI 20 years ago. The “Russian model” of academic boycott shows that Danish universities are not afraid of taking the right stance when history demands it. What is the meaningfullness of boycotting Russian universities if collaborations continue with universities from a country committing genocide and scholasticide?
[subscribe_student]