Groningen University suspends collaboration with Israeli professor-soldier

A professor from the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) participates in a European research collective alongside Dutch scientists from Groningen and Eindhoven. The collective studies how computer chips can mimic human self-awareness, among other things.

This Israeli professor is also a reservist in the army and writes about this on social media. He has posted pictures of himself in military uniform, with destroyed buildings in the background.

The University of Groningen had doubts after the professor's double duty was revealed by the investigative journalism platform Investico in an article in the daily newspaper Trouw. The research project is funded by the EU, and one of the rules for such funding, to which all universities agreed, is that it must not serve any military purpose. 

Reason
Groningen is now reconsidering the project, according to a spokesperson for the university, as quoted by UKrant. "It gives us reason to take a closer look: will it or will it not be used for military purposes?"

The institution says that the project must first be examined by the Knowledge Security and Sensitive Partnerships Advisory Team, which investigates whether the research in question could be applicable to both civilian and military purposes.

Commotion
A similar commotion about this partnership with Technion happened in August at the Eindhoven University of Technology, which severed its ties with Israeli institutions but allowed this particular research to go on. Severing ties at the “institutional” level does not necessarily have consequences for scientific collaborations, according to the university.

A spokesperson for TU Eindhoven now says that, in practice, the institution will never encounter the Israeli professor-cum-reservist. The project mainly revolves around training PhD students, which all universities do independently. TU/e has since informed its news outlet, Cursor, that it does not intend to take any additional measures with regard to this project.

At the end of September, Investico revealed that Dutch technical universities are collaborating with Israeli institutions on technology that can be used for military purposes. Investico wrote that the institutions also have a financial interest in this research through their spin-offs.