UU wants to withdraw from project with Israeli government, but pulling out is easier said than done

Utrecht University (UU) is investigating whether it can withdraw from a EU Horizon project involving the Israeli Ministry of Health. Five months ago, the university announced that it would no longer enter into new partnerships with Israel and that it wanted to withdraw from this project because of the genocide in Gaza. 

UU wants to pull out of this particular project because the Ministry of Health falls directly under the Netanyahu cabinet. The Executive Board plans to adhere to the existing contractual agreements for the remaining partnerships, as the university deems that there is little chance that these projects will contribute to human rights violations or the deterioration of human rights in Gaza.

"We are currently assessing the consequences of withdrawing from the Horizon project involving the Israeli Ministry of Health. This includes a possible breach of contract and the potential impact on UU researchers and other partners involved in the research project", a UU spokesperson explained in a written response.

Horizon projects are large-scale European collaborations which usually involve many partners. If UU withdraws from the project that includes the Israeli government, the research will continue, only without UU researchers. The Israeli government will remain involved in the project.

For this reason, UU would prefer to see Israel excluded from the Horizon programme, a decision that would be made at the European level. UU supports the call by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Caspar Veldkamp and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) to terminate the cooperation agreement with Israel.

Existing projects will continue
The university and UMC Utrecht are collaborating with Israeli institutions on considerably fewer projects than they were a year and a half ago. At the time, UU had around forty partnerships with Israel; it now has fifteen. Several projects are expected to be completed this autumn.

The Faculty of Medical Sciences (formerly the Faculty of Medicine) and UMC Utrecht are involved in four projects with Israeli partners. Of the other ten projects involving UU researchers, nine are funded by Horizon and one by the Dutch Research Council (NOW), as announced by UU Rector Wilco Hazeleger in a meeting with the University Council held at the end of September. UMC Utrecht and UU are jointly involved in a project.

Apart from the project with the Israeli government, all other existing projects may continue because the Knowledge Security advisory team concluded last year that those research projects do not contribute to human rights violations in Gaza and have no military applications.

Moreover, the university refrains from severing these ties as a means to safeguard academic freedom. Withdrawing from all research projects would have major consequences for Utrecht University. "If that were even possible, it would in all likelihood have only a limited impact on the Israeli partners. Besides, it could damage individual relationships between scientists. The Executive Board believes that critical scientists in Israel should not become completely isolated. We believe it is important to maintain a dialogue with students and colleagues in conflict areas, as they are the ones who can contribute to change," says the spokesperson.

Boycott
Hazeleger qualifies UU’s decision to no longer enter into new collaborations as a boycott, a term he has been using since the start of the current academic year. This means that both new individual collaborations and collaborations in consortia are no longer possible. UU maintained an exchange programme with the University of Haifa until last summer. This exchange programme was terminated when UU suspended new collaborations. The measure is mainly symbolic, however. Since August 2024, UU students have not been able to go on exchange to Israel due to the Dutch government's negative travel advice to the area.

The agreements regarding two other exchange programmes, namely with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Reichman University, had already expired and were thus not renewed. The rector stated in the University Council meeting that the measures taken by the university so far "go very far, even compared to other universities. This is the limit of what we can and want to do."