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At least eight Spanish public universities and four private ones, plus one university center, maintain links with Israeli academic institutions that support the war actions in Gaza that total more than 35,000 deaths, the vast majority civilians. There are 12 rectorates that will have to review their ties with these centers, after the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE) agreed last week to “break relations” with their Israeli counterparts that were not committed to peace.
None of the main nine campuses seem to be, following various public statements they have released in recent months, in which they use Israel’s usual rhetoric when talking about Palestine and without a hint of requesting a ceasefire.
The (non) reaction of the Spanish University was under scrutiny since the current invasion of Gaza began, a surveillance that has been exacerbated as a result of the university camps for Palestine that broke out first in Valencia and then on numerous campuses in different cities. The campers demand that their rectorates break off relationships of all kinds – academic, business – with their Israeli counterparts.
In the heat of these mobilizations, the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE) reported that it was committed to “suspending collaboration agreements with Israeli universities and research centers that have not expressed a firm commitment to peace and compliance with international humanitarian law.”
After the headlines came the nuances. The suspension of agreements is not immediate, nor even automatic. Each university can decide for itself what it will do. It is a recommendation. Most of the rectorates have avoided talking about themselves and referring to collaborations that they may or may not have in force. The exception has been the University of Salamanca, which flatly denied having agreements of any kind, and which nevertheless appears as a signatory of a mobility agreement, according to information from the University of Tel Aviv.
The Israeli centers themselves report that they have agreements in force with more than a dozen educational institutions in Spain. Among them, the Complutense University of Madrid, the University of Granada, the University of Alcalá de Henares, the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, the University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, the Polytechnic of Madrid, the University of Jaén, the University of Salamanca, the Navarra, the Francisco de Vitoria University, the Pontificia de Comillas, ESADE (Ramón Llul University) and the ESIC university center.
The information available is limited: a third of Israeli universities do not make their international agreements public, and the majority of those that do do not explain the nature of these collaborations. The University of the Basque Country only collaborates within the framework of a global network for the exchange of engineers. The Polytechnic of Madrid and the Pontifical of Comillas are present in that same network, in addition to maintaining mobility agreements with the University of Tel Aviv. This Israeli center is also committed to facilitating mobility with other universities such as Jaén, Salamanca and ESADE. There is no complete information about the rest of the Spanish institutions that have some type of link, so the pacts can range from the mobility of students or personnel to military research.
Asked about the details of the “review” announcement (what deadline is given, what the universities consider a “commitment to peace”, etc.) the CRUE refers to the statement, which does not clarify any of these issues. The camped students already described the rectors’ note as “empty words.”
Israeli positions
Although the note issued last Thursday was the most covered in the media, the CRUE had already taken a position in previous statements about the war in Gaza. Its Israeli counterpart, the Association of Rectors, has behaved in the same way, which has spoken out throughout these months of invasion in response to specific events.
In all its communications, the association that encompasses the rectors of all the universities of the State of Israel has replicated Israeli propaganda rhetoric: they equate the proclamations for the right of Palestine to exist with “calls to genocide”, they compare what they call “movement international anti-Zionist” with “the darkest chapters of Jewish history” in reference to the Holocaust, and reduce the invasion of Gaza to a fight “of light against darkness.” Additionally, in December they advocated for “strong leadership on American campuses” against speeches criticizing the war, and last month they recommended the use of “measures beyond conventional tools” to break up university camps in the US.
Likewise, some of the universities explicitly talk about facilitating the combination of studies with military obligations or provide scholarships to students who serve in the Armed Forces, whether active or in reserve. “These efforts to facilitate the attack in Gaza, to the extent of their possibilities, are two clear examples of how an academic institution can favor the continuity of the war,” stated the Center Board of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Granada (UGR), the center’s highest governing body, in a statement in which it asked the Government Team to cease relations with Israel.
Previous positions of Spanish universities
Although the University had not spoken out as a whole until now (eight months later) on Palestine, some universities had spoken out individually in favor of peace. The intention to sever relations with Israeli universities is not new, nor does it come exclusively from student demands.
In February, the UGR signed a manifesto “of support and solidarity with the civilian population of the Gaza conflict,” and a similar one was released by the University of the Basque Country last month after ruling out, after criticism from the teaching staff, the creation of a chair of cybersecurity that contemplated collaboration with Tel Aviv University. At the center level, the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology of the Complutense also positioned itself with a text called “With Palestine, no to the genocide in Gaza.”
