A Call for Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) by Students, Staff and Academics of Freie Universität Berlin
Why Freie University Berlin needs to adopt a policy of academic boycott according to the BDS ethical guidelines towards Israeli universities and other institutions which are complicit in apartheid, occupation, settler-colonialism and/or genocide.
Israel is an apartheid state and an occupation force. Since October 2023, the Israeli state has been carrying out a genocide in Gaza, while waging war and acts of aggression on the populations of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran. As we write this call, Israel is illegally occupying new areas and preparing annexations of already occupied lands.
Freie Universität Berlin (FU) as an institution has been complicit in supporting and abetting the Genocide in Gaza. Most immediately, it has been doing so by denying its reality, and even Palestinian suffering as such.
Against this policy, legitimate and justified resistance, principally carried by students with support from staff and faculty formed in the fall of 2023. They have organized different actions on campus, ranging from self-organized lecture series to protests such as sit ins, die ins and rallies, occupations of lecture halls and camps in 2023 and 2024. Increasingly, protesters realized that the universities silence was connected to a deeply entrenched complicity of the FU as an institution in Israeli apartheid, settler-colonialism, occupation and genocide.
The administration reacted by criminalizing and endangering the protesting students, faculty and staff, and intimidating the entire campus community. This included the abandonment of academic freedom and university autonomy, when e.g., the federal minister Bettina Stark- Watzinger or the mayor of Berlin Kai Wegner demanded the police be brought onto campus to crack down on students. Since December 2023 this has led to continuous physical brutalization and hospitalization of students in countless cases. In more than 100 accounts the university itself is pressing charges against its own students, for protesting within the premises of their own university.
Claims by the university that students are rogue protesters or antisemites, while the FU administration is looking for dialogue, are false. On the contrary, the actions and false claims of the FU administration have created and fueled an atmosphere of fear and fake news on campus and beyond. FU arbitrarily is curtailing academic freedom and other fundamental rights on the behest of members of government officials in order to continue cooperations with Israeli universities and other institutions which are complicit in crimes against humanity.
The FU administration willfully does the German states biding by intimidating those who speak out, and by criminalizing those who have taken tangible actions. The FU administration mocks its own motto “Veritas, Iustitia, Libertas” (truth, justice, freedom) by holding that the essence of freedom of academia was the upholding of criminal policies and its ties to Israeli universities and institutions.
The FU administrations actions are not by chance. The FU has been a for long a strategic partner of Israeli universities and institutions. The FU engages in an ideological normalization of apartheid and occupation, facilitating ties which have increased the Israeli states soft power towards German academia and intellectuals, and consequently to broader German society and German policy makers. FU has also contributed to crimes against humanity and the Palestinians by furthering scientific exchange with institutions, which possibly and plausibly enable the Israeli state to develop historical and political narratives, military strategies and weaponry against the Palestinians and other populations to further or uphold occupation and apartheid in different direct and indirect ways.
These connections are laid out in our detailed BDS report, including tangible demands and proposals on how to fulfil academic boycott, published by students, staff and faculty of the Freie Universität Berlin.
The extent and the different forms of complicity are shown among others through (1) the cooperation with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which offers to host exchange students from FU Berlin on illegally occupied land and in hostels which constitute illegal settlements, (2) through cooperation with the University of Haifa which directly acts as a training ground for officers of the Israeli occupation army or (3) through cooperation with the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion), which is a major hub for military technology development specifically designed to uphold and deepen colonization and apartheid such as the Technion developed D9 remote-controlled bulldozer, infamoussly known for destroying Palestinian villages, streets or crushing the bodies of dead (and living) Palestinians, as during the Gaza Genocide.
In this light, it becomes apparent why today, the German state attempts to further criminalize Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) through resolutions which effectively call on state institutions, including universities, to arbitrarily curtail fundamental rights to fight the BDS movement: to cover up its own complicity in these crimes. This vicious response, however, shows that BDS as in the case of South Africa is an effective tool to ideologically question apartheid, and to materially and politically isolate unjust regimes.
In December 2024, the FUs students’ general assembly, in which 1600 students attended, voted with an overwhelming majority for the FU administration to acknowledge the Gaza genocide as well as Israeli apartheid and occupation. This general assembly called for appropriate measures to be introduced to contribute to stopping these atrocities.
Students, staff and faculty who are issuing this call for BDS at FU hold that an academic boycott according to the BDS ethical guidelines towards Israeli and other institutions in order to end genocide, the regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid is the only appropriate and sufficient measure for FU Berlin to take under the current circumstances.
The academic boycott of institutions which facilitate or support these crimes is a legitimate form of non-violent resistance and a moral obligation for today’s academic community. If the FU’s academic community wants to achieve this goal, it must also take a stand against government and state policies that call fundamental rights into question. Admittedly, it is difficult to adopt and fulfil such a stance under the current conditions. However, being able to take this stance is precisely the essence of academic freedom.
Above all, however, the demand for and implementation of an academic boycott with the aim of protecting human rights and achieving essential rights of self-determination for Palestinians is more than a fundamental right. In the face of the Gaza genocide, it is our fundamental duty.
Freie University Berlin, February 19th 2025