Students for Palestine and Researchers for Palestine are organizing a campaign event on the 15th of October in the University of Helsinki Main Building.
Come learn about BDS, PACBI as well as academic boycott more broadly – and discover what our No Association with Genocide -campaign is about in particular! Let’s join our forces as students, researchers and faculty to build the pressure needed for our institution to implement a full academic boycott of Israel! Together we can build the momentum and give courage to the University to take immediate concrete action.
The event program consists of speeches, presentations and discussions. Come talk to us, learn more and sign a petition in support of academic boycott. There will be small snacks and coffee served in the event.
What ❓
No Association with Genocide – campaign event
When ⏰
Wednesday15.10. 16-18:00
Where 📍
Tekla Hultin (F3003), University of Helsinki Main building (Fabianinkatu 33)
Why 💡
BDS has noted that grassroots organizing across Europe over the past years has yielded results. Israeli partnerships in Horizon Europe projects have decreased by 68,5%, and with them the previously unmatched share of EU funding to Israeli Universities has been cut drastically. They also note that public opinion about the EU-Israel Association Agreement has never been as low; all that is needed is to leverage this towards meaningful change. BDS calls for escalation of grassroots pressure — we answer with this campaign.
This academic year, we shout with force: “No Association with Genocide!” and organize with resolution to rid our Universities of shameful partnerships with Israeli Universities. We need Universities in Finland to join the ranks of those European universities that have decided to boycott Israel. While our University leadership is wasting away their academic integrity waiting for orders from politicians in the Finnish government and the EU alike, we implore them to use their academic freedom to defend Palestinian rights to education and life.
University of Helsinki has taken important steps towards ending its complicity, by freezing exchange agreements with Tel-Aviv University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Spring 2024, and now by joining an appeal put foward by Belgian Universities demanding the immediate suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. It is this very agreement, which forms the basis for Israel’s participation in European multilateral research collaboration and the Horizon Europe funding framework. Following its own logic, should the University of Helsinki immediately sever its own problematic ties and ongoing research collaboration with Israeli institutions.
Now we urge the University to take the crucial step of terminating 15 ongoing institutional research projects with Israeli universities, and to refuse to sign any future projects that Israel participates in. If removing Israel from these projects turns out impossible, must University of Helsinki themselves withdraw from them.
Students, join our demands!
“Genocide in Horizon. Let’s change course!“