Swiss academics oppose Israeli research pact
Wire desk byline Sourced from Xinhua, Dawn, Arab News, Anadolu and Minute Mirror. Translated and abridged by the GSRRA Desk.
More than 250 Swiss academics have sent an open letter to the Ministry of Education calling for the termination of a research agreement with Israel.
The letter to the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) denounces the agreement as “complicity with crimes committed in Gaza”.
The mobilisation was organised by the Collective for Academic Freedom, Democracy and Solidarity (Clads), founded in 2024 by a number of academics from Lausanne, including Professor Julia Steinberger, known for her climate battles, reports 24 Heures and the Tribune de Genève.
Contacted by Keystone-ATS, the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research said it would not take a position for the time being, pending the response that SERI is preparing.
The petitioners call on the SERI to carry out an “assessment of ongoing projects” in universities in order to determine their possible links to the Israeli army and the “genocidal policy” of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
They also call for the termination of the ‘agreement between the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Israel Science Foundation.
This partnership, Steinberger explains in the French-speaking newspapers, has restricted access, “which gives Israel an even more privileged and therefore even more problematic status”.
Reference Link:- https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/foreign-affairs/mobilisation-against-swiss-israel-academic-agreement/90905383
Zamir Ahmed Awan is the founder and Chair of the Global Silk Route Research Alliance, a think tank in Islamabad. He studied engineering at Shanghai University in the 1980s, and years later he went back to China as Pakistan's science counsellor in Beijing, from 2010 until 2016, working on science and higher education cooperation between the two countries.…
