Pitzer College Closes Study Abroad Program With Complicit Haifa University
The University of Haifa has provided equipment to Israeli soldiers carrying out the #GazaGenocide, hosts three Israeli military colleges, and the Israeli military base of Glilot is an extension of the university.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) welcomes news that Pitzer College has closed its study abroad program with Haifa University following years of campaigning. Pitzer College is the first US higher education institution to enact a significant measure of the academic boycott of Israel.
We applaud students and faculty for their tireless work to ensure Pitzer is free of complicity in Israel’s regime of military occupation, apartheid and genocide against millions of Palestinians. We also commend the 400+ alumni who pledged no donations as long as Pitzer remains complicit.
The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Institutions, public and private, have a moral and legal obligation to take all measures to prevent genocide.
The University of Haifa has provided equipment to Israeli soldiers carrying out the #GazaGenocide and established an “emergency” fund for student soldiers. It has for years hosted three Israeli military colleges, and the Israeli military base of Glilot is an extension of the university.
Israel’s #GazaGenocide has destroyed or heavily damaged all Palestinian universities in Gaza, including by placing explosives in empty campuses, and after some had been occupied and used as military bases as well as detention and torture centers. This is scholasticide, or the killing of learning.
We commend the Pitzer Student Senate for its recent 34:1 vote to suspend the study abroad program with Haifa University over its complicity. Already in 2019, the Pitzer College Council voted by 70% to suspend the program, only to be undemocratically vetoed by the Pitzer College president.
We urge Pitzer College to honor the moral clarity of the Pitzer community by adopting ethical policies to ensure it does not enter into future agreements with institutions complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide anywhere.
We urge all international academic institutions, associations and unions to cut ties with complicit Israeli universities, as called for by Palestinian civil society and the heads of 15 Palestinian universities. If not now, when?
