Photo Shutterstock The executive board released a new statement on Wageningen’s partnerships with Israeli institutes last Friday. The statement includes neither a commitment to, or denial of, the protesters’ demands to sever all ties. The executive board focuses on the assessment framework.
‘We heard the call for a clear moral position on collaboration with Israeli institutes. A call perhaps for a policy framework that details with which partners we wish to collaborate or which we wish to exclude’, the statement reads. Despite the ‘supposed clarity’ such a policy framework may offer, the board declares that WUR values individual academic freedom more.
Furthermore, the statement refers to WUR’s Principles of Collaboration (in which employees previously saw arguments against collaboration with Israeli institutes). The board also indicated that a dialogue on the matter is to take place in the coming month, as was announced in the previous EB statement.
Human rights
The pressure group, consisting of concerned employees, is unimpressed with the latest statement, says spokesperson Joost Jongerden. ‘The executive board fails to address the main issue of concern: the fact that there is also something called institutional responsibility in addition to individual responsibility. If WUR, as an institute, enters into relationships, partnerships or agreements, it should consider whether they ethically align with the human rights paragraph in the Principles of Collaboration.’
The executive board fails to address the main issue of concern: the fact that there is also something called institutional responsibility in addition to individual responsibility
Joost Jongerden, spokesperson pressure group
Jongerden claims the board casts doubt by addressing both institutional and individual responsibility as if they were the same thing. ‘The protesting employees have written a discussion piece detailing what constitutes individual responsibility and what constitutes institutional responsibility. The fact that the board casts institutional responsibility aside and, in doing so, refuses to use this document constructively, is worrisome.’
