The question is extremely embarrassing in universities and colleges: as Israel wages a relentless war in Gaza and opens a new front in Lebanon, is it legitimate to maintain academic partnerships with its higher education establishments? And to what extent does this scientific cooperation not contribute to the research finding a military application?
The students mobilized in the dozens of “Palestinian committees” created since spring in higher education centers are calling for a boycott and the creation of study commissions to control the cooperation undertaken in Israel, whether economic or academic.
“Who made the effort to install these elements? As far as I know, no one, it is a serious failure of the French university institution”laments Bertrand Badie, professor emeritus of Sciences Po universities, who is surprised to “the lack of impulse for reflection on the part of the Minister of Higher Education to give herself the necessary perspective.”
“Military complexes integrated into campuses”
When asked, school managements avoid or are evasive about the follow-up they give to the ongoing cooperation. “As universities are autonomous, there is no general rule. “Each establishment is free to agree on its associations.”France Universités, the association that brings them together, laconically states.
Things were very different with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. “A near-global scientific embargo, historic in its scale, has fallen on Vladimir Putin’s Russia”noted Stéphanie Balme, director of the international research center Sciences Po, in an April 2022 article dedicated to “War-proof scientific diplomacy”. France Universités, on March 10, 2022, announced that it was suspending its memorandum of understanding with the Russian Rectors’ Union which, in a press release, had expressed its support for the invasion of Ukraine.
“We must be very careful when what makes sense for the Russians does not make sense for other states.”warns Bertrand Badie. The request of the mobilized students is completely legitimate: we must take the time to establish, through consultations, criteria that allow us to decide between boycotting or continuing to cooperate with universities, whether Israeli or Russian. »
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