News
Press Release on April 6, 2025
Executive Board of German University under Criticism: Staff initiative Calls for Urgent Review of Collaborations with Israeli Research and Teaching Institutions
An initiative by employees at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is criticizing its Executive Board for its unwillingness to seriously engage in a transparent and meaningful evaluation of the ethical permissibility of research collaborations that are at high risk of violating human rights. "After months of ease trying to persuade the Executive Board to engage in constructive and open dialogue, we feel compelled to address the issue publicly," says Dr. Maximilian Tschol, spokesperson for the Initiative for Ethical Academic Ties at KIT (IEAT).
Founded in 2024, the IEAT (https://ethicalties-kit.org/) is committed to ensuring that KIT’s collaborations with external partners are always in line with the principles of justice and international law. Against this background, it calls for an ethical and legal review of collaborations with Israeli research and teaching institutions, as many of them are known to have close ties to the Israeli military. In light of the human rights and international law violations by the Israeli military documented by the United Nations and independent human rights organizations, the initiative believes there is an urgent need to review whether these collaborations are still consistent with the ethical guidelines of KIT and may be continued.
Unfortunately, all of IEAT’s offers to initiate dialogue have been firmly ignored by the KIT Executive Board so far, making the recent conclusion of new cooperation agreements with the universities of Tel Aviv and Haifa on March 3 of this year by the President of KIT particularly worrisome (https://www.kit.edu/kit/english/pi_2025_014_helmholtz-and-kit-strengthen-ties-with-arab-and-israeli-partners.php). "For a German university committed to human rights and the values of international law, it should be self-evident to carefully examine such cooperation agreements and promote a critical discussion of them within its own institution," emphasizes Dr. Simpson, a founding member of the IEAT.
The Executive Board’s unwillingness to address the issue raised by the IEAT is also reflected in the way they have tried to discredit the initiative with a series of inaccurate accusations and the prohibition of holding an event on KIT premises to discuss the connections between German academia on the one hand and the Israeli military and weapons industry on the other. The IEAT considers such actions to contradict the principle of “dealing with each other in partnership, truthfulness, and trust" enshrined in the ethical guidelines of KIT. “The impression arises that the attempt to discredit the IEAT from the outset and to refuse dialogue with it was also intended to shield the realization of new, highly questionable collaboration agreements from possible criticism so as not to jeopardize it.” says the spokesperson for the initiative.
The IEAT, whose KIT-internal open letter of October 2024 was signed by 148 KIT employees, will continue to work resolutely, despite the difficulties it faces, to end cooperation with research and teaching institutions involved in human rights and international law violations.