Timeline
October 22 , 2024
Open Letter to KIT Executive Board, Ethics Committee and Senate
Call to all relevant bodies of KIT, to critically evaluate and discuss the ethical and legal permissibility of maintaining collaboration agreements with Israeli institutions.
October 31 , 2024
Application to KIT Ethics Committee to review legally and ethically Israeli partnerships
December 17, 2024
Recommendation by the KIT Ethics Committee to the Executive Board to have the current legal situation regarding cooperation with Israeli research institutions examined and to react according to the results of this examination.
Ethical considerations guiding permissibility of collaboration agreements remain unstated / unclear.
February 24, 2025
Executive Board decides to let KIT legal department evaluate how the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (Nr. 2024/57) regarding the Illegal Occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory by Israel affects research cooperation between Israeli institutions and KIT.
Exact time when legal review was concluded is unknown. Results were first communicated to us on the 26th of March, 2025. Preliminary feedback from experts in International Law point out that KIT's own legal review only focuses on foreign trade law, and does not take into account obligations regarding the German Constitution and International Law.
March 3, 2025
KIT pledges to sign new cooperation Agreements with Tel Aviv University and University of Haifa.
March 26, 2025
2nd Application to KIT Ethics Committee
Calling for more clarity on ethical criteria guiding cooperation agreements of KIT, and the initation of transparent evaluation procedures regarding human rights standards of (potential) partners.
May 7, 2025
KIT Ethics Committee votes against a new statement or recommendation.
The Ethics Committee declines to elaborate on its criteria and procedures guiding case by case evaluations. It declines to clarify whether it acknowledges direct or indirect Human Rights Violations by (potential) partners as impacting the permissibility of cooperation. It further does not respond to our plea to work on a transparent Human Rights Impact Assessment for international cooperation.
September 8, 2025
KIT Ethics Committee meets with IEAT for an exchange.
EC provides a written response to questions by IEAT. EC makes clear that it only focuses on research design and research content for its ethics recommendations. It does not see its role in evaluating possible risks regarding human rights violations by partner institutions.
EC clarifies that its first and only public statement from December 2024 involved a screening of ongoing research projects. No systematic evaluation procedures were followed, but the self-described research content was screened for topics that could fall into dual-use or security-relevant research, and might therefore require special ethical consideration. No such content was found.
EC does not take up IEATs suggestion for KIT to develop a human rights impact assessment for collaborating institutions.
September 30, 2025
KIT provides written assessment of its legal obligations under international and German Constitutional law regarding ongoing and future collaborations with Israeli universities and research institutions.
While KIT claims to take into account court rulings and legal obligations that have immediate relevance for its cooperating partners, it currently sees no legal obligation arising from decisions of the ICJ and under German constitutional law.