Pressure continues to mount for universities across the motu to express solidarity with Palestine. Pōneke Wellington has seen successive protests, the most recent involving Massey students calling for their university to divest from investments in Israeli Government Bonds. Now, Victoria University students and staff have penned a letter to the Uni’s senior leadership and Foundation Board of Trustees. The letter outlines their own list of demands of the uni, which also likely has financial links to Israel. As of writing, the letter has 342 signatures.
The letter begins: “On Monday, July 8th, Te Herenga Waka students returned to their studies after a short break. That same day marked nine months of Israel’s genocidal campaign that has destroyed the studies, lives, and futures of the students of Gaza. According to research published in the Lancet journal on July 5th, “it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable" to the genocide. In past weeks, Israel continues its relentless attacks on civilians.’”
Since the letter was written, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is the United Nation’s highest court, ruled on July 20th that Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories are illegal, and all states should cooperate to bring an end to the conflict.
The authors of the article say that they are “appalled that since the closing of the 2023 academic year, no student in Gaza has been able to return to class, no lecturer to a lectern, no scientist to a lab. Not one of Gaza’s 12 Universities remains standing. This is scholasticide.” They point to a letter that was released by Gaza university staff on May 29th calling upon “friends and colleagues around the world to resist the ongoing campaign of scholasticide in occupied Palestine.”
This echoes the argument of the open letter that was addressed to Otago University earlier in the year which said, “Universities that fail to condemn these attacks can no longer claim to be genuinely committed to the pursuit of knowledge and any meaningful vision of a local and global scholarly community.”
On the same day that the letter from Gaza uni staff was released, students of Gaza urged their peers around the world to “raise the pace and ceiling of your struggle and your honourable stances, quantitatively and qualitatively, against the institutions, corporations, and governments that participate in the slaughter of our children, our students, and our people.” Victoria staff and students in the letter write, “As members of the University community, we must respond to these calls for support and justice not only symbolically, but also through collective and institutional actions.”
Much like Massey’s recent news of financial ties to Israel, Vic staff and students are concerned that it’s likely that Vic Uni’s money is invested in Israeli military campaigns. They explain that this is likely since “the Victoria University Foundation’s $69 million investment portfolio includes international assets, which are managed (at least in part) by Nikko Asset Management, whose international portfolio holds Israeli government bonds that help to finance their military campaigns. Nikko is also invested in Palantir and Safran, large multinationals that supply weapons and military intelligence used against Palestinians.”
In an article published by Salient entitled ‘Your Education Is Supported by Mass Murderers,’ news co-editor Will Irvine explains that Safran is a French defence corporation that manufactures some of the drones used against civilians in Gaza. Palantir is owned by Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist who was granted a controversial New Zealand citizenship under the Key government, and whose AI surveillance technology is used by the Israeli state and has been accused of racial profiling.
The letter has three demands of Victoria University: divest all funds held by the university and university foundation with ties to Israel; implement a Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) policy, both financial and academic; establish scholarships and fellowships for Palestinian students and academics. A similar scholarship was granted for Ukranian academics in 2022.
Authors of the letter sign off by saying that they wish to be part of a university that “takes meaningful, material action against settler colonial violence – both in Aotearoa and elsewhere. The demands laid out in this letter are the bare minimum we could be asking of the institution that represents us. We amplify the call of our Palestinian counterparts, and we invite you, the University leaders, to join the collective struggle against settler colonialism, genocide, the denial of Palestinians' futures, and the silencing of their voices.”
As of writing, there has not been any response from Victoria University. Across the country, universities have maintained positions of “institutional neutrality” as debate unfolds among students and in student mags over their responsibility regarding political stances on the conflict.
Otago University has refused to comment on the responses of other tertiary institutions, however they stated they are focused on “inclusivity, education and community support without taking sides in a politically sensitive international conflict. We will continue to support all staff and students impacted by conflict to the best of our ability.” Otago Uni “to the best of [their] knowledge” has no financial links to Israel.
Otago SJP are holding a ‘Stand Up for Palestine’ march from 3:30pm on Tuesday, July 30th, from the Union Lawn to the Clocktower to further their goals.