Palestine Support From US Campuses Reaches Ashoka, Student Body Demands To End Tie-Up With Israel's Tel Aviv University

While pro-Palestine protests on US campuses have been going on for around a week, the same phenomenon has entered Ashoka University, situated in Haryana's Sonipat, Indian Express reported.

The student government, an elected body, here has demanded to end collaboration with Israel-based Tel Aviv University (TAU) citing its ties with those Israeli institutions that are "involved in human rights violations."

Presently, Ashoka University has research partnerships with Tel Aviv University that involve faculty visits for teaching, student mobility, research collaboration, short-term study opportunities and joint programmes.

The petition cited Tel Aviv’s ties with Israeli weapons manufacturers like Elbit Systems and the Palestinian death toll of 34,596 and said that the continued collaboration raised serious ethical questions.

"Professors from Tel Aviv University have been involved in drafting the Israeli Occupation Force’s (IOF) code of ethics, providing legal defense to IOF members for war crimes and drafting doctrines that dictate military operations," it added.

Mentioning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against companies accused of being on Israel's side against Gaza, it called to "immediately suspend all existing academic and research collaborations" with TAU.

It alleged that Tel Aviv University continues to "exist to stifle conversation around the Palestinian people and to prevent Palestinian scholarly work," while Palestinian universities have been demolished by Israeli forces.

The petition argued, "By maintaining ties with a university linked to systematic human rights abuses, Ashoka University is complicit in these violations" and it should demonstrate its commitment to ethical conduct and human rights.

Ashoka University was in controversy in March as well when videos of its students raising slogans such as 'we need caste census' and 'Brahmin-Baniyawaad Murdabad' went viral on social media.