Cut ties with Israeli universities, Nalsar University of Law students, teachers demand

HYDERABAD, India: A group of students and teachers from the Nalsar University of Law in Hyderabad have written to their vice-chancellor demanding that the varsity’s ties with Israeli educational institutes be severed to protest against the country’s actions in Gaza.

A total of 275 LLB, LLM and Department of Management Studies (DoMS) students have signed the letter which demands “an unequivocal condemnation of the Israeli actions in Palestine and to cut all ties with international exchange programmes with Israeli institutes…”.

Nalsar has academic exchange programmes with Tel Aviv University and The Radzyner School of Law, the letter reads.

A group of students and teachers from the Nalsar University of Law in Hyderabad have written to their vice-chancellor demanding that the varsity’s ties with Israeli educational institutes be severed to protest against the country’s actions in Gaza.

According to students who signed the petition, the signatures were collected after Israel bombed the Nuseirat refugee camp and other alleged offensives in the Gaza Strip. Nalsar should boycott Israeli universities as these institutes have become “mute spectators of the offensive,” the students have written.

Nalsar should also roll back academic cooperation with Israeli institutes because an institute which stakes claim on “principles of justice” should not ignore the “unprecedented humanitarian disasters wreaked upon the people of Gaza”, the letter reads.

In the petition, the students wrote, “Human rights organisations including Lowenstein Human Rights Project, Yale Law School, UN experts, and the International Court of Justice, Hague have in no uncertain terms held the disproportionality of the offensive and a likely ‘genocidal’ character to the Israeli offensive in Gaza.”