On the 7th May 2024, Students for Palestine initiated a series of sit-ins at Universities across Switzerland, including at ETH, to take a stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict and to push for greater transparency on the scientific collaborations taking place with Israeli institutions [1,2]. In Zürich, they are calling for consistency between ETH’s position on Israel-Palestine and the war in Ukraine. The ETH administration immediately silenced the voice of the student organisation, requested police assistance to break up the action, and is now pressing charges against 28 protestors. This reaction has been criticised not only by the student body, but also by organisations such as Amnesty International [3].

Regardless of our personal views on the demands of the protestors, as staff members of affiliated scientific institutions (ETHZ, EPFL, Empa, Eawag) we are dismayed by the refusal of the ETH administration to consider the concerns of the student body. Science only flourishes when different viewpoints can be openly discussed, a value enshrined within the Swiss constitution. We reject the argument of “political neutrality”[4] by the counterexample of the response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We therefore call upon the ETH to show consistency in its response to global conflicts, and to respect the students’ right of assembly and freedom of speech. A first step in this direction is to drop the charges against the protestors, which seeks to silence them via financial means, and to refrain from similar repressive measures in the future.

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[1] Students for Palestine - No Tech for Genocide!, BARRIKADE, accessed 8 May 2024, <https://barrikade.info/article/6436> (in German)
[2] Students for Palestine - No Tech for Genocide!, Instagram, accessed 8 May 2024, <https://www.instagram.com/p/C6qcwdfC6ic/?img_index=1> (in English)
[3] Amnesty International, Amnesty International website, accessed 8 May 2024, <https://www.amnesty.ch/de/laender/europa-zentralasien/schweiz/dok/2024/das-recht-auf-protest-an-universitaeten-muss-garantiert-sein> (in German).
[4]  Ulrich Weidmann, ETH Zürich Hochschulkommunikation, accessed 8 May 2024, <https://ethz.ch/staffnet/de/news-und-veranstaltungen/intern-aktuell/archiv/2024/05/die-eth-zuerich-ist-keine-plattform-fuer-politischen-aktivismus.html> (in German)