Dear all,
It has been a while since the last update. The war crimes and mass killings in Palestine continue unabated, and ETH's concrete responses to date can be summarised as follows:
- Condemning Hamas, while refusing to reference the daily terror inflicted by Israel on a civilian population
- Criminalising students for taking part in a global wave of protests, where people from across the world came together to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people and anger at the unwavering support of Western nations for an apartheid state. It is noteworthy that ETH continues relations with academic institutions that are situated on illegaly occupied land, as now ruled on by the ICJ [1].
The Schulleitung's position is that they will follow the positioning of the Swiss government as a federal institute, science itself is apolitical, and ETH as such must remain politically neutral. One can compare the statements from the federal government and from ETH on the invasion of Ukraine, and see that ETH admirably went beyond their remit on this occasion. On the question of science and politics, the abstraction of "science" to the scientific method ignores the mechanisms by which science is funded and to which ends it is pursued. Finally, it is difficult to see how condemning one side while refusing to name the other can be seen as a neutral stance.
Returning to the first motivating factor, it is interesting to note that the Swiss department of foreign affairs (EDA) proudly announced it's leading role in the passing of a "resolution on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of peaceful protests". The protection of these rights is indeed critical, and it is gratifiying to see that all of us who signed this petition appear to have the support of the Federal government. Unfortunately, it appears that the Schulleitung is unaware of the government's own position, and faced with criticism from NGO's such as Amnesty International on their attempts to spread fear as a means to suppress freedom of expression, perhaps they should reflect on this contradiction and drop the charges.
Assuming that they do not, and instead the Schulleitung chooses to continue to cause significant emotional, financial, and legal damage to it's own students, please keep your eyes peeled for future updates. Hopefully, a fundraising campaign will be set up soon to help the students fight for their, and all of our, human right to protest.
[1] Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024 (icj-cij.org)