Thread by @JKSteinberger

So yesterday we had quite the victory at Uni Lausanne for both the Palestinian rights student movement, and for the university as a whole against political violence & silencing pressure. No time to detail the whole thing, will just add links.
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Image: Keystone/Valentin Flauraud

The students won concessions on all 4 of their demands:
1. public university statement of solidarity with Palestinian academics and scholars
2. active support of Palestinian scholars and rebuilding Palestinian academia
3. transparency on collaborations with Israel
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The fourth and most contentious was the calling into question and possible boycott of collaborations with Israel. The partial concession here is the creation of an urgent working group (students were not thrilled, but still) setting out criteria for ethical collaboration.
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These would apply to all collaborations, not just with Israel. Privately, uni leadership thinks this is a good thing. Honestly quite proud of our uni leadership and rectorate, they negotiated in good faith while under IMMENSE political & media pressure to resort to violence.
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Pressure which almost every other uni leadership immediately caved under, or enthusiastically embraced. Looking at you EPFL, ETHZ, Geneva, Basel, etc.
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The Uni Lausanne students compiled a detailed, referenced report, detailing links between Israeli institutions the university collaborates with, and the Israeli military. It is HUGE. A+++ all around, our students are the best. In French.
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drive.google.com/file/d/14WeJR7…

Link to yesterday's press conference. The constrast between our university, functioning as an autonomous decision-making deliberative body, and the testimonies from students of other Swiss unis facing huge violence could not be starker.
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The political & media pressure is horrendous. The politicians did everything we are usually accused of: they seeked to impose their political line on the university, they seeked to bring violence onto the campus, they used media appearances to inflame the situation ...
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... and cynically raise their profile and advance their careers. I am deeply ashamed of them, as well as of most of the media, who did zero investigating, and just repeated harmful talking points. Let the record show our students did the work & the research. 👏👏👏
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The occupation ends, our building will be a sadder and emptier place today, but a huge movement was forged. This saturday, there will be a cross-university demonstration in Bern at 1pm. See you there.
Free Palestine!
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Image: @Lorikhysenii