Gaza Genocide: University of Cape Town's Stand on Ethics and Solidarity

University of Cape Town Alumni for Palestine

For nearly two years, the world has watched Israel’s unrelenting assault on the Gaza Strip, accompanied by intensified land invasions on the West Bank and supplementary regional wars in Iran and Syria. Most recently, the IDF has adopted a brutal strategy of mass starvation and attacks on those who try to access food as part of its genocidal campaign.

Repeated legal guidance from the ICJ and ICC lay out the illegality of Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, the culpability of Israeli leaders in war crimes in Gaza, and the desperate need for a cessation of hostilities, protection of the rights of Palestinians, and unfettered access to humanitarian aid.

This guidance has been ignored by Israel, which continues to act with impunity.  Throughout this time, there have been growing demands from ordinary people, civilian activists, and governments across the world for a ceasefire and an end to Israel’s eighteen-year illegal blockade of Gaza. 

It has become increasingly clear that the moral battle being fought in Palestine is also being fought across the globe within governments and institutions. We are all responsible, and we will all have to account for our response – or our silence - in the decades to come.

The UCT resolutions

The University of Cape Town's response, in June 2024, was to pass two resolutions. These aim to signal solidarity with Palestinians by protecting the freedom to criticize Israel and refusing to be complicit in its genocidal campaign. 

UCT’s first resolution affirms the legitimacy of criticising Israel and Zionism and rejects the conflation of doing so with antisemitism. This suggests that UCT should distinguish carefully between criticism of Israel and antisemitism and take concrete steps toward preventing the former from being erroneously censored based on the latter. 

UCT’s second resolution prohibits affiliations with the IDF. This is supported by a comprehensive body of international law that recognises IDF actions as illegal. 

There have been several attempts to pressure the university to rescind these resolutions, including the withdrawal of substantial donor contributions. More recently, a legal challenge to the resolutions has been brought by Prof. Adam Mendelsohn. Mendelsohn’s challenge focuses on governance processes: he accuses the UCT Council of not acting in the best interests of the University by privileging moral concerns over financial sustainability and of limiting academic freedom.

Mendelsohn’s argument is not made on moral grounds. Instead, it is grounded in the view that those who have resources make the rules.  And in this lies a question for UCT about the very soul of the university. What vision do the Vice-Chancellor, senior leadership, and academic staff offer in this moment? Will UCT take seriously its moral and democratic responsibilities to act for the public good, or will it bow to the will of the highest bidder?

UCT’s identity

UCT’s mission statement asserts that its practices are underpinned by “values of engaged citizenship and social justice”, and that it “promotes a more equitable and non-racial society”. UCT’s Vision 3030 reiterates a commitment to creating a “fair and just society.” 

UCT’s values commit it to acting in support of Gaza, where every single university has been completely obliterated over the past two years. The broader UCT community has signalled support for its Gaza resolutions, with majorities in the Senate, Council, and Convocation all having endorsed this direction. The donors’ threats to withdraw funding are, in effect, an attempt to countermand UCT’s internal democratic processes. 

Precedents from other universities

Internationally, a growing number of universities have cut ties with Israeli universities and other institutions where these are seen to be associated with human rights violations. These include the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), Trinity College, the University of Belfast, and the University of Florence. Closer to home, universities such as the University of the Western Cape and the University of Fort Hare have made similar commitments. UCT aspires to be the academic and thought leader on our continent.

UCT’s values and mission statement aspire to even higher ideals. We would do well to listen to our colleagues and peers from around the world who have been brave in confronting the genocide, some at great personal and professional cost. 

Calls from inside Israel and Palestine

An increasing number of voices from inside Israel are calling for an end to the onslaught. These include  1300 Israeli academics who published a letter noting that, “As academics, we recognize our role in these crimes. It is human societies, not governments alone, that commit crimes against humanity. Some do so using direct violence. Others do so by sanctioning the crimes and justifying them, before and after the fact, and by keeping quiet and silencing voices in the halls of learning. It is this bond of silence that allows evident crimes to continue unabated without penetrating the barriers of recognition.”

Prominent Israeli genocide experts such as Amos Goldberg, Raz Segal, and Omer Bartov have emphatically described Israel’s campaign in Gaza as genocide,

Outside of academia, numerous Israeli organisations and individuals have spoken out against Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians, including ordinary citizens, former politicians, and a leading member of Israel’s legal team in the genocide case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Following growing protests, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem has described what is happening in Gaza as a genocide.

In addition to these calls from Israelis, an urgent appeal was made by the Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza, calling for their “friends and colleagues around the world to resist the ongoing campaign of scholasticide in occupied Palestine, to work alongside us in rebuilding our demolished universities, and to refuse all plans seeking to bypass, erase, or weaken the integrity of our academic institutions“.

Academic freedom, funding, and collegiality

In the face of this international outcry, UCT’s management continues to vacillate about its support for the resolutions. The UCT Vice-Chancellor has repeatedly invoked the objectives of academic freedom, funding, and collegiality in discussions of the resolutions. 

All three are of critical importance to the university. 

However, academic freedom is first and foremost protected by valuing truth over power, which in the present instance would suggest standing firm with UCT’s academics against Israel’s assault on Gaza. Academic freedom should not be abused to engage in human rights violations. It should, instead, protect students and colleagues whose rights have been violated.

While genuine academic freedom defends truth against power, deferring to financial incentives over ethical obligation would do the opposite. Nonetheless, the question of funding is critical to the sustainability of any institution.

However, UCT’s general operating budget depends almost entirely on funding from government, tuition, and merchandising. The threatened withdrawal of funding does not represent an existential threat to UCT.  Furthermore, the majority of donors have not threatened to withdraw funds, and some have signalled explicit support for the resolutions.

As for collegiality, critical engagement from diverse perspectives is to be encouraged. But this need not include the exaggerated appeasement of those who would act against the most basic moral, legal, and institutional imperatives. Indeed, the process of passing the resolutions encompassed exactly such critical engagement.

How will UCT respond? 

In response to these developments, over 1600 UCT alumni have signed a statement calling on UCT to stand and act against the destruction of Gaza and its entire education system, including all of its universities, and to uphold the two resolutions.

UCT’s ethical, legal, democratic, historical, and academic commitments all point to an obligation to stand in solidarity with their Palestinian counterparts, and to speak and act resolutely against ongoing genocide.

To this end, the UCT Alumni for Palestine group has called on UCT to reject any attempts to undermine the resolutions that condemn state-sponsored violence and the systematic destruction of education and healthcare in Gaza; to publicly denounce the withdrawal of funding intended to coerce or distract from UCT’s commitment to ethical leadership and academic freedom and to articulate clearly UCT’s legal and moral obligations by international law and the ICJ rulings, South Africa’s Constitution, and UCT’s own Vision 2030, ensuring that the university’s actions are beyond reproach in the face of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and apartheid. 

The principle of the matter is very clear, and if UCT is to be taken seriously as an institution committed to “social justice” and advancing “the pace of transformation within our university and beyond,” then the sheer moral clarity of the moment should be enough to dispose the university to act accordingly.

* This article is an abbreviated version of a statement signed by over 1600 UCT Alumni.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.