The board of Trinity College Dublin has voted to cut all ties with Israeli universities and companies headquartered in Israel.
This will include ending all investments, commercial relationships, academic and research collaborations. The university will no longer facilitate Erasmus+ student exchange agreements with Israeli universities.
Trinity College Dublin is the first university in Ireland to accept recommendations for the full divestment of interests in Israeli companies.
The decision follows a series of meetings of a taskforce set up between staff and student representatives.
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These meetings were arranged as part of an agreement to end a five-day encampment that was set up on the university’s campus in May of last year in protest over the institution’s ties to Israel.
Jenny Maguire, outgoing president of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union, welcomed the board’s decision.
“This historic win must be a catalyst for action across this island,” she said.
Ms Maguire thanked “everyone who has raised a sign, threw down a tent and demanded a better world”.
Freedom of Information records seen by The Irish Times show the university’s endowment fund invested in 13 Israeli companies, three of which feature on a United Nations Human Rights Council list of companies involved in illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The university had already divested from some of these companies.
A protest organised by the students’ union and the Trinity College Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign took place in the hours before the vote.
It was held outside the school of business, where discussions were taking place.
Speaking at the protest, Sinn Féin TD Donna McGettigan commended the students who participated in the encampment, saying it was “a display of people power in action”.
People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Paul Murphy criticised the Government, claiming it was “promising to pass the Occupied Territories Bill, but then on the other hand, trying to avoid annoying, irritating, clashing in any with US imperialism or big powers within the European Union”.
In a statement following the vote, Paul Farrell, chair of the board of Trinity College, thanked members of the taskforce “who contributed significant time and expertise over the past year to consider these important issues so thoroughly”.
Labour Party spokeswoman on further and higher education, Senator Laura Harmon, said she hoped the move by Trinity College would “now act as a catalyst to all institutions across the country to follow suit, to fully divest from Israel and to cut all academic ties”.
