Calls for Irish University to end its collaboration with Israel

The deep irony involved in studying human rights and international law in a university which continues to have a research partnership with an Israeli institute which collaborates closely with the Israel Defence Force (IDF) was highlighted during a sold-out conference on the west coast of Ireland this week.

The ‘Voices for Palestine’ conference at the Aras na nGael centre in Galway city centre was organised by the Campus Anti Genocide Coalition (CAGC) in opposition to the University of Galway’s continued research partnership with Technion, the Israeli public research university which maintains deep collaborative ties with Israel’s security forces.

Speakers at the event included three members of the Gaza Sumud Flotilla, all graduates of the University of Galway, who were abducted by Israeli forces in international waters as they tried to bring aid to Gaza in October of last year, and veteran campaigner for human rights Bernadette McAliskey (née Devlin), a former member of the British parliament from Northern Ireland.

All of the speakers called on the Galway institution to end its EU-funded research contract with Technion, which the University of Galway claims it cannot back out of due to contractual obligations and legal advice that it cannot do so.

The University of Galway is the home of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, attracting students from all over the world to study international law, and also hosts a Nelson Mandela Anti-Apartheid week in March each year. The former President of South Africa received an honorary degree there in 2003 and his legacy is invoked in Galway every year when high profile speakers visit the campus to celebrate its opposition to racism and Apartheid.

A Ph.D. scholar on genocide, Ramez Al Hayek, told the conference that he had spent much of the last three years researching the law of genocide and how international law can address the destruction of a people.

“Yet I have spent almost the same amount of time asking my own university to take seriously the very principles that we study and teach here,” said Al Hayek, a scholarship student from Palestine. “And that is a contradiction I find increasingly difficult to accept.”

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Mr. Al Hayek, whose research focuses on genocide and settler-colonialism in Palestine, said the University of Galway has had two presidents and one interim president since October 2023. Students and staff at the University met with the then President, Ciaran O hOgartaigh, to discuss the university’s “deeply disappointing” response to the start of the onslaught in Gaza in late 2023.

“Three presidents, three years of meetings, statements, reviews, and promises. Yet here we are, still demanding that our university ends its institutional relationship with the Technion. In those three years, more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, over 175,000 injured, and approximately 82 per cent of Gaza’s structures damaged or destroyed. An entire education system has been devastated, with more than 95 per cent of schools and universities damaged,” said Mr. Al Hayek.

He said some progress had been made. In February 2024, the University called for a ceasefire in Gaza and, three months later, it proposed the adoption of a human rights policy and impact assessment, including a review of research collaborations. And in February 2026 it acknowledged that a genocide had been inflicted on the people of Palestine.

But he said that the “contradiction” between studying human rights in Galway and the university’s partnership with the Technion had been increasingly difficult to accept during three years of mass killings and destruction in Gaza and the on-going attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.

Mr. Al Hayek said that there was shock among Palestinian students on the campus when the news broke in March 2025, via the Electronic Intifada news website, that the University of Galway had become the co-ordinator an EU-funded project known as ASTERISK, a green hydrogen initiative, and that its partners included Technion.

In September 2025, the university’s management said its interim human rights assessment process should not be used to end the Technion project because a formally approved policy and procedure was not in place.

The controversy led to the establishment of the CAGC, an alliance of students, academic staff, and trade unions on the Galway campus, leading to weekly protests at the entrance to the university, honorary degrees being refused, and Irish students even refusing to accept anti-racism awards.

In April of this year, brothers Dylan and Shane O’Halloran returned the Nelson Mandela Anti-Racism / Leadership Award in protest against the university’s refusal to end its research partnership with Technion.

“How can the university’s own failure to put a human rights mechanism in place become the justification for not applying one?” asked Mr. Al Hayek. “This is a fundamental problem of institutional accountability.”

Mr Al Hayek said the onus was on other states not to assist a state committing violations of fundamental rules of international law and that the International Court of Justice established obligations for other states, including Ireland, after ruling in July 2024 that Israel’s continuing presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal.

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He said that Technion’s relationship with the Israeli military establishment was “extensively documented” and listed the Silon and Brakim programmes, which provide training for the Israeli defence forces, as clear examples from Technion’s own website.

“We are not demanding that individual Israeli academics be excluded because of their nationality, nor are we calling for restrictions on academic discussion or the exchange of ideas,” he said. “We are asking why the University of Galway continues to maintain a formal research relationship with an institution whose connections to the Israeli military are openly acknowledged. A contract cannot be treated as the final word on an institution’s responsibilities, especially when circumstances raise serious questions under international law.

“I think there is something deeply troubling about a situation in which the University of Galway proudly celebrates the expertise of its Irish Centre for Human Rights, yet continues to struggle to translate that expertise into institutional action. The university should now complete and publish a credible human rights policy, provide a transparent assessment of the Technion relationship, and pursue the necessary steps to end that institutional cooperation.”

Poet and human rights activist Sarah Clancy, a graduate of the University of Galway and member of the Global Sumud Flotilla detained by Israeli forces after being seized in international waters last year, told the conference that she was deeply ashamed by the University of Galway’s research partnership with the Technion.

Ms. Clancy said the Technion contract was just one of a number of ways in which the authorities in Ireland was complicit in the horrors unfolding in Gaza, including the use of Shannon Airport in Co. Clare by the US military, and the more general collaborations between the tech sectors in Ireland and Israel.

“I never thought I would be utterly ashamed of the institution in which I obtained a Master’s Degree,” she said. “Have no doubt, the University of Galway is complicit in genocide.”

Dr. Margaret Connolly, a sister of the President of Ireland, Catherine Connolly, also recalled her experiences with the Global Sumud Flotilla in 2025. She said that Irish people were particularly moved by the horrors unfolding in Palestine because of their own history of being colonised, occupied, and living through a man-made famine under the rule of the British Empire.

“As a mother, a woman, and a medical doctor, I cannot ignore the horrors of the occupation and Israel’s system of settler-colonialism and Apartheid in Palestine,” said Dr. Connolly. “Injustice is coded into the DNA of Irish people, but our government, and the governments of the western world, are shockingly complicit in what has been happening in Palestine.”

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