We have gathered some of the most frequently asked questions about the Uppsala Declaration below.
Who can sign the Uppsala Declaration?
Everyone with a position in Swedish higher education and research (whether salaried or not) can sign the Uppsala Declaration. This includes PhD candidates, who are research staff in the Swedish system.
Who wrote the Uppsala Declaration?
Teachers and researchers at Uppsala University, in consultation with experts on international law as well as Palestinian and Israeli scholars.
Why did you write the Uppsala Declaration?
Almost two years into the unprecedented killing, maiming, and starving of Gaza’s besieged population, it is urgent for us to address our own role in Israel’s destruction of Palestine and the Palestinian people. Committed to the principles of international humanitarian law and no less committed to the value and dignity of human life, we believe that Swedish institutions of higher education and research should suspend collaborations with all Israeli institutions complicit in illegal occupation, apartheid, genocide, and other violations of international law. For as long as our Swedish institutions continue to collaborate with complicit Israeli institutions, including Israeli universities and research centres, we conscientiously object to taking part in such collaborations.
What do you hope to achieve with the Uppsala Declaration?
By collecting signatures from faculty and staff across Swedish institutions of higher education and research, and by terminating our own participation in collaborations with complicit Israeli institutions, we hope to 1) demonstrate to our institutional leaders that there is strong and principled support from within our community to suspend collaborations with complicit Israeli institutions, and to 2) pressure our leaders to follow our lead and suspend formal collaborations with complicit Israeli institutions until they comprehensively and verifiably comply with international law.
Why have Palestinian academics called for an academic boycott of Israel?
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) is a part of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Initiated in 2004, PACBI advocates for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions for their deep and persistent complicity in Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights under international law.
Long before the Gaza genocide, Israel was occupying and colonising Palestinian lands, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes (the vast majority of Gaza’s population are refugees from what is now the state of Israel). Inspired by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, the BDS call urges international solidarity and non-violent action to pressure Israel to comply with international law. In 2011 the University of Johannesburg became the first international university to heed the call, ending an agreement with Ben Gurion University over its complicity in human rights violations.
It should be noted that PACBI and its partners in the broad coalition of Palestinian civil society organisations leading the BDS movement have consistently advocated for a boycott of Israeli institutions on the basis of their well documented complicity, but never for a boycott of Israeli researchers on the basis of their national identity.
How are Israeli universities complicit in illegal occupation, apartheid, genocide and other violations of international law?
Israeli universities have long been major, willing and persistent accomplices in Israeli violations of international law, and have played an active role in planning, implementing, advocating for, and justifying illegal occupation, apartheid, and now genocide. Israeli universities maintain institutional collaborations with the Israeli military and security forces: they have army bases and installations on campus, they train soldiers and security forces through specialised degree programmes, they develop weapons and surveillance technologies used to commit war crimes in the occupied territories and elsewhere, and they develop military and legal doctrines used by the Israeli state to implement, maintain and justify its illegal occupation, ethnic cleansing, and extra-judicial killings of Palestinians. They also systematically discriminate against their Palestinian students and staff, denying them their academic freedom (Wind 2024).
Tel Aviv University, for example, has developed weapons systems used by Israel against children and other civilians in Gaza, and it has partnered with the Israeli government, military, and military industries to develop doctrines and technologies to deliberately target Palestinian and Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure. For its part, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has part of its campus built on illegally occupied Palestinian lands in East Jerusalem, hosts a military base on its campus grounds, and is training elite soldiers to maintain the illegal occupation.
Could an academic boycott of Israeli institutions infringe on academic freedom?
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) is not advocating for a boycott of individual scholars based on their identity, but calls for a principled boycott of institutions based on documented complicity. In line with this principle, the Uppsala Declaration does not call for ending contact with Israeli academics, so long as they are not implicated in committing and/or advocating for genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity, and so long as this contact does not involve any complicit Israeli institution.
The academic boycott seeks to build international pressure on Israeli academic institutions to end their deep complicity with Israel’s systems of oppression against the Palestinian people. This has already proven effective, as the growing traction of an international academic boycott has triggered increased calls by Israeli academics to end their institutions’ participation in Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It is not Israeli but Palestinian academic freedom that is currently under attack. While education and research in the West Bank has long been severely restricted and campuses are being increasingly raided by the Israeli military, the entire sector of education and research has been wholly eradicated in Gaza, with Israel deliberately and systematically targeting and demolishing schools, and last year completed the destruction of every single university. Thousands of researchers, teachers, and students have been killed, maimed, or illegally confined by Israel. No Israeli university has called on the Israeli government to cease the destruction of Palestinian higher education.
Would it not be better to encourage dialogue and diplomacy?
Diplomatic efforts have failed for decades precisely because with more or less unconditional Western government support for Israel, there is no real incentive for Israelis to end the illegal occupation of Palestine and the violent subjugation of the Palestinian people. In contrast, the role of the international boycott in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa shows that rather than impeding dialogue, the external pressure from an international boycott can force political leaders to the negotiating table (US Campaign for Palestinian Rights).
Why should we only boycott Israeli institutions?
Israel is not the only repressive regime in the world, Palestinians are not the only subjugated people, and Gaza is not the only place where civilians are being targeted and starved by armed forces. Israel is, however, the only country in which Swedish universities have active collaborations with state institutions, even as the leaders of that state are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and while the state itself is being investigated for the crime of genocide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
UN officials as well as leading international law experts and human rights organisations have documented how Israel’s ongoign genocide in Gaza is moreever unprecedented with respect to the scale and intensity of the destruction and forcible displacement, the weaponisation of starvation, the number of UN staff, health professionals, and journalists killed by armed forces, etc. It is also unprecedented in that Israeli soldiers and officers document their own crimes and openly brag about them. According to UN human right experts, Israel’s genocide in Gaza has included “domicide, urbicide, scholasticide, medicide, cultural genocide and, more recently, ecocide.”
For over two decades, Palestinians have been calling on international academia to take this stance in an act of solidarity, and it is important that we heed their call or, at minimum, do no harm by not crossing the nonviolent picket line.
Do you denounce Antisemitism?
Of course. We denounce all forms of racism, including anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian racism. Mislabelling legitimate criticism of the state of Israel as antisemitism is, however, a deceitful and dangerous tactic. As 40+ Jewish groups including Judar för israelisk-palestinsk fred (JIPF) in Sweden put it in an open letter denouncing the IHRA definition of antisemitism: “At times like this, it is more important than ever to distinguish between the hostility to or prejudice against Jews on the one hand and legitimate critiques of Israeli policies and system of injustice on the other.”
Conflating anti-Jewish racism with opposition to Israel’s system of occupation and apartheid, effectively undermines both the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality and the struggle against actual antisemitism. It also serves to shield Israel from being held accountable to universal standards of human rights and international law.
Are academic boycotts of Israel in effect in other European countries?
Yes. Six Norwegian universities – OsloMet, the University of South-Eastern Norway, the University of Bergen, the Bergen School of Architecture, Nord University, and the University of Stavanger – suspended collaborations with complicit Israeli institutions between January and June 2024. In May 2024, the Board of the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE), representing 76 universities in Spain, decided to end collaborations with Israeli universities. In the same month, the University of Helsinki suspended exchange agreements with Israeli universities.
Five Dutch universities – the University of Amsterdam, Radboud University, Utrecht University, Tilburg University, and Erasmus University Rotterdam – suspended various collaborations with complicit Israeli universities in May and June 2025. In June 2025, Trinity College Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast went further than other Western universities, announcing that they will not only end all ties with Israeli universities but also with Israeli businesses.
Uppsala University already issued a statement putting pressure on the Swedish government. Isn’t that enough?
Only days after we published the Uppsala Declaration and the names of the first 700 signatories, the Board of Uppsala University issued an official statement demanding that the Swedish government condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza, resume its support for UNRWA, and act to increase the pressure on Israel to comply with international law. While this clearly is a positive first step, Uppsala University has so far failed to address the elephant in the room, namely its own collaborations with Israeli institutions complicit in violations of international law.
Words are important but so far we have seen nothing but words from many Western leaders who are still aiding and assisting Israel’s genocide, apartheid and illegal occupation through funding, arming, cooperating, and shielding Israel from accountability. As the ICJ has made clear, all states and entities have a duty to act to prevent and punish genocide, and to end complicity in illegal occupation and apartheid. As we have seen in the last year and a half, Israel is acting with complete impunity. Because of this it is important that all sectors of civic society put pressure on Israel and its complicit institutions until there is real change.
Has the Uppsala Declaration been reported on in the press?
Yes! Check this link which we will be updating regularly: Uppsala Declaration in the news
Where can I sign the Uppsala Declaration?
You can sign it here.
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You can learn more about the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) on the international website of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement.
You can learn more about Swedish universities’ involvement with complicit Israeli institutions in the Boycott Report issued by Workers and Students in Swedish Academia for Palestine (WASSAP).
You can read more questions and answers in the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) FAQ of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
You can contact the drafters of the Uppsala Declaration at uppsaladeclaration@protonmail.com (please write in Swedish or English).
This page was last updated on June 24, 2025.