Protesters met with closed gate at Executive Board office
Around a hundred people protested on campus on Friday afternoon against TU Delft’s collaboration with Israeli universities and other Israeli knowledge institutions. The group held a march that ended near the Executive Board’s (EB) offices, where the gate providing access to the surrounding garden turned out to be closed.
The demonstrators gathered at 12:00 on the square in front of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. There, they unfurled a banner reading “Impact for a dead society”, a reference to the university’s motto: “Impact for a better society.”
According to Delft Student Intifada, the organisation behind the protest, the Israeli institutions with which TU Delft cooperates contribute directly or indirectly to violence against Palestinians.
Horizon
“The university keeps lying to us. They said they would cut ties, but they still haven’t,” one protester told Delta. In December, TU Delft reported that it would withdraw from a Horizon project: Next Generation of Edge AI Crossing Technology Fields (NEXT).
However, TU Delft is still listed as a participant on the Horizon project’s official page, which was last updated on 17 February. When asked why the university still appears there, a spokesperson recently responded that “TU does not comment on individual cases.”
After chanting slogans, the demonstrators moved towards the CvB office. While the access gate is usually open on working days, this time it was closed. The group remained in front of the shut gate for about half an hour, banging on pots and pans and shouting, among other things, “TU shame on you.” The demonstration ended around 13:30.
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