TU shares few details about projects with Israel: ‘Individuals should not become part of the debate’

In June 2025, the Executive Board decided to refrain from entering into new partnerships with Israeli universities and other organisations unless they met strict criteria. The Executive Board expressed ‘serious concerns about possible involvement in genocidal violence and human rights violations’, it wrote in a statement.

Ongoing research projects had to be reassessed on a case-by-case basis. The Executive Board adopted the advice of the internal committee ‘Moral Deliberation on Sensitive Collaborations in relation to Israel-Gaza’that Israeli partners should be enabled ‘to distance themselves in word and deed from potential human rights violations and genocide’.

Withdrawn from project

On 3 December 2025, TU Delft announced its withdrawal from the project ‘Next Generation of edge AI crossing technology fields’. This project concerns secure European artificial intelligence, and the partner in Israel is the company Weebit Nano. Activists protested against this collaboration on the same day, partly because it had started after the Executive Board had decided not to enter into new collaborations.

The question is whether other partnerships will follow. Delta recently asked the Integrity Office which ones are currently being considered. However, the department would not say, pointing out that ‘many research projects can be found publicly via project websites or international research databases’. Journalists from Follow the Money and Investico, for example, have indeed used these in recent years to uncover information.

TU Delft itself says it does not want to add specific projects or research groups ‘to this debate’. The explanation? “In the current geopolitical context, this could put individual researchers and partners in a difficult position.” It could make them ‘personally part of a political and social debate’, which TU Delft wants to avoid.

Picture may be incomplete

The Integrity Office does mention numbers. It has identified 22 projects involving both TU and an Israeli partner: 3 of these have already ended, another 9 will end in the coming months, and 3 have an unclear status because they have just been added to the list. The remaining 7 will be investigated with priority.

The Integrity Office describes how the inventory of existing collaborations was compiled: ‘based on internal project information and public sources such as project websites and international research databases’. One difficulty here is that international work is often carried out in consortia. If TU Delft is not the lead partner, it is ‘not always fully apparent which parties are indirectly involved in a project through other partners’. As a result, the current picture may not be complete.

No insight into results

The Integrity Office says that it is up to researchers and faculties themselves to reassess projects, with advice from the Integrity Office, the Legal Affairs and Knowledge Security departments and ‘other relevant experts’. If there are still doubts or ethical questions afterwards, the option remains to hold a moral deliberation with other colleagues from TU Delft. This could take place in the permanent moral deliberation room that is currently being set up.

And once all that research is complete, what will be published about the final results? Not much, at least if it is up to TU Delft. Where possible, this too will be done ‘at an aggregate level’.