Divest from Israeli and Zionist Prizes
The Azrieli Fellowships
The Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellowships are circulated each year via the research offices of each major university in New Zealand. The Azrieli Fellowships support postdoctoral research at one of eight Israeli universities, each of which is complicit in Israel’s military occupation. For example, Technion's new campus in Tel Aviv received a $6 Million US donation from the Azrieli Foundation in 2014. Technion collaborates with the Israeli military, as well as Elbit Systems and Rafael Advanced Defense, which are companies that produce weapons systems used against civilians as well as the surveillance equipment for Israel’s Apartheid Wall.
Information about the fellowships can be found here.
Write to your TEU delegate and your research office and ask whether it is ethical for Universities in Aotearoa to be offering opportunities for scholars to contribute to the Zionist settler colonial project while we are still attempting to undo the impact of legacies of colonialism in this country within the tertiary sector
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Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash
The Wolf Foundation
The Wolf Foundation is described as a ‘prestigious foundation’ which ‘celebrates and promotes exceptional achievements in the Sciences and Arts worldwide’. It was originally set up in 1976 with a formal status of a private non-governmental organisation. However, it is overseen by the Israeli state and its board includes the Israeli president and the minister for higher education.
The foundation awards two kinds of scholarships. The first and biggest fund is the Wolfe Prize, which is awarded annually to individuals on the basis of nomination by their institutions, in the areas of both sciences and the arts. The prize has an international remit, aimed at universities and institutions worldwide, and includes a $100,000 monetary award which is presented at the Israeli Knesset.The second tier of scholarships, including the ‘Kiefer’ and ‘Krill’ prizes, are awarded to Israeli artists, scientists, and postgraduate students at Israeli institutions.
Given the relationship between the Foundation and the Israeli state, the Wolf Foundation is subject to BDS. Under the PACBI guidelines, nominations should not be made to the Wolf Prize, and individuals supported by the Foundations scholarships and prizes should not be hosted at NZ universities and institutions.
For more information on the Wolf Prize visit Wollfund.org.
Write to University Leadership to Support Palestine Solidarity
Write to your University Vice-Chancellor or get help from the union to propose that the university supports these three demands:
1. Endorse the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and disclose and divest from any economic ties to the apartheid state of Israel,
2. Condemn those universities who have called on police to violently remove protesters from their campuses,
3. Call for the protection of students’ rights to protest and assemble and endorse the aims of those protests – the immediate demand of ceasefire and longer-term demands to end the apartheid, violence, and illegal occupations under which Palestinians continue to suffer. In other words, the University must call for a liberated Palestinian state if it is to conceptualise itself as a university that seeks to confront its own settler-colonial foundations.