Another Western university cuts ties with Israeli partners
The University of Galway has cut ties with Israeli researchers and institutions, becoming the third major school to do so following Hamas' 2023 attack on Israel.
The move signals the campaign to isolate Israel academically has moved beyond isolated student protests.
The University of Galway has become the latest Western institution to distance itself from Israel, announcing it will no longer approve new research projects that involve Israeli universities.
In a September 2 statement, Interim President Peter McHugh confirmed that Galway will block “any new institutional research agreements involving direct Israeli partners” effective immediately. While the school remains contractually bound to its current ASTERISK project, which includes Israel’s Technion Institute, McHugh said no new collaborations would move forward.
The announcement comes amid what Galway described as an “extreme humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, and it follows months of internal review of the school’s academic and financial ties to both Israel and Palestinian institutions.
Galway is not the first European university to scale back cooperation with Israel. Earlier this summer, Trinity College Dublin voted to sever all academic and commercial partnerships with Israeli institutions. Weeks later, Utrecht University in the Netherlands went even further, becoming the first Western institution to explicitly label its policy a “boycott.”
Galway’s approach mirrors Trinity’s tactic of halting collaborations while avoiding the “boycott” term. Still, the university’s leadership made clear its decision was rooted in political and humanitarian objections to Israel’s military actions. McHugh reiterated calls for an “immediate, permanent ceasefire” and urged the European Union to review Israel’s participation in the multibillion-euro Horizon Europe research program.
Galway has increasingly cast its policies toward Israel as part of a broader moral duty. In addition to pausing Israeli partnerships, the university announced that it has relocated 14 Palestinian students from Gaza to Ireland, providing scholarships, fee waivers, and evacuation support.
This marks the culmination of years of activist pressure. In 2024, then-President Ciarán Ó Hógartaigh tied the university’s stance to Nelson Mandela’s legacy, declaring that Galway had a responsibility to oppose “collective punishment” of Palestinians.
In a statement made on Oct. 18, 2023, less than two weeks after Hamas’ mass assault on Israel, Hógartaigh announced the raising of a “peace flag” and included lyrics from The Cranberries’ 1994 hit “Zombie.”
Galway’s suspension of cooperation comes as European and American universities face escalating demands from student protesters and faculty groups to cut ties with Israel under the banner of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. By formally pledging to block new agreements, Galway signals that the campaign to isolate Israel academically is gaining traction beyond isolated student encampments.
Whether more schools follow Galway, Trinity, and Utrecht remains to be seen. But activists celebrated the move as another breakthrough in what they call a “taboo-shattering” effort to pressure Israel through higher education.
For Israel’s defenders, however, the trend raises concerns about the politicization of academia and whether universities are abandoning scholarship in favor of one-sided activism.
