Here are all of WASSAP’s statements in solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and other movements for global resistance to colonization, occupation, and apartheid.
1 June 2025
WASSAP response to Uppsala University’s statement of 21 May 2025, calling on the Swedish government to condemn Israel.
See Uppsala University’s statement here: https://www.uu.se/en/news/2025/2025-05-21-statement-by-the-board-of-uppsala-university-on-the-situation-in-gaza
WASSAP welcomes the recent statement by the Uppsala University Board calling on the Swedish Government to prevent the genocide in Gaza. This is a significant and necessary step. However, a call for state action rings hollow if the University itself fails to take corresponding institutional measures. Furthermore, it is concerning that the statement from the University Board continues to misrepresent the calls for cutting institutional ties with complicit Israeli universities as a strategy directed at individual researchers, associated with discrimination and threats. This obscures the fact that Israeli universities play a role in the perpetration of the genocide. Maintaining institutional ties with such universities poses obstacles to fulfilling the university’s purpose. It lends legitimacy to Israeli universities that are directly implicated in violations of international law and human rights.
Calling on the government to act without universities themselves acting within their power to cut institutional ties with universities is inconsistent and allows the university to distance themselves from their own responsibilities to uphold human rights. We continue to demand that universities end all formal collaborations with Israeli universities and other complicit universities, and establish collaborations with Palestinian universities, including meaningful support to displaced Palestinian academics and students, offering them a place to study and work at Swedish universities.
It is not only the government who needs to heed the call to prevent the genocide in Gaza. Universities have the ethical obligation to do so as well. To deny this, is to deny the foundational role of the university to create knowledge and produce research that prevent genocide today. Universities have not always taken meaningful steps to prevent genocide and those of us who work and study at them do so knowing the gravity of such matters. Swedish universities still have the opportunity to do what they are ethically ordained to do. We implore them to do so.
26 March 2025
WASSAP statement on the abduction of Mahmoud Khalil and the repression against other students in the United States.
As students, workers, and academics we are outraged not only by the genocide and scholasticide in Gaza, but also by the deeply concerning developments experienced by our colleagues in the US. As many others around the world, we strongly denounce these actions and stand in solidarity with those directly affected.
On March 8, 2025, Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student was abducted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). He was detained without an arrest warrant and was not accused of any crimes, which makes his detention an unlawful disappearance. Mahmoud’s abduction was sought by the United States Government with the aim of deporting him: his active role in the Palestinian solidarity student encampment last year has been considered by the US Government to jeopardize its foreign policy objectives. (For more information; ”Vita huset statuerar exempel med Mahmoud Khalil” 21 mars 2025 – USApodden | Sveriges Radio.) Currently, Mahmoud is held in a detention facility in violation of his rights as a permanent resident of the United States whose wife is a US citizen.
Additionally, Columbia University announced it was expelling, suspending, and revoking the degrees of 22 students. More academics have been arrested or forced to flee the US, such as Leqaa Kordia and Ranjani Srinivasan. Yale University suspended Helyeh Doutaghi, a researcher and a Deputy Director of the Law and the Political Economy Project following false accusations of links to ‘terrorist organisations’.
As members of Workers and Students in Swedish Academia for Palestine (WASSAP), we strongly condemn the illegal detention of Mahmoud Khalil and the complicity of Columbia University with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. This is an infringement of freedom of expression, academic freedom, and fundamental habeas corpus protections. When educational institutions punish students for speech that is not to the liking of our current governments, we are all in danger. This sets a dangerous precedent for universities not only in the United States, but across the world, including Sweden, where those who stand up for righteous and just causes and whose views do not align with the policies of our elected officials can be punished merely for expressing those views.
We call on Swedish universities to publicly condemn the outrageous acts of disappearing, forced displacement, and otherwise persecuting Palestine solidarity activists, such as Mahmoud Khalil, Leqaa Kordia, and Helyeh Doutaghi, as well as the punitive measures taken against student protestors, such as expulsions and degree revocations. We also call on them to respect and promote students’ right to protest.
We stand in solidarity with our fellow academics and students!
WASSAP 