Dr. Taylor Randall
President, University of Utah
taylor.randall@utah.edu
Dr. Mitzi Montoya
Provost, University of Utah
Mitzi.Montoya@utah.edu
Dear President Randall and Provost Montoya,
We write on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF) to express our grave concern regarding the University of Utah’s signing on 19 May 2025 of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Ariel University, located in the illegal Israeli settlement of Ariel in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The University of Utah has become the first American academic institution to sign a major formal cooperation deal with Ariel University, the establishment of which also constituted a violation of international law. To enter this agreement in violation of international law and against the backdrop of months of intensified Israeli violence against and repression of Palestinian universities in the West Bank and its devastating destruction of all the institutions of higher learning in Gaza, killing hundreds of faculty and staff as well as thousands of students is particularly egregious.
Founded in 1966, MESA promotes scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. As the preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the prestigious International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2,800 members worldwide. Our organization is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and outside of North America.
Established in 1982 and chartered as a full university in 2012—an act that was opposed by the Council of Presidents of Israeli Universities—Ariel University has been the target of periodic calls for its boycott because of its location in the occupied West Bank. Indeed, a letter from Jewish faculty at the University of Utah opposing the partnership with Ariel makes this very argument. Despite this controversial history, according to the Jerusalem Post’s reporting, President Randall and Ariel University president Prof. Ehud Grossman signed a five-year memorandum of understanding which puts in place a framework for joint research projects, student and faculty exchanges, shared academic conferences, and the shared use of teaching materials and scientific publications. The agreement was apparently brokered with the assistance of Israel Bachar, Consul-General of Israel in Los Angeles, who is reported to have asserted that the memorandum “marks a new chapter in academic cooperation between Israel and the United States.” Mark Lewis, a spokesperson for Ariel University, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed that although Ariel had “signed several smaller MOUs with U.S. universities, none of those partners had the international standing that the University of Utah brings. In that sense, this is our first truly ‘major’ American agreement in Judea and Samaria” [sic.]
This MOU has elicited significant criticism from your faculty. In addition to the objections of Jewish faculty members noted above, University of Utah faculty have criticized the fact that the university administration failed to consult them over such a controversial step. They also contend that the conclusion of this agreement violates the Utah Board of Higher Education’s Resolution on Freedom of Expression, which requires “institutional neutrality”: “Institutions, as governmental entities, or employees acting in their official capacities as representatives of the institution must refrain from taking public positions on political, social, or unsettled issues that do not directly relate to the institution’s mission, role, or pedagogical objectives.” It also runs counter to your university’s own Guideline G1-007C, which states that “university employees acting on behalf of the university, including leaders acting on behalf of their units, may not take a position on behalf of the university or a university unit on political, social, or cultural controversies, public debates, or flashpoint moments.” While the university’s statement in response to criticisms of the MOU claims that concluding such an accord does not violate institutional neutrality, Israeli Consul-General Bachar indicated quite the opposite when he praised both universities for their “brave” engagement at a time when “campuses are being taken over by protesters in keffiyehs calling for a Palestinian state ‘from the river to the sea.’”
We feel compelled to remind you that Israel’s settlements on the West Bank constitute a violation of international law. In its 19 July 2024 Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice affirmed that Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. In a report issued in February 2018, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded, further, that investing in or otherwise conducting business with entities operating in illegal settlements on the West Bank is itself inconsistent with international law and constitutes complicity in war crimes. Several of the most prominent international human rights organizations have also reached the same conclusion, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. It is worth recalling in this regard that Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) specifically forbids an occupying power from transferring its own citizens into occupied territory, while Article 55 of the Hague Regulations (1907) prohibits creating permanent changes in an occupied territory that are not intended to benefit its population, in this case, the Palestinians of the West Bank. Ariel’s faculty and students are prime users of the “Trans-Samaria Road,” a four-lane highway built on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians, including those whose land was confiscated to build this highway, are prohibited from using major portions of that road. West Bank Palestinians, moreover, are absent from the faculty and student body of Ariel. Indeed, Palestinians who live in the vicinity of Ariel are not allowed to enter the settlement, let alone the university.
Also critically important is the historical context: the long-standing practice of violence against the Palestinian higher education sector by the Israeli military and armed Israeli settlers. MESA’s Committee on Academic Freedom has issued numerous letters on this issue, including those dated 13 April 2021; 21 July 2021; 8 February 2022; 26 May 2022; 22 November 2023 and 25 January 2024. Violence by Israeli soldiers and settlers has dramatically intensified since 7 October 2023. According to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education, between 7 October 2023 and 29 April 2025, 35 students in the West Bank were killed by the Israeli military, 189 students were seriously injured and more than 370 were arrested and illegally detained. The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) estimates that since 7 October 2023, 17,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been arrested and more than 10,000 Palestinians from the West Bank are currently held in Israeli prisons, among whom are hundreds of faculty members, researchers, university students and staff. Most of these detainees are held under administrative detention, i.e., without charge or trial. According to the Student Affairs office at one of the West Bank’s premier institutions of higher education, Birzeit University, 153 of its students are currently being held by occupation forces in prisons the dreadful conditions of which have drawn growing criticism from human and civil rights groups.
The University of Utah’s relationship with an Israeli institution located in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank, manifested in this memorandum of understanding, thus makes the university complicit in these horrendous practices and violations of international law. There is nothing neutral about the position your university has taken.
As an occupying authority, Israel’s targeting of Palestinian educational institutions through incursions, raids, attacks and abductions of students and faculty constitute violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, relating to the protection of civilians in times of war. Israel’s obstruction of education is also a clear violation of the right to education enshrined in Article 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and Article 13 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The right to education is binding in all circumstances and is to be protected in all situations, including during crises and emergencies resulting from civil strife and war. Israel is a party to the UDHR and a signatory to the ICESCR and is therefore obligated to uphold them.
Higher education should embody the spirit of freedom of inquiry and exchange. Such exchange cannot occur at an institution of higher learning built in violation of international law, complicit in ongoing human rights violations, and serving exclusively only one portion of the population under the control of a state whose current war against the Palestinians of Gaza has been labelled by the International Court of Justice as plausibly a genocide and whose political, economic, social, educational, and cultural policies toward the Palestinians of the West Bank are regarded by the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s own human rights organization B’Tselem as constituting apartheid.
We call upon you in the strongest of terms to revoke this shameful MOU.
We look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Aslı Ü. Bâli
MESA President
Professor, Yale Law School
Laurie A. Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California
Documents & Links
- Joint_Letter_26_June_2025
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