Trinity College Dublin’s decision to boycott Israeli institutions and universities will “detrimentally impact” the college’s global standing, particularly in the US, the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland has warned.
In an open letter to the chair of TCD’s board Paul Farrell, Maurice Cohen, a senior figure in Ireland’s Jewish community, accused the university of a “blatant violation” of the Equal Status Acts.
In the letter, which was co-written with former minister for justice Alan Shatter, Mr Cohen also accused Trinity of violations of the Universities Act and relevant EU regulations, including those governing the Erasmus student exchange programme
Trinity’s board voted on Wednesday to cut all ties with Israeli universities and companies based in Israel over the conflict in Gaza in what is the first move by an Irish university to agree on the full divestment of interests in Israeli companies.
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The boycott includes ending all academic and research collaborations and Erasmus student exchange programmes with Israeli universities.
Trinity has two Erasmus+ exchange agreements with Israeli universities - one with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which ends next month, and the other with Bar Ilan University, which ends in July 2026.
Mr Cohen and Mr Shatter said in their letter that boycotting Israeli academics, a majority of whom are Jewish and who include prominent critics of the Israeli government, amounts to “anti-Semitism”, according to the definition laid out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
“It also constitutes discrimination against non-Jewish Israeli academics, of whom there are many in Israel’s universities and research bodies,” they wrote.
They argued that by boycotting Israeli academics and Israeli research institutions, Trinity is “holding them collectively responsible for actions of the Israeli state”.
The letter also criticised Trinity’s board for failing to address “Iran’s sponsorship of the Houthis attacking international shipping and daily targeting Israel with ballistic missiles, its sponsorship of Hamas, Hizbullah and other terrorists groups”.
The boycott vote followed a series of meetings of a taskforce set up between staff and student representatives at the university.
The meetings were arranged as part of an agreement to end a five-day encampment that was set up on campus in May of last year in protest over the university’s ties to Israel.
The letter from Mr Cohen and Mr Shatter requests that the board immediately publish the report of the task force and “cancel its premature decisions”.
It also requests that before any further decisions, “representatives of Ireland’s Jewish community should be given the opportunity to consider and respond to the report” alongside Government and relevant departments.
The Irish Times contacted Mr Farrell seeking his comment on the letter from Mr Cohen and Mr Shatter.
Jenny Maguire, outgoing president of TCD’ students’ union, called the decision a “historic win” that “must be a catalyst for action across this island”.
