Rector Magnificus Sarah de Rijcke made the announcement during the University Council meeting on Monday.
The pharmaceutical company 1Base Pharmaceuticals is based in Naale, an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, and was participating in the VirION Horizon project, which also involves the LUMC, as Mare recently reported.
Following this news, the University Council put questions to the Executive Board. During the meeting, Rector Magnificus Sarah de Rijcke was able to reassure the Council, as the Israeli company had reportedly withdrawn from the consortium. De Rijcke went on to add that ‘the LUMC does not wish to collaborate with companies operating from illegal settlements’.
Upon further enquiry, spokesperson Mischa van Vlier declined to confirm that 1Base had withdrawn from the Horizon project, referring the matter to Horizon instead. The Portuguese coordinator of the project did not respond to Mare’s questions.
PROJECT PAGE
Earlier this week, a spokesperson for Amsterdam UMC told university publication Folia that the pharmaceutical company had indeed withdrawn.
Nevertheless, 1Base Pharmaceuticals is still listed on VirION’s project page and has now also reappeared on the map showing all project partners, having previously disappeared from it.
Strikingly, although the company’s listed address refers to the illegal settlement of Naale, the map places 1Base in a shopping centre in Be’er-Sheva, some 80 kilometres from Naale. However, there is no pharmaceutical company at that location; instead, it is a cosmetics shop.
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
The University Council meeting also revealed that the Committee on Human Rights / Conflict Zones, which issued its advice on collaborations with Israel earlier this year, has since been disbanded. The university currently uses a policy framework – based in part on the committee’s advice – to assess whether collaborations are justifiable.
A more definitive policy document is still underway. However, De Rijcke emphasises that the university also consults the expertise of individual members of the academic community when making such assessments.