The Greater Los Angeles area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) today called the University of California, Irvine (UCI)’s partnership with Tel Aviv University (TAU), an institution complicit in Israel’s apartheid and genocide, “deeply troubling.” CAIR-LA also urged UCI leadership to address the harmful impact of this partnership on the well-being and safety of its Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students.
SEE: UCI Engineering + Society Conference
UCI’s upcoming engineering conference will feature a dozen professors from TAU—an Israeli university with a documented problematic history of suppression of Palestinian students on its campus and in supporting Israel’s ongoing genocide.
A 2024 report by the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel revealed that Palestinian students at the university have faced disciplinary action largely based on their social media activity expressing their Palestinian identity, religious beliefs, or opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
TAU also works closely with Israeli military companies, and some of Israel’s biggest military technology companies, including Elbit Systems, have access to TAU’s research centers. Through its venture capital firm, TAU invests in Xtend, a company that develops AI-assisted surveillance drones and systems used in Israel’s genocidal military operations in Gaza.
TAU also reportedly opened an “engineering war room” on its campus last year to “invent solutions” for soldiers by developing technology used by the Israeli military, including live-streaming technology for dog-mounted cameras for the army’s canine unit, which has perpetrated deadly attacks on Palestinian civilians.
In a statement, CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said:
“It is deeply troubling that UCI leadership has chosen to align itself with an institution that has long been complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and its broader system of apartheid. Tel Aviv University has worked closely with the Israeli military and weapons industry, developing surveillance and warfare technologies that have been used to terrorize and kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. At the same time, the university has actively suppressed the rights of Palestinian students on its campus—closely mirroring UCI’s own campaign of intimidation against students and faculty advocating for Palestinian human rights.
“This partnership is morally bankrupt and historically indefensible. We would never accept a public university partnering with institutions complicit in apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, or the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. This partnership sends a clear message that these universities value entrepreneurship, technology, and academic collaboration over the safety and well-being of Palestinian students, both here and abroad. We call on UCI leadership to consider the harmful impact of this partnership on the well-being and safety of its Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students.”
UCI has a similar pattern of censoring pro-Palestinian advocacy and restricting academic freedom. In May 2024, UCI summoned dozens of law enforcement agencies to forcefully disband the university’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment, leading to the arrest of dozens of students, faculty, and community members peacefully protesting Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and calling on the university to divest from companies tied to Israeli apartheid.
Earlier this year, CAIR designated UCI as a hostile campus for its militarized crackdown on peaceful anti-genocide protests, the suspension and criminal prosecution of students and faculty, and its long-standing pattern of discriminatory treatment toward Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and allied students and faculty.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars recently passed a resolution declaring that Israel’s actions meet the legal criteria to establish that it is committing genocide in Gaza. For nearly two years, the Israeli government has carried out a horrific genocide through indiscriminate bombing, ethnic cleansing, and the deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war against nearly two million men, women, and children in Gaza.
CAIR-LA is Southern California’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, protect civil rights, promote justice and empower American Muslims.
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CONTACT: CAIR-LA Communications Manager Enjy El-Kadi, (714) 851-4851 or eelkadi@cair.com; CAIR-LA Senior Communications Coordinator Madi Hameed, mmorse-hameed@cair.com