(Photo by Jacob Starling of protestors at USYD, 2024)
On the 12th of February 2025, USYD (The University of Sydney) announced via their media that they will not be renewing their exchange program with the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design – an Israeli art school deeply complicit in genocide and apartheid.
An email sent on behalf of Professor Lisa Adkins, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Science (FASS), revealed that “we [The University of Sydney] recently informed Bezalel Academy that we do not intend to renew our exchange program agreement with them.”
(Screenshot of email sent out on behalf of Prof. Lisa Adkins, Dean of Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, 2025)
Bezalel is an arts Academy that opened an “Emergency Sewing Centre” for sewing and repairing the military uniforms of the Israel Defence Forces, with tags put inside saying “With love from Bezalel.”
The decision to end the exchange program with Bezalel follows months of dedicated campaigning by students and staff, building upon the effort in the last year and a half against the genocide in Palestine and the University’s ties to Israeli institutions.
How Students and Staff Shut Down the Bezalel Exchange
Students Against War (SAW), Solidarity USYD and staff in the National Tertiary Education Union 4 Palestine renewed their efforts in campaigning against USYD’s exchange programs with Israeli universities since the genocide broke out in 2023.
(Photo and design by Wasmiya Al-Ashour, banner-painting by SAW, 2024)
After SAW filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to seek more information about USYD’s ties to Israel, it was revealed that they were to renew their agreement with Bezalel Academy in March 2025. Students took this as an opportunity to pressure the University to reject the exchange agreement renewal.
The students organised a targeted campaign at the Sydney College of the Arts (SCA), the faculty linked to the exchange. SAW and NTEU 4 Palestine held a speakout at the SCA graduation show in November 2024 calling out the exchange program and leafleting the graduation attendees. They also wrote a petition calling on the University to cut the exchange program, gathering over 200 signatures.
(Photo and design by Wasmiya Al-Ashour, banner-painting by SAW, 2024)
History of Activism at USYD
This builds upon a history of student and staff activism at USYD, particularly regarding ties to Israel. In 2013, Associate Professor Jake Lynch refused to assist an academic from Hebrew University as part of his support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, sparking significant controversy.
To gain support for Jake Lynch, Erima Dall, a student activist with Solidarity, put a BDS motion to the USYD Student Representative Council (SRC), which passed.
In 2014, there was a major debate in USYD’s National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) branch about whether the staff union should support BDS. Fast forward 10 years and the NTEU USYD branch passed a BDS motion for an academic boycott of Israeli universities and a call to cut ties with the war industry. Nationally, the NTEU has officially adopted an “institutional academic boycott of Israel.”
The 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza (Operation Protective Edge), which killed over 2,000 Palestinians, further galvanised campus opposition to ties with Israeli institutions.
These efforts contributed to the decline of the Bezalel Academy exchange program at UYSD, with student participation ceasing entirely by 2015. The ongoing efforts to organise support at USYD for Palestinian liberation into a targeted campaign against Bezalel Academy was the final nail in the coffin. This timeline shows that the program’s termination was not due to administrative decisions but resulted from sustained activism over a decade.
Western Sydney University students and staff should build on this victory
The successful campaigning against the Bezalel Academy exchange program proves that collective student and staff action works. But the fight is far from over. Like USYD, Western Sydney University maintains partnerships with Israeli universities. This includes a research partnership with Israeli company Syqe. Syqe has an agreement with the Israeli Ministry of Defense to supply medicinal cannabis inhalers for the purpose of providing therapeutic benefits to Israeli soldiers.
Across the country, university leaders are intensifying their repression of pro-Palestine activism. Western’s management have shown where they stand. Instead of listening to staff and students’ calls to end partnerships with Israeli companies and weapons manufacturers, Western management has used repressive tactics to silence our opposition. Last year, they collaborated with police and suspended three students for their involvement in pro-Palestine action. Students refused to be intimidated and called a response action a week later to stand up to this repression. There is an ongoing campaign to pressure management to lift the suspensions on the students.
Western’s Chancellor, Jennifer Westacott, wrote an opinion piece originally with The Australian, but was republished by Western’s news centre stating that “Universities have to return to their role as institutions that promote better societies.” How can she claim that our universities need to be institutions that “promote better societies” when WSU continues to collaborate with weapons manufacturers and pro-Zionist organisations?
We must build on the Bezalel Academy victory and escalate the fight to cut Western’s ties with Israeli institutions.
We must build a mass movement on campus. One so powerful that Western and every university has no choice but to sever ties with institutions complicit in apartheid and genocide.
