The Vrije Universiteit Brussel said it would pull out of an AI project it was working on in collaboration with Israeli institutions, amid the Gaza war.
A Belgian university said on Wednesday that it is planning to end its collaboration with two Israeli institutions on an artificial intelligence project.
It comes after a negative assessment by Vrije Universiteit Brussel’s ethics commission, the Belga News Agency reported.
The university said it would start discussions with the EU Commission, which is funding the research project, in order to pull out.
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel said on Tuesday that it wished to achieve greater transparency over its work with Israeli organisations given the “unacceptable escalation of the conflict in the Middle East”.
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I don’t think they have an endowment or anything like US universities have, so it would basically just be cancelling collaborative projects and stuff like that.
Many also have exchange programs which need to be cancelled.
The strange part here is that even though these universities only have a small connection to israel and not a huge stake, they still refuse to fully break bonds.