LSP Statement in support of the student occupation
Leiden Scholars for Palestine (LSP) fully supports the demands of the students who occupied the Academiegebouw on November 26th, 2025, calling for a full cessation of collaboration between Leiden University and Israeli academic institutions, whilst Israel continues to wage genocide against the Palestinian people with full impunity and despite the so-called ‘ceasefire’.
LSP also deplores the decision by Leiden University not to engage in any meaningful negotiation with the students and instead call on the police to arrest them – yet another attempt to evade questions by its students and staff about its complicity in genocide.
Whilst we are relieved to learn that all the students who occupied the Academiegebouw have been released and that the charges against them have been dropped, we are shocked by the continuous silence of our university about Israel’s atrocities, its determination to continue doing business as usual during a genocide and the dereliction of its basic duties towards its staff, students, and society at large.
Let us be clear: what the students demand is a basic commitment to justice on the part of an academic institution that portrays itself as a bastion of freedom and promotion of universal human rights but operates in opposition to the values it professes. Nowhere was such dissonance more outstanding than on November 26th: whilst Leiden was honoring the memory of Rudolph Cleveringa who, during the Nazi occupation of this country, spoke publicly and courageously against the persecution of the Jewish people and the removal of all Jewish professors from their posts in this University, it persists in inaction and faint calls for “neutrality” during the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
If there is someone at this academic institution who was truly honoring the memory of Rudolph Cleveringa on November 26th, it was the students who occupied the Academiegebouw.
We stand by them in demanding that the University does what it says it stands for – that it stops applying universal principles selectively; that it rejects the Orwellian calls for “neutrality” in the face of a settler colonial state that is committing genocide; that it implements a full boycott against Israeli academic institutions.
We join our students in honoring the memory of Rudolph Cleveringa and claiming our right to speak up as members of this academic community - forcefully and without equivocation - against the dehumanization of the Palestinian people, to build a world where human rights are truly for all and not for an ever-restricted few.
