Across Europe, university staff and students have been researching and challenging their institutions' complicity in oppression and occupation in the Palestinian West Bank and genocide in Gaza. At the same time, voices for Palestine solidarity have been subject to institutionalised criminalisation and repression.
Powered by (contributions from) volunteers, grassroots research coalitions, and a variety of sources, the
Index of Repression and
Academic Complicity databases crowdsource data to document and expose repression of Palestinian solidarity activists, and academic ties to Israel and companies arming it, respectively.
We will talk about how we gathered data; how we ensured the safety and anonymity of our sources; how we maintain the databases; how we verify the data. We will discuss our design decision and methodology in the face of an often antagonistic academic and political climate, and what lessons we learned. Finally, we will discuss how these databases can be used for your own journalism. This session is useful to journalists working in the area of activist repression as well as those who want to build up databases via crowdsourcing.
The Index of Repression is a publicly accessible database that maps patterns and trends across all sectors of society, documenting the institutionalised criminalisation of Palestine solidarity. Key instruments of this repression include the application of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, counterterrorism frameworks, and anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) resolutions. The Index exposes the full range of mechanisms used to justify the criminalisation of the Palestine solidarity movement, including violations of civic freedoms and rights. The Index is a living database, currently covering Germany and Britain, with further countries, including the Netherlands, in development.
Academic Complicity is a mapping project collating recent research efforts from ad-hoc coalitions at universities across Europe, uncovering their own university's ties to genocide and occupation, and displaying it in a form usable by journalists, activists, and the public. The first database was set up for the Netherlands in the summer of 2024 and has since spread to Belgium, Germany, France, and Norway. It is currently expanding to Denmark, and a new database on Horizon Europe collaborations across Europe will be published directly before Dataharvest.
