Third honoree turns down doctorate from University of Galway over links to Israeli tech institute

AN EXPERT ON Irish emigration has become the third person this week to turn down an honorary doctorate that was due to be conferred by the University of Galway at a ceremony today.

Soeaking at an event on the Galway campus yesterday, Professor Kerby Miller said that he would not accept the award, in light of the university’s ongoing research project involving an Israeli institution linked to Israel’s military.

Professor Miller was due to be recognised for his role in helping to create the university’s Imirce digital archive of emigrant letters dating back over 300 years.

Established Professor of Modern Irish History, Brendán MacSuibhne, who worked with Miller on the project, said it spoke volumes that a scholar of such high repute, “who had brought such great honour and attention to our university, cannot in conscience accept an honorary degree from it”.

MacSuibhne said the university needed to take note of the significance of the decision.

Earlier this week, actor Olwen Fouéré joined film-maker Margo Harkin in pulling out of the planned award ceremony today for nine high profile recipients in arts, culture, music, law, and public life.

Both women said they have taken the decision over their opposition to the university’s research links with Israel’s Technion Institute of Technology.

Fouéré, an acclaimed actor, writer and director was due to receive a Doctor of Arts for her work including her “international career spanning theatre, film and television”.

In a statement, Fouéré said she was “overjoyed to be offered an honorary doctorate” from the university and “was certain that my practice would be strengthened by association and I was committed to shouldering the responsibilities that such an honour entails”.

“The University of Galway is close to my heart for a number of reasons, not least because the university houses the globally recognised Irish Centre for Human Rights whose staff has worked diligently to promote justice in Palestine and to condemn, with good academic and moral authority, the crime of genocide,”she said.

The university has said it is contractually bound to a research partnership involving Israel’s Technion Institute of Technology, which works with Israel’s arms industry, including its top weapons manufacturer Elbit systems.

The €3.9million ASTERISK research project on extracting hydrogen from seawater is co-funded by the EU and coordinated by the University of Galway, with the Technion Institute being one of several partners.

Fouéré noted that a contract was signed in December 2024, “well into the ongoing massacre of Gaza”.

“The research partnership with the Technion Institute of Technology is extremely problematic,” she said, noting it specialises in the development of tank and drone technologies.

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“It is responsible for the D9 bulldozer which destroys Palestinian homes in the West Bank as well as in Gaza,” she said.

“It developed the Scream, a ‘non-lethal’ acoustic system that ‘creates sound levels that are unbearable to humans at distances up to 100 meters’, in their own words,” she said.

She noted that students at Technion can attain credits for serving in the Israeli military.

“It is well known that several demands from University of Galway staff, researchers, students, and the wider community, to cut the university’s ties with the Technion contract, have been met with avoidance, delay and legal obfuscation,”she said.

Fouéré said she had originally planned to accept the honorary degree and make a statement of intent to challenge the university’s delay in terminating the Technion contract.

“After a great deal of thought, I have regrettably come to believe that the stronger, and perhaps more visible, action is in refusing to accept an honorary degree at this moment in the university’s history,”she said.

She called on the newly appointed president of the University of Galway, the university management team and the chair of its governing authority to “sever all ties with Technion and the Israeli regime in compliance with the University of Galway’s obligations under Irish and international law”.

Last year, the Galway university announced a review of its links with Israel and Palestine, involving a human rights impact assessment of research collaborations.

However,interim president Peter McHugh told staff this September that the ASTERISK project had been approved before the human rights impact assessment began.

He said legal advice meant it had to continue with the partnership “premised solely on the ongoing contractual obligations”.

The university said this week that its human rights impact assessment has not been published due to legal advice received recently.

This advice said that “the interim human rights assessment process should not be relied upon due to the absence of a formalised approved university policy and procedure on such matters”, it said.

“University of Galway remains committed to exploring ways forward in relation to the research partnership,”it said.

Aosdána member and activist Margaretta D’Arcy, who died earlier this week, and film-maker Lelia Doolan recently returned their honorary doctorates to the university in protest over the research links.

Other recipients of the honorary doctorates this week include artist Brian Bourke, novelist and translator Anna Heussaff , harpist Kathleen Loughnane , former advocacy manager and deputy general secretary of Conradh na Gaeilge Peadar Mac Fhlannchadha, business leader Pádraig Ó Céidigh and poet and singer Micheál Ó Cuaig.

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