"Since Monday, news has spread about EKA's decision to suspend its contract with an Israeli university," the university said Tuesday's statement. "In light of difficult international and in-house sentiment, the latest Erasmus+ agreement with Israel has been suspended. EKA has no functioning partnership with either Israel or Palestine."

According to a spokesperson, EKA, which has nearly 200 Erasmus+ partners, has cooperated with universities in both Israel and Palestine, and sympathizes with all those suffering in the current war.

"EKA wants to provide a safe working and creative environment for its members, both students and staff, regardless of generation, religion or worldview," the statement read.

"One of EKA's missions is to be a platform for making sense of what is happening in the world, which is why all views that value humanity are worthy of debate and we need to educate ourselves about the world's differences," the university highlighted. "EKA values the active sensitivity of its diverse student body to the world at large."

EKA will consider convening a broad-based working group involving the Ministry of Education and Research and Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discuss the challenges of international learning in crisis countries, they added.

Last week, the curriculum director at the Estonian Academy of Arts informed students that the second part of a workshop by Jonathan Ventura, an associate professor at Israel's Shankar College, had been canceled, as EKA decided to sever ties with all Israeli universities, Estonian weekly Eesti Ekspress reported on Monday.

The workshop had been scheduled for February.

Speaking to Eesti Ekspress, EKA rector Mart Kalm stated that the university is not open to cooperation offers from Israeli universities.

Other universities decline to take position

The rectors of Estonia's other major universities, meanwhile, declined to take a position or comment on EKA's recent move.

"We do not have any direct institutional cooperation with Israel; there's the Erasmus+ student exchange program," said University of Tartu (TÜ) rector Toomas Asser, adding that one TÜ student is heading to Israel's Ben-Gurion University (BGU) through the program.

"We have no agreements to break, and we wouldn't do so either," he confirmed.

"This issue has unfortunately come up, but I don't know any more about what's going on at EKA than what I've read in the media," the TÜ rector continued. "It would be a good idea to look into what those decisions were based on."

Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) rector and Rectors' Council chair Tiit Land confirmed that TalTech does not have any existing agreements with Israel.

Commenting on the EKA decision, Land stated that universities are different, and how their communities feel will vary, but acknowledged that there is inevitably a political undertone to it.

"But it's difficult for us to approve or condemn the actions of another university's leadership," he acknowledged. "Similar developments have also occurred in other countries, such as the U.S., where both sides have large communities. It's simply inevitable that it's like this."

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