The move comes after students at several French universities have, like some of their peers in the United States, protested or held sit-ins demanding a ceasefire in Gaza over the past year. The Political Studies Institute in the eastern city of Strasbourg cut ties with the Reichman University near Tel Aviv in June, local newspaper Dernieres Nouvelles d’Alsace reported on Wednesday.

The institute’s director Jean-Philippe Heurtin told AFP he had been strongly opposed, but members of the university board – which includes students – approved it in a vote.

France’s Higher Education Minister Patrick Hetzel on X on Wednesday said he “deplored the decision” taken by the French university board.

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy in a June opinion article in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper criticised the Reichman University for giving an honorary doctorate to a military commander. The man had shot dead a 17-year-old Palestinian who had hurled a rock but “posed no threat” to him in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2015, Levy wrote. The case was brought up during the debate over whether to cut ties in Strasbourg.

The academic boycott of Israel is part of the Palestinian-led “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) campaign, which says that Israeli universities are “developing weapon systems and military doctrines” used in Lebanon and Gaza. Israel and its key backer the United States have regularly accused the BDS movement of “anti-Semitism”, charges its co-founder Omar Barghouti has denied.