An aerial view of Germany’s Ruhr University Bochum. The university announced that it has cancelled an anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement lecture. Photo: Tuxyso via Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Ruhr University Bochum (RUB), one of Germany’s largest universities, on Monday announced that it has cancelled an anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement lecture that was scheduled for this month.

“The university management cancelled the event taking place in RUB’s rooms,” the university wrote to the Jerusalem Post via Twitter on Monday. The university also posted a cancellation notice on its website.

Salah Al-Khawaja, a member of the executive committee of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, was scheduled to speak about “Palestinian civil resistance against the Israeli occupation power and settler politics as well as the Stop the Wall and BDS campaigns.”

RUB’s cancellation notice stated that organizers of the anti-Israel event had “rented a room for March 18 in the [university’s] Blue Square. The Ruhr University Bochum distances itself from content of the announcement [for the BDS talk]. The event is cancelled because of these reasons and will not take place in the Blue Square.”

RUB is one of the five largest academic institutions in Germany, with more than 44,000 students enrolled in 2015.