Students in the UK have been taking over university buildings to protest the destruction in Gaza and now the academic boycott movement has made its way across the Atlantic. Inside Higher Ed covered the recent creation of U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel today. The US Campaign’s boycott includes five points:
- Refraining from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions that do not vocally oppose Israeli state policies against Palestine;
- Advocating a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding and subsidies to these institutions;
- Promoting divestment and disinvestment from Israel by international academic institutions;
- Working toward the condemnation of Israeli policies by pressing for resolutions to be adopted by academic, professional and cultural associations and organizations;
- Supporting Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an explicit or implicit condition for such support.
Inside Higher Ed covers the story pretty fairly and includes the usual arguments against a boycott which is summed by this statement signed by over 300 university presidents in 2007, “In seeking to quarantine Israeli universities and scholars, this vote threatens every university committed to fostering scholarly and cultural exchanges that lead to enlightenment, empathy, and a much-needed international marketplace of ideas.” This is not a new sentiment. Abe Foxman made the same appeal in 2005 to fight the academic boycott movement in the UK, “Those who now urge a boycott of Israeli universities must know that such a boycott is an assault on the very idea of the university as a citadel of intellectual freedom and informed debate.”
Now of course none of these paragons of academic freedom uttered a peep when Israel didn’t just boycott a Palestinian university but tried to destroy it. Israeli academics Neve Gordon and Jeff Halper pointed out this hypocrisy after the recent bombing of Islamic University in Gaza in their Chronicle of Higher Education article “Where’s the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?“
And while university heads in the US are protecting their marketplace of ideas, academics in Israel are trying to prevent a possible war criminal from joining theirs. Ha’aretz reports that professors at Tel Aviv University are protesting a decision to appoint Col. Pnina Sharvit-Baruch as a lecturer for the Faculty of Law. Evidently, under Col. Sharvit-Baruch’s command “IDF legal experts legitimized strikes involving Gaza civilians, including the bombardment of the Gaza police course closing ceremony.” The irony is not lost on Dr. Anat Matar, a Philosophy lecturer, “I was shocked to learn that half of the second-year law students will learn the foundations of law from someone who helped justify the killing of civilians, including hundreds of children.”
Will the US boycott movement take off, who knows? But reading about Col. Sharvit-Baruch (or Arnon Sofer) its hard not to see the argument for it. (Adam Horowitz)
