Do American university leaders oppose the academic boycott of Israel because they actually believe that it undermines academic freedom, or are there other reasons? If academic freedom were the real reason, wouldn’t their reactions to targeted boycotts of other regions besides Israel, U.S. states for example, be the same?
David Lloyd says that the outrage that has greeted University of Michigan’s John Cheney-Lippold refusal to write a letter of reference for a student who wished to participate in a Study Abroad Program in Israel is astonishingly hypocritical. “No professor and no institution should engage in furthering programs that so systematically violate our long-cherished equal-opportunity and anti-discrimination policies, inscribed both in federal law and campus codes. US academics should do the right thing by following Professor Cheney-Lippold’s courageous example and refusing to participate in any institutional endorsement of study abroad in Israel,” Lloyd writes.
A new ‘ethics code’ authored by the same professor who wrote the IDF ethics code, seeks to combat BDS advocacy by Israeli academics.
The various boycott initiatives against the U.S. are being covered favorably and curiously by mainstream media – will they do the same for BDS?