2005-04-23—College boycott |
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By Ira Sharkansky
I was saddened, but not surprised, by the news
that the Association of University Teachers in
Britain has declared a boycott against the
Israeli universities
Bar Ilan and Haifa.
Still pending is a proposed boycott against the Hebrew
University.
Why not surprised? The issue has been around
for a while, and it's a natural for academics who yearn to demonstrate
their standing with fashions that lean heavily to the left.
Boycott actions include demands that
university teachers do not collaborate with Israelis, do not allow Israeli
academics to publish in professional journals, participate in professional
conferences, or receive research funds from international bodies.
The charge against Bar Ilan is that it
maintains branch campuses in the occupied territories. The charge against
Haifa is that it rejected a masters thesis that had claimed an Israeli
military unit had slaughtered civilians during the 1948 war. The charge
against Hebrew University involves a claim that the university has built
dormitories on land owned by Arabs. In response, the university cites
court decisions that the Arabs in question are squatting on land that they
do not own.
The details are less important than the
action. The Hebrew University asserts that sponsors of the boycott did not
ask the university about its side of a story, but simply adopted as true
Arab allegations. Assertions of apartheid and anti-Arab actions by Haifa
University overlook the fact that some 35 percent of Haifa's students are
Arabs.
Why now, when the Israeli-Palestinian front
has been relatively quiet, and when Israel is wrenching itself toward a
difficult withdrawal of Jewish settlements from Gaza and part of the
West Bank?
It's tempting to scream
"anti-Semites," but that would only be true in part. One of the
British newspapers reports that a Jewish lecturer at Birmingham University
is among the boycott's sponsors. There is also a Jewish lecturer
(political scientist, no less) at Haifa who urges his foreign colleagues
to boycott his university and the rest of the Israeli establishment.
"Self-hating Jews?" I do not know the individuals involved.
Sadness competes with anger in my feelings. I
lament the quality of higher education in institutions whose lecturers
march to political slogans that seem so much at odds with the facts. I do
not feel any differently about the Jews who join the march. Like their
Gentile colleagues, they have every right to demonstrate their ignorance
and shallowness. If they are self-hating, that is their problem and not
mine.
Tonight we will celebrate Pesach at the home
of my brother-in-law, a retired professor from the Hebrew University and
now the director of a new brain science center at Bar Ilan University. He
is a distinguished physiologist. Among the guests will be a Gentile who is
a long-time collaborator from Germany, who comes most years to join in our
family Seder. I am sure that we will mention the boycott. But we will
concentrate on the text and songs that celebrate freedom, and the food.
Chag Sameach.
Sharkansky is a member of the political science department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem |