2 min read
Once you start down the boycott route, all sorts of unforeseen consequences emerge:
An American research foundation announced on Thursday that following the decision of the British University and College Union (UCU) to consider launching an academic boycott of Israel it has cancelled its plans to open a grant application process for UK researchers.
The $150 million Goldhirsh foundation supports scientists around the world in the quest for a cure for brain cancer funds research.
In a letter to British academic institutions, foundation leader Elizabeth Goldhirsh writes: " As a director of a $150 million foundation that supports scientists around the world in the quest for a cure for brain cancer, I am profoundly disappointed in your union's decision to boycott Israel today. This action represents a severe setback for academic freedom and open discourse. Moreover, the decision to single out and demonize Israel above and beyond all other countries - remaining silent over Russia's brutal occupation in Chechnya, for example, or China's ongoing oppression of Tibet - is, at best, troubling. At worst, it points to a far more sinister and tragic motivation. Equally disturbing is to do so at a time when Israel's civilians are facing near-daily missile attacks from Gaza and her partner for negotiations is an organization that dispatches suicide bombers and refuses to recognize the Jewish State's right to exist. Given this decision, I am deeply saddened to say that while my foundation had been considering opening up our scientific grant process to British researchers we will no longer be able to do so. I urge you to work against this boycott and restore learning's highest ideal of fairness free of prejudice to British academia."
Meanwhile, the response from our higher education minister, Bill Rammell, has been, well...pathetic: I profoundly believe this does nothing to promote the Middle East peace process.It maybe that I am doing him a disservice and he has come out with a stronger statement against the boycott. But I can't find one anywhere. In which case, his response is simply shameful. Is the most powerful thing he can think of to say against the vote that it won't promote peace? How about calling the vote what it is: a despicable act of racism and a repudiation of all that the word 'university' should mean.
One Middle Eastern academic understands this. Here's Dr Sari Nusseibeh, President of al- Quds University:
The free flow of science and information, far more than traditional military methods to preempt conflicts, constitutes in my view a powerful force against war. It is also, far more than the free flow of trade between nations, a powerful tool for equal- opportunity human- development.
...[A]n international academic boycott of Israel, on pro Palestinian grounds, is self- defeating: it would only succeed in weakening that strategically important bridge through which the state of war between Israelis and Palestinians could be ended, and Palestinian rights could therefore be restored. Instead of burning that bridge the international academy should do everything within its power to strengthen it, including, foremost, through its own collaborative intervention.