Yitzhak Santis: BDS – Economic Jihad

Foreign Entities Endanger Academic Freedom in the US
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Academic freedom is under attack by a foreign movement that seeks to separate universities in the United States, and the rest of the world, from one of the world’s most dynamic and creative academic cultures, the Israeli university and college system. The Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), based in Ramallah, seeks to cut Israeli academia off from the rest of human intellectual society. The damage to the cause of academic freedom and human development would be incalculable.

Recently, over three dozen Nobel Prize Laureates signed a letter sponsored by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East condemning PACBI’s efforts. In a rambling response, PACBI revealed its anti-democratic and anti-intellectual impulses:

“The protection of academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas cannot be the only norm dictating the political engagement of scholars … The aim of the academic boycott of Israel, in this context, is not to safeguard academic freedom as an abstract principle, but to obtain justice and fundamental rights for the Palestinian people.”

In this breathtakingly dismissive statement, PACBI reveals its disinterest in safeguarding what it airily calls the “abstract principle” of academic freedom. The freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights could also be dismissed as “abstract principles,” but to do so is to invite the rise in tyranny. Certainly arguments have been made, particularly in perilous times, against upholding some of the Bill of Rights’s “abstract principles” for some “greater good” such as national security. But, as the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two showed, the consideration of the Bill of Rights as merely “abstract principles” to be sacrificed when convenient is a dangerous erosion the Constitution and the freedoms guaranteed therein.

Yet, this is precisely PACBI’s logic as they so lightly call for the “abstract principle” of academic freedom to be subordinated to their parochial greater good, namely the Palestinian nationalist cause. PACBI’s boycott call targets “the vast majority of Israeli intellectuals and academics” for a “comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and international levels.” PACBI calls upon the international community to “refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions.”

There is nothing abstract about the free flow of information and academic freedom. Human life depends on it. PACBI’s call for an academic boycott of Israeli universities, if implemented, would have devastating consequences for millions of people throughout the developing world. Some examples: even though desertification is a global scourge that leads to famine in Africa, Central Asia and South America, PACBI would put Ben Gurion University’s cutting edge research on desertification off limits to countries who need it the most. In another example, PACBI would close down the Israeli AIDS Consortium in Africa, founded by Israeli medical academics associated with three Israeli universities, which assists African universities, research institutes and government agencies combat AIDS.

In 2007, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, joined by hundreds of other American university presidents, declared, “We will not hold intellectual exchange hostage to the political disagreements of the moment. In seeking to quarantine Israeli universities and scholars (an academic boycott) threatens every university committed to fostering scholarly and cultural exchanges that lead to enlightenment, empathy, and a much-needed international marketplace of ideas.” Bollinger is correct: PACBI’s cause is fundamentally anti-democratic and inhumane, and should be opposed by all who value intellectual freedom and the greater good that springs from it.

Cutting Edge contributor Yitzhak Santis is the director of the Middle East Project of the San Francisco-based Jewish Community Relations Council.

http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=21808&pageid=&pagename =

Yitzhak Santis: BDS – Economic Jihad

Foreign Entities Endanger Academic Freedom in the US
  • 0