Disappointing news emerged this past week from the University of Johannesburg, where 60% of the academic senate voted to end a 25-year-long collaborative project with Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva to use Israeli water purification expertise to aid in preventing algae from forming in a Johannesburg reservoir.

What were the UJ Senate’s reasons for its dubious decision? BGU has connections to the Israeli military-what university doesn’t have some form of connection with the military of its country?-and UJ had sought, but could not find, a Palestinian academic institution with the expertise to collaborate on the project, even though BGU had invited such collaboration and, of course, Palestinians and Israelis alike are members of the BGU academic community.

The scholars of UJ’s senate were apparently unconcerned that they hold none of their other academic collaborators to such standards, nor indeed that BGU is home to some of the fiercest critics of Israeli government policy among the Israeli academic community-and that’s saying something, considering Israel’s academic community includes and allows free expression even to those calling for the abolition of the state of Israel itself.

The UJ administration was quick to clarify that UJ was not participating in an academic boycott of Israel and that individual collaboration between scholars at UJ and BGU was free to proceed. But no matter: The damage was done. Israel detractors around the world were quick to hail the “victory” of the first academic institution anywhere in the world-still none have ever done so in North America-to suspend ties with Israel, with many detractors openly hoping that this decision would be the first of a “domino” series of similar acts elsewhere.

No doubt, the UJ senate decision is a problem. But it would be a mistake for the network of campus Israel supporters to consider this problem our own. A mentor and dear friend of mine, Michael Brooks, the long-time Hillel director at the University of Michigan, offers an analytical framework in such circumstances to ask three questions: first, what’s the problem? Second, whose problem is it? And third, what’s the opportunity?

In this case, I submit, the problem is not that the University of Johannesburg has decided to deprive itself and its community from taking advantage of the finest water reclamation and purification expertise in the world. Nor, indeed, is the problem that Ben-Gurion University is now free to focus on pressing water shortages among the world’s fast growing economic and population powerhouses in China and India, both of whom are emerging as significant trading partners to Israel.

The problem isn’t even in a symbolic “victory” for Israel’s detractors in halting a project that was providing aid to a country, despite being blessed with some of the greatest natural resources in the world, in which the majority of the population lives in poverty, one in four people live on less than $1.25 per day, and where in September 2010-while the UJ senate was spending its time considering suspending this program-over a third of the workforce was out of work, including more than half of blacks aged 15-34, three times the level for whites.

No, the problem is that an institution with which the free world’s academic community interacts has decided that it will set aside the principles of academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas in favor of an unfair and unequally applied political litmus test. That’s not a problem for campus Israel supporters; that’s a problem for academics anywhere in the world who favor academic freedom and integrity. In taking this action, the UJ senate consciously separated itself from scholars around the world, including dozens of Nobel laureates who signed a letter this Fall, initiated by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, decrying the UJ senate’s proposed action in particular and boycotts or divestment from Israel in general. In short, this is the academic community’s problem.

But this problem also poses an opportunity for academics around the world to uphold the values of academic freedom and integrity by making a simple statement to the UJ senate: Boycott us, too. For any college or university that has connections to its country’s military, that does not premise academic scientific exchange on a subjective political test, or, indeed, itself has ties to Israel or Israeli academics, a principled statement would request that UJ refuse to deal with them, too.

Such a statement would send a clear message standing for academic integrity. The network of campus Israel supporters can help their campus communities take this step, not for Israel’s sake or even for the campus Israel network’s sake, but for the campus communities’ sake. The campus Israel network is here to help the campus community, not with our problem, but with the campus community’s problem.

When the campus Israel network approaches problems with this analytical framework, it liberates itself from the woe-is-us mentality that too frequently hampers our work. The campus Israel network is here to strengthen the campus community as a whole. That’s the value that our network can provide. That, indeed, is our opportunity.

http://israelcampusbeat.com/home/news/11-03-28/Boycott_Us_Too.aspx