http://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/26412
Editorial Ignores Nature of Bollinger’s Statement And His Allegance to Academic Freedom
To the Editor:
William R. Roff is, as he indicated in his op-ed piece, “Bollinger Boycotts Discussion” (Sept. 4), an emeritus professor of history at Columbia and a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh. Given his distinguished credentials, his remarks about both the British Universities and Colleges Union action of last May and University President Lee Bollinger’s statement of June 12 in response to that action are shocking.
In his statement, President Bollinger described the UCU’s action as a vote “to advance a boycott,” which is clearly not the same thing as “to boycott.” Professor Roff noted that the vote was for “discussion and debate about a call for boycott, informed by the full text of the appeal from their Palestinian colleagues and by campus visits by Palestinian academics and intellectuals.” That the purpose of the “discussion and debate” is “to advance a boycott” is evident from the absence of any suggestion that the debate be “informed” by input from the targets of the boycott under discussion, that is, Israeli academics.
Professor Roff accused President Bollinger of “attempting to stifle even discussion of a boycott,” but in fact, nowhere in his statement did President Bollinger do so. Criticizing a proposal is not at all the same thing as stifling discussion of it. Similarly, our criticism of Professor Roff’s article is not an attempt to deprive him of his right to publish in any venue that he chooses and that is willing to print what he writes.
However, the purpose of a boycott is precisely to stifle discussion. A boycott would deprive Israeli academics of the opportunity to participate in meetings and collaborative ventures with UCU members and to publish their work in journals run by UCU members. The British academic community and the readers of its journals would also be deprived of the opportunity to benefit from the contributions that Israeli academics might make to scholarship and science. Given the track record of Israeli scholarship, that would be a major loss; it would certainly cripple British scholarship. Immediately after the UCU vote, the Russell Group, a consortium of leading British universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, denounced it, as did a number of British scholars and leaders.
The UCU national congress proceedings, quoted by Professor Roff, invoke, as the rationale for the action, the alleged “complicity of Israeli academia in… Israel’s 40-year occupation [which] has seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society…” The text, as cited by Professor Roff, indicates that the source of the proposal is “a call from Palestinian trade unions for a comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions.” If that is not “advancing a boycott,” it is hard to know what would be.
As President Bollinger correctly noted, accepting the principle of academic boycott anywhere would endanger academic freedom everywhere. But he did not propose to stifle discussion of boycotts. He simply expressed solidarity with the targets of the call for a boycott, as more than 400 other university, college, and foundation presidents, as well as nearly 60 Nobel Prize winners and 11,000 other academics from 1,000 institutions worldwide have done (see spme.org for the list). Even Professor Noam Chomsky of MIT and Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al Quds University in Jerusalem and former Palestinian Liberation Organization representative, have opposed the call for an academic boycott. Professor Roff is entitled to disagree with them all, but it is disingenuous of him to have ignored them.
Awi Federgruen, Ph.D.,
Judith S. Jacobson, Dr.P.H., MBA
Sept 4, 2007
The authors are members of the Columbia University faculty and co-coordinators of the Columbia University chapter of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.
