British “scholars” single out Israeli academics for boycott

Once again, Britain’s brain trust takes a brave stand and kicks Israel under the bus. This time, they’re insisting that all Israeli academics must publicly renounce the policies of their government if they want to participate in international academic forums, etc.

This is political correctness gone mad—of the kind Larry Summers talked about when he was president of Harvard University:

Of course academic communities should be and always will be places that allow any viewpoint to be expressed. And certainly there is much to be debated about the Middle East and much in Israel’s foreign and defense policy that can be and should be vigorously challenged.

But where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent. [emphasis added]

For example:

• Hundreds of European academics have called for an end to support for Israeli researchers, though not for an end to support for researchers from any other nation.
• Israeli scholars this past spring were forced off the board of an international literature journal.
• At the same rallies where protesters, many of them university students, condemn the IMF and global capitalism and raise questions about globalization, it is becoming increasingly common to also lash out at Israel. Indeed, at the anti-IMF rallies last spring, chants were heard equating Hitler and Sharon.
• Events to raise funds for organizations of questionable political provenance that in some cases were later found to support terrorism have been held by student organizations on this and other campuses with at least modest success and very little criticism.
• And some here at Harvard and some at universities across the country have called for the University to single out Israel among all nations as the lone country where it is inappropriate for any part of the university’s endowment to be invested. I hasten to say the University has categorically rejected this suggestion.

We should always respect the academic freedom of everyone to take any position. We should also recall that academic freedom does not include freedom from criticism. The only antidote to dangerous ideas is strong alternatives vigorously advocated.

I have always throughout my life been put off by those who heard the sound of breaking glass, in every insult or slight, and conjured up images of Hitler’s Kristallnacht at any disagreement with Israel. Such views have always seemed to me alarmist if not slightly hysterical. But I have to say that while they still seem to me unwarranted, they seem rather less alarmist in the world of today than they did a year ago.

I would like nothing more than to be wrong. It is my greatest hope and prayer that the idea of a rise of anti-Semitism proves to be a self-denying prophecy — a prediction that carries the seeds of its own falsification. But this depends on all of us.

Summers gave that speech in September 2002. Three years later, he left Harvard after a controversial tenure.** Things have only gone from bad to worse in the meantime.

However…(there’s always a “however”) imagine my surprise to read some of the comments attached to the Ha’aretz piece I link above: Yossi, from Israel, thinks the boycott is “annoying but a good idea,” while Mohammed, from Saudi Arabia, patiently explains to him that, no, it’s not okay—it’s anti-Semitic to single out Israelis.

Yossi: The Boycott may be annoying for some or even offensive but actually it is a very good idea.

It is very important at a time like this when the Palestinians are suffering so much from IDF violence and agression that the International Community start to isolate Israel in the same way they isolated Apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.

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Mohammed: The Main reason the boycott lacks credability is that it singles out only one country. Here in Saudi Arabia for instance our freedoms are far more resrictive than our Palestinian brothers and sisters. What about Syria, Iran, North Korea etc. They treat our own Muslim population jarshly and have killed far more of our own than Israel has in all of its history. Yossi, when academics are targeted its usually about racism or in this case anti-Semitism because the academics are the very people who are makeing a difference with human rights and individual freedoms. Therefore when British Educators decide to take a stand against Israeli Educators the Palestinians are the losers and the Brits are seen in full view exposed for what they are doing which is racism-anti-Semitism. If this organization targeted boycotts of a variety of educators from repressive countries around than it would only be a bad Idea but because it only targets the Israelis its just pure bigotry.

I will be curious to see how many American academics rise to defend their Israeli colleagues.
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**Read this piece for a postmortem on Summers’s departure. It’s long and, most curiously, doesn’t even mention Summers’s remarks about anti-Semitism that I quoted above. But Summers was controversial about most everything—he was an equal-opportunity offender. Here’s the most interesting bit from the piece. It speaks volumes about politilcal correctness among other “elites,” too.

Several college presidents whose politics are not notably conservative agreed that Summers was punished for his views — and said that they worried about the message that sent to other presidents. “Summers as an individual may have been too strong-minded, too clear, and too disrespectful of the Harvard elite to survive,” said one president. “One thing is sure, and that is that the academic elite do not tolerate dissent that deviates from well known and narrowly defined boundaries, and the academic elite in particular does not tolerate dissent that carries with it the threat of implementation.” [emphasis added]

edited to add a link