The Israeli government is gearing up to oppose the British academic boycott. In the meantime, a group of international academics under the rubric of the Scholars for Peace in the Middle East have undertaken their own counter-boycott:
A group of distinguished academics has issued a call to show solidarity with their Israeli counterparts following last month's move to boycott Israel by Britain's University College Union. Led by law Prof. Alan Dershowitz of Harvard University, Steven Weinberg, a Nobel Prize laureate in physics from the University of Texas, and a task force against boycotts set up by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the group is urging scholars to sign a statement of solidarity with "our Israeli academics and professional colleagues," stressing that they will not participate "in any activity from which Israeli academics are excluded."
We picked up the address of the petition from a One Jerusalem post, and you can view it and sign it for yourself here.
The signatures represent some of the brightest lights of international scholarship. Just for completions sake, here are some other people who think that the proposed academic boycott of Israeli institutions is aggressively counterproductive and very likely anti-Semitic:
* Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who has a colorable claim to having the most important ethicist of our age:
I am made uneasy by the single-minded focus on Israel... One might consider, for example, the Chinese government’s record on human rights; South Korea’s lamentable sexism and indifference to widespread female infanticide and feticide; the failure of a large number of the world’s nations, including many, though not all, Arab nations, to take effective action in defense of women’s bodily integrity and human equality; and many other cases. Indeed, I note that gross indifference to the lives and health of women has never been seriously considered as a reason for any boycott, a failure of impartiality that struck me even in the days of the South Africa boycott.
* Sebastian Coe, British Olympic champion and chief organizer of the 2012 games in London:
"The fact that I'm here at this time shows what I think about the academic boycott," Coe said during a panel discussion Wednesday at the University of Haifa, according to a release issued by the university... Bill Rammell, Britain's minister of state for higher education, has said the proposed boycott does nothing to promote the Middle East peace process. Rammell is planning to visit Israel to personally express the British government's opposition to the plan.
References:
* SPME Petition [Scholars for Peace in the Middle East]
* Israel plans to combat boycott threat [JPost]
* Scholars urge solidarity amid boycott [JPost]
* Fight The UK Academic Boycott of Israel [One Jerusalem]
* Against Academic Boycotts [Dissent]
* London Olympic organizer rejects U.K. boycott efforts [Ha'aretz]
Previously:
* World Medical Association Trying To Destroy Israeli Medical Network, Bleeding Edge Israeli Medical Industry [Video]
* British Academics Boycotted Israel In the 70s And 80s. Guess How It Turned Out.
* Israeli Public Diplomacy Expert : British Boycott Is Vicious Anti-Semitism
