There are clearly arguments for and against a boycott, but Ronald's 'arguments' do need some qualification. The starting point should be - what do we do to support pressure on Israel to stop its military transgressions. I don't think that people some form of boycott, on balance - and it is on balance and with a heavy heart - do so without a sense that such political action involves some form of injustice as a part to countering larger injustices. Its often a question of context and balance.
The problem I have with some of the www.european-association.org argument is that it talks of truth and freedom as abstractions, as if they can easily co-exist as concepts with a world where such violence and abuse occurs. This seems to inflate academic freedoms above other rights and responsibilities. Yes, academic freedom is important and yes, it is known that academics in Israel are critical of Sharon and working against the current situation. They are, however, little more than an elite fiction if they are abstracted from the conditions under which people live in their societies. Is an academic from Israel willing to post the argument their that their academic freedom, their scientific ethics of freedom, are not compromised by Sharon's politics? Will they put individual career aspirations or research before human rights? I don't think so.
The arguments of supporting resistance by Israeli academics and fostering Israeli-Palestinian links are far stronger and do raise questions about boycotts. Perhaps what should emerge from this debate is a more focused and defined form of specific boycott - but remember it has to be a political move worth doing, or its tokenism. To take up Ronald's discussion of other examples of absence of boycotts, i take your point, history provides ammunition about both sides, but had international universities dropped collaborations with the Uk in support of the Miners Strike in the Uk, for example, when the state used welfare systems as a means of policing and victimisation, I WOULD HAVE UNDERSTOOD! (actually, I would have applauded!)
I do wish to defend academic freedoms, but then I am not suggesting they are transgressed, but that we respect them by not allowing normalisation or recognition for a regime that flouts them. The boycott is surely about institutional (particularly where finance is concerned) ties and funded research funding bids and activities. We can still dialogue as individuals, co-write as individuals, welcome Israeli academics on visits (though I would go with not visiting reciprocally).
Ronald, to equate a boycott on formal (not informal) academic collaboration with opposition with the boycott on Iraq, where people are DYING - is unfortunate. I oppose the Iraq boycott because Saddam is a military dictator who brutally savages his people, and I would support other action that freed Iraqi's from his savagery, but I know that the humanitarian disaster means we should not boycott even if he uses the result to his own ends. If you are saying Israel has the same state structure and polity, and Israeli academics are suffering the same (starvation, state violence, high child mortality), then I would move to your view, but I presume you are not.
I also regret, Ronald, that you wish to move the debate onto more personal ground when you say:
"I am really surprised about the lack of understanding of the functionning of institutions in modern democracies by some of my social science colleagues. It is absolutely absurd, and, if that matters, immoral to link autonomous research institutions and researchers with their governments and to punish them".
Please do not imply ignorance and immorality amongst those who disagree with you, or is that also a matter of academic values? The idea of a boycott is a politics of recognition and a politics against the normalisation of an abnormal and immoral state of affairs. Whether we like it or not, when governments are not starving universities of funds, shouting down critical academics and stereotyping academics as not contributing to the 'real world' of business, they represent 'their' universities as a beacon of their civilisation, their quality of education and contribution to knowledge production and as a key national resource. There are always links between senior and powerful university personnel and government. A boycott makes a public statement about a willingness not to overlook atrocities or indeed abstract our cosier lives from others.
Perhaps rather than engaging in conflict, we should look at an earlier view of Ronald's, some sort of European event where recognition could be stressed, Israeli academics could be heard and their resistance made promninent in the news and a constructive politics of recognition be developed that minimised hardship to israeli academics whilst pushing the institutional levers that will pressure Sharon. Much of it would have to be webcast and technologically constructed, but it might be more constructive than dual camps arguing with each other,
Best Wishes
Paul
Paul Reynolds
Senior Lecturer in Politics and Sociology
Centre for Studies in nthe Social Sciences
Edge Hill College
St Helens Road
Ormskirk
Lancs L394QP
Tel: 01695 584370
email: [log in to unmask]
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