THE MEANING OF ACADEMIC BYCOTT
(A Reply To Tanya Reinhart and others)

My dear colleagues and friends Tanya Reinhart, Rita Giacaman and Elia Zureik:

On May 17 Professor Tanya Reinhart published a lengthy and well-documented
article in "Indymedia Israel" (http://www.indymedia.org.il), seeking to
convince Israeli academics opposing Israel's oppressive and brutal policies
toward the Palestinian people to join Professors Hilary and Steven Rose in
their effort to promote a boycott against the Israeli academic community
and its institutions. The appeal suggests that European research institutes
stop treating Israel like a European country in their scientific relations
with it until Israel acts according to UN resolutions and opens serious
peace negotiations with the Palestinians. About 270 European and some
American and Palestinian scientists signed this appeal, including about 10
Israelis.

Contrary to some of my Israeli colleagues I do respect the right of every
member of the scientific international community to make such a demand, and
as all of you know, I even agree with most of the reasons behind this call.
However, the same reasons that lead the Professors Rose to call for a
boycott against Israeli academic institutions lead me to urge the world
academic community not only refrain from boycotting us but to offer us its
support and protection.

First of all I have to admit that Israeli academic institutions are a part
and parcel of the oppressive Israeli state that has, among its other acts
of foolishness and villainy, committed unforgettable crimes against the
Palestinian people. A major cause for the Israeli academy's inseparability
from the state is that we are so heavily funded and subsidized by the
Israeli government. A successful boycott will have a boomerang effect by
cementing the dependence of Israeli academic institutions and their members
on an increasingly capricious government.


Since Ms. Limor Livnat was appointed Minister of Education under the
present government, the Israeli academy became the target of a
reconstruction and "reeducation" campaign. This policy was in no way
accidental. In Israel today, the mass media are generally chauvinistic and
unwilling to challenge the Sharon government.  Dissenting journalists like
Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, who document the daily afflictions and human
rights violations suffered by the Palestinian population, are subjected to
petition drives designed to pressure the country's most liberal private
newspaper to stop publishing their work. In this repressive climate, the
Israeli academy remains the last bastion of free thought and free speech.
Most humanistic, dissident voices in Israel originate in the academy or are
supported by faculty members.

This is not to say that all the members of the Israeli academy are great
humanists or support the idea of self-determination of the Palestinian
people. We are a highly heterogeneous community, as is true in any other
fine academic environment. Some of us are highly active in ethnocentric
groups, other (perhaps the majority) alienated from any public or
intellectual activities, while a small but salient minority (of which Prof.
Reinhart is a prominent member) are very active and highly committed to the
humanization and democratization of various aspects of the Israeli society.
However, the most important feature of this community is that so far, in
spite of the deep cleavages among us, we have found a way to co-exist each
with the other and to conduct spirited dialogs among ourselves and with the
world outside the ivory tower - under the umbrella of academic freedom I
also think we, the Israeli academy, have stood fast in a time of crisis and
have conducted ourselves more credibly than the British academy (while the
British government was engaging in acts of brutality against the
Irish-Catholics, during the Falkland/Malvinas war, or throughout the long
Thatcher regime) , or the patriotic American academy (during the current
war against Afghanistan, the McCarthy-era witch hunts, or even during most
phases of the Korean and Vietnam wars). Yet I have never heard of any calls
to boycott either the British or American academies. As for the cause
celebre of the "successful" boycott of the South African academy, it is
well known that it mainly damaged the progressive forces within South
Africa and probably hindered its democratization process. As sociologists,
the Roses have to know the inner dynamics of communities under siege.

My friend Elia Zureik suggested that the boycott should be only
institutional but not personal. Very kindly and generously, he has offered
to cooperate with me, (presuming I'm on his personal list of "good guys")
but to boycott my institution, the Hebrew University. Self-evidently it is
his right to boycott every institution or person he want to, but he must
realize that if his call to freeze funds to my institution is effective,
the resulting constraints on research and conferences will also hurt "good
guys" like me. Moreover, the very idea of making selections among members
of the academy is a horrifying idea and I hereby pledge not to cooperate
with any institution or person who will make such selections, even if I
myself am ruled acceptable by them. Selections made on the basis of
non-academic criteria endanger academic freedom.

I'm fully aware that academic freedom is not above other moral
considerations and does not exist within a political and social vacuum. I
can understand European and American academics who feel strong moral
resentments when confronted by oppressive policies and war crimes directed
against Palestinians and who desire "to do something" within their own
profession. Even more, I can sympathize with Palestinian academics like
Professor Rita Giacaman, who daily witnesses the destruction of Palestinian
academic institutions and the harassment of faculty and students while only
miles away, my institution operates more or less normally.
Her feelings are especially comprehensible because my institution, as an
institution, never did anything to relieve the severe conditions suffered
by Palestinian universities and colleges. True, we had some of common
research and development projects, some funded by European authorities and
NGOs, but under the present circumstances they provided almost no remedy to
the Palestinians.

However, I have less understanding for my Israeli colleagues who are asking
to be boycotted. I don't condemn them as our "trade union" did, because
they are fully entitled to express their opinions and to try to convince us
of their correctness. Moreover, they and I have the common goal of
democratizing and de-colonizing Israeli society. The only divergence
between us, beside the very meaning of the academy, is that, should their
call be taken seriously it would weaken our common academic autonomy and
freedom - the precise goal of our adversaries - and ultimately have
catastrophic consequences for our common struggle.

Therefore, I'm calling on the international academic community to
strengthen its connections with the Israeli and Palestinian academic
communities, in order to empower their autonomy and freedom. Both people
needs a strong academic space as a part of their civil and civilized
societies in order to promote the elements that are able to initiate major
social and political changes in the region.

Baruch Kimmerling