Unbelievable - who is it that has the beam in his eye??
If I have this straight: Israelis are to be boycotted because their
universities have not taken a unified and organized stand against the
occupation (never mind that many individual academics are outspoken critics
of it - your impression of general support for the occupation and the war
in Iraq is simply uninformed).
Britons, on the other hand, are not to be boycotted because individual
academics have been "actively opposed" and anyway the war was a
"short-lived affair" (funny, I was under the impression that the UK/US
occupation of Iraq was still proceeding apace, but I supposed they must
have packed up and gone home long ago, so that Iraq is now safe, stable and
flourishing).
Still nothing to say about those rascally Americans? No concern with an
ongoing history of interventions, occupations, training of death squads,
selective support for tyrants, etc.? I would sooner boycott the land of
the Dershowitzs than the land of the Kimmerlings. But in truth neither is
appropriate as a target for a boycott; to boycott a university is to
misunderstand the nature of a university. A good university will always
contain a vast diversity of views and political stances, including people
who support foreign occupations; all Kimmerlings and no Dershowitzs would
be a pretty poor excuse for a university. There is room even for those who
demonstrate hypocrisy.
David Bartram
At 09:29 24/10/2003 +0100, you wrote:
>That is a question that Bartram and others need to answer. I personally do
>not feel that an institutional boycott of the British universities would be
>an appropriate response to the war in iraq - although there may have been
>other appropriate response - largely because it was a relatively short-lived
>afair. Some of us have been actively opposed not only to this recent
>intervention, but were opposed to the first intervention in 1990-1 and to
>aspects of the sanctions regime throughout the last ten years. For general
>lack of response to that decade-long situation, I would not have been
>suprised at external criticism of the supine attitude of British academia. I
>have myself often been publicly critical of the willingness of my colleagues
>to go along with British policy in this regard - although there have been
>those who have been stalwartly opposed.
>
>Interestingly, I have seen no signs of any attempt by Israeli academics to
>organise a critical response themselves to the war in Iraq - rather my
>impression is that, if anything, they have supported it. Presumably they
>were pleased to see their government's patrons and allies intervene to
>effect 'regime change' in Iraq and are now encouraged by the significant
>Israeli presence in the proposals for the so-called 'reconstruction
>efforts' - which should prove lucrative and ensure a useful presence in a
>neighbouring Arab country.
>
>But this attempt to compare the intervention in iraq with Israeli occupation
>of the West Bank and Gaza, and the appalling destruction that has been
>caused there, over a period of a generation, is of course a masterful 'red
>herring'. First cast out the beam in thine own eye.
>
>david seddon
>
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