Marc Lamont Hill is a professor at Morehouse College and a frequent TV Commentator. He also is coming out with a new book soon on social justice in the U.S.Lamont Hill also is a big supporter of the “Ferguson to Palestine” movement which uses the doctrine of intersectionality to connect Israel to inner city and racial problem in the U.S. The only majority Jewish state in the world is held out as the connecting force of evil in the world.We wrote about his support in January 2015, when he was part of a Dream Defenders delegation to Israel and theWest Bank, Wow, Marc Lamont Hill drank the anti-Israel Kool-Aid. For that visit, Hill included this statement in a video about the trip:
We came here to Palestine to stand in love and revolutionary struggle with our brothers and sistersWe come to a land that has been stolen by greed and destroyed by hateWe come here and we learn laws that have been co-signed in ink but written in the blood of the innocent and we stand next to people who continue to courageously struggle and resist the occupationPeople continue to dream and fight for freedomFrom Ferguson to Palestine the struggle for freedom continues.
That statement was issued in Nazareth, which is part of pre-1967 Israel:
Lamont Hill just announced his support of the academic boycott of Israel which is not being voted upon by the American Anthropological Association (this detailed post explains the AAA academic boycott and why the justifications are propaganda not reality.)
Here is the image he posted on Instagram:
Systematic academic boycotts, including of Israel, are considered to be severe violations of academic freedom by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) because such boycotts damage the entire academic system and free exchange of knowledge:
[S]ince its founding in 1915, the AAUP has been committed to preserving and advancing the free exchange of ideas among academics irrespective of governmental policies and however unpalatable those policies may be viewed. We reject proposals that curtail the freedom of teachers and researchers to engage in work with academic colleagues, and we reaffirm the paramount importance of the freest possible international movement of scholars and ideas….The Association’s defense of academic freedom, as explained in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, rests on the principle that “institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good . . . [which] depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.” Although the statement says nothing about academic boycotts, plainly the search for truth and its free expression suffer if a boycott is in place….The Association recognizes the right of individual faculty members or groups of academics not to cooperate with other individual faculty members or academic institutions with whom or with which they disagree. We believe, however, that when such noncooperation takes the form of a systematic academic boycott, it threatens the principles of free expression and communication on which we collectively depend.
Major academic associations of universities and over 250 university presidents have issued similar statements regarding the threat to academic freedom and the advance of knowledge pose by the BDS academic boycott of Israel.
Not long after I saw Lamont Hill’s annnouncement of his support for the academic boycott of Israel, I saw this article in the Jersusalem Post online, Haifa and NY researchers collaborate on treatment for two deadly cancers:
The Technion – Israel of Technology and New York University Langone Medical Center have initiated a joint cancer research project, targeting the most dangerous form of skin cancer, metastatic melanoma, and mesothelioma, a rare cancer that develops in the protective lining of the lungs and other internal organs.In the first joint collaboration, US and Israeli researchers will test the ability of a nanotechnology based on so-called “nanoghosts” to deliver the promising treatments.In earlier studies, Technion researchers took a stem cell, removed its contents and then shaped a piece of the cell’s outer membrane into a vehicle to deliver treatments into the brain.
There are dozens if not hundreds of similar medical research projects cooperatively between Israeli higher education institutions and non-Israeli institutions. Under the official academic boycott guidelines, such cooperative projects are banned:
Research and development activities that fall into these broad categories:
(a) Among academic institutions – Institutional cooperation agreements with Israeli universities or research institutes. These agreements, concluded between international and Israeli academic institutions, typically involve the exchange of faculty and students and, more importantly, the conduct of joint research. Many of these schemes are sponsored and funded by the European Union (in the case of Europe), and independent and government foundations elsewhere.
The American Anthropological Association boycott will be mostly symbolic (like that of other groups like the American Studies Association). So perhaps it’s viewed as a no-risk easy ideological and political choice for Lamont Hill and others AAA members. But if they support the BDS academic boycott of Israel for one field of study, they necessarily advance the boycott in all fields of study since BDS makes no exceptions for medical research. The academic boycott is the academic boycott, in for one field, in for all.
Which raises a question I tweeted to Lamont Hill. Since the Technion-NYU cancer research project would be banned under the academic boycott guidelines, How Many People Must Die for BDS?
Based on past Twitter interactions with Lamont Hill and his various writings, I believe he is sincere in his beliefs. But he is sincerely wrong, and needs to answer the question whether The Technion – NYU joint cancer research should be canceled, and if so, how many people must die for BDS.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY
