Israel Boycotts by Universities Would Put Academic Freedom at Risk
“Can the principle of academic freedom survive a series of political debates about whether to boycott universities in a series of countries?”
The BDS movement is trying to exploit the nature of the campus protests, but there are bigger issues involved.
Inside Higher Ed reports:
What Is at Stake in an Academic Boycott?
At the core of two decades of contemporary debates about boycotting Israeli universities—debates that date to about 2001 in Britain—has been the issue of how boycotts affect the defining pillar of faculty teaching and research: academic freedom. Does an academic boycott imperil the status of academic freedom? Or is an academic boycott a quite separate matter, addressing the tactical need to sanction countries whose conduct is unacceptable?
Can an academic boycott ignore the status of academic freedom in the very country under consideration, setting aside the question of whether its faculty possesses freedom of speech and the freedom to make individual choices about how to teach and conduct research, and instead direct attention toward the nation’s conduct off campus and even outside the target nation-state itself? Is it worth imposing an academic boycott and thus sacrificing the potential for dialogue with dissident faculty members even when their country behaves very badly?
Can the principle of academic freedom survive a series of political debates about whether to boycott universities in a series of countries? Are academic boycotts and academic freedom mutually exclusive? Are they categories—and practices—that cannot coexist in the real world? Does pursuing an academic boycott fundamentally weaken the theory and practice of academic freedom?
These are not just theoretical or philosophical questions. They clarify part of what is at stake whenever the decision of whether to impose an academic boycott is being discussed.
There is little question that the ability to collaborate with faculty members in another country would be affected by a campaign to boycott its universities. Such collaboration speaks to key components of academic freedom as the American Association of University Professors defined it in its 1915 declaration—the right, indeed the necessity, that faculty members be free to exchange ideas, hypotheses and research results with one another, including across international borders; that they be free to meet face-to-face in academic conferences no matter in what country they live and work; that they be free to establish both individual and group collaborations across national borders. Can the principle of academic freedom remain intact if the right to put it into practice is abridged by one or more academic boycotts?
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Comments
Before the international rise of Hamas and Iran and etc., the world was what it was.
A lot of us remember the world before, say, 2000.
Remember? Some good. Some less good.
Now — can you imagine what the world will be like if and when the Hamasniks and ayatollahs and their variously cowed allies are permitted to continue their rise to power in the US, in Europe, in Africa, in Asia, in Australia?
Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does give me some peace that the good people running these colleges and towns like Portland, Me, will get what’s coming to them — even if me and my family get October7th’ed first.
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