Tuesday, April 5, 2005
Or should that be "ill." Attention MESA: Look, politics in the classroom!
Guardian: Boycott call resurfaces
The second, also received last month, again says the author won't review the proposal. "I support the academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions, as a means of registering my protest against Israelis' lack of respect for human rights and continuing illegal occupation of Palestinian land."
Almost three years ago to the day, moves towards an academic boycott of Israel began in earnest when a moratorium on European funding for Israeli research was suggested by Steven and Hilary Rose and 120 other academics, in a letter to the Guardian. The issue has burst on to the front pages intermittently: when Umist's Mona Baker sacked two Israeli linguists from a translation journal she edited; when Oxford's Andrew Wilkie refused a place to an Israeli PhD student; and last year, when the School of Oriental and African Studies hosted a conference on the subject entitled Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Strategies and Principles...
...Blackwell says that over the past three years the boycott has been as active as ever, but on a quiet and individual level - "a covert boycott where people are quietly getting on with it. It's a passive boycott that dares not speak its name"...
Of all the countries in the world, with all the objectionable governmental policies, it's Israel they choose to boycott - playing politics in an iron-fisted manner they wouldn't do with any other country on any other issue, but if you suggest that there's an element of Judenhass involved, they will scream to high-heaven that you are trying to stiffle the debate - these people who want to cut off all contact will scream that it's you who are trying to stiffle the debate.
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