Rutgers prez blasts boycott
, NJJN Staff Writer | 07.26.07

Rutgers University president Richard McCormick has signed on to an intercollegiate effort to oppose a British academic union's proposed boycott of Israeli scholars.

In an op-ed column in the July 19 Star-Ledger, McCormick wrote that "any intrusion on the free flow of information and academic exchange to serve a political agenda is a violation of the principles we hold as institutions of higher learning."

His words echo the sentiments of dozens of other American university presidents who have been voicing concern that such a boycott would be a severe infringement of academic freedom.

Their outcries came after a vote in June by the English University and College Union, which has 120,000 members, urging its members to consider an academic boycott of Israeli universities.

Delegates to a union convention called for a "comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions," citing Israel's occupation of the West Bank and "the complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation." The motion passed by a vote of 158 to 99, with 17 abstentions.

Though most observers say the effort is likely to fail when put before the union's full membership – four previous British attempts at an academic boycott of Israel have faltered – it nevertheless appears to have inspired other British bodies to consider similar measures.

"No matter how one feels about the policies of Israel or, for that matter, any nation, prohibiting contacts with academics in that country is the wrong thing to do," McCormick wrote.

"It denies opportunity to academics working in completely nonpolitical fields and cuts off the ability to exchange information, collaborate, and interact. Ironically, it is these very exchanges that often provide the answers to some of the difficulties that create global conflict."

Lori Price Abrams, director of the UJC MetroWest NJ Community Relations Committee, said her organization has been urging university presidents in the area to oppose the potential boycott. "We are thrilled that McCormick has done this," she said. "We consider this to be an issue of top importance."

One man spearheading the enlistment of university leaders to the cause of opposing the boycott is Harold Shapiro, a former president of Princeton University and the University of Michigan.

Shapiro chairs the Dorothy and Julius Koppelman Institute on American Jewish-Israeli Relations, a branch of the American Jewish Committee.

Although "it is possible the whole thing will go down in flames," said Shapiro, it was important to hear the voices of academic leaders in a statement of "how distressing this is and how much this stands against the things we stand for."

For the past several weeks, Shapiro has been reaching out from his office in Princeton to campuses across the nation. He uses what he jokingly calls his "lapsed authority" as president emeritus of two leading American universities to contact former colleagues.

"Some have written with enormous enthusiasm and anger. Others are just distressed by the idea of a boycott," he said. "I don't think their responses are motivated primarily by a support for Israel, although Israel is the subject of this. It is primarily something that most academics think is inappropriate. It is something which they think strikes at the basis of academic freedom at their institutions and therefore ought to be opposed, and our indignation on this ought to be straightforward."

Shapiro said, "People have their own views on the kind of statement they want to make, but I haven't run across anybody who has said it's a stupid idea."

The British professor who proposed the boycott resolution said he has been subjected to "sustained vilification" by "eminent American professors and supporters of Israel." In an op-ed published in Britain, Tom Hickey, chair of the UCU and a philosophy lecturer at Brighton University, wrote that opponents of a boycott "wish to deflect attention from the substantive issue: the plight of people suffering under occupation."

Among other British unions calling for an anti-Israel boycott are the British Transport and General Workers Union, representing some 800,000 workers. American labor leaders, including the president of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States, have denounced the boycott calls. The Jewish Labor Committee has been organizing opposition to the boycotts among U.S. labor leaders.

"Here is an issue we can all be disturbed about, and we can all draw attention to and mobilize our concern about that; obviously, to the extent we are successful, it would prevent something like a boycott," Shapiro said.

Local stories posted courtesy of the New Jersey Jewish News