Forty scholars of geopolitics from around the world will land here today to take
part in a weeklong seminar, accompanied by professional field trips, to discuss
and analyze the changing nature of borders, territory and conflict in a
globalizing world.
The conference will take place at Ben-Gurion
University in Beersheba. Following this meeting, many of the participants will
remain in Israel to take part in an even larger academic event, the regional
biannual meeting of the International Geographical Union (IGU) which will take
place in Tel Aviv next week.
It is not easy, these days, holding large
international scientific events here. While hundreds of participants are
expected next week, the number would have been even larger if there was
not a
reticence to come here on the part of many scholars. For many, they have
a false
sense of their safety and insecurity, convinced that this is a dangerous
place
to come to, while for a few, they will not come as part of a protest
against
Israel’s policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians, part of a small, but
silent,
boycott of the country and its academic institutions.
Notwithstanding,
the decision by the IGU to hold its meeting here is itself indicative of
the
fact that most academic institutions make a necessary distinction
between
political critique and scientific scholarship.
There will be many
participants who are critical of Israel’s policies and will, no doubt,
make
these positions known to their Israeli colleagues during the course of
their
stay, but who understand that collective boycotting is not only
unethical but,
at the end of the day, it achieves absolutely nothing other than
creating an
even greater degree of intransigence (especially among those who
pathologically
believe that the “whole world is automatically against us”) as well as
preventing Israeli-Palestinian dialogue from taking place in one of the
few
remaining places where it exists – inside the walls of the academic
community.
FOR ITS part, the academic community here is showing signs of
growing intolerance and attempts to deny the free and open debate which
is such
an integral part of the university milieu. The inboxes of hundreds of
university
faculty, especially in the social sciences, have been filled – ad
nauseam –
recently with discussions and confrontations concerning the limits of
academic
freedom. The right-wing attacks on those who would be critical of
government
policy have become stronger than ever before, and many left-wing
academics and
research NGOs have been targeted by those – such as Isracampus, Im
Tirtzu and
NGO Monitor – who have taken on a self-appointed role of superpatriots,
defenders of the national cause and the sole interpreters of what it is
to be a
Zionist.
This has not been helped by the fact that even the minister of
education has, without checking the facts of a largely erroneous report,
given
support to these critics, or that the Foreign Ministry has actively
promoted the
harmful NGO report in meetings with members of the European Parliament
in
Brussels – severely damaging the country’s image as a free and open
society in
the eyes of many European lawmakers. The discussion of these “facts” in
Knesset
committees, without any attempt to verify the information, reflects
poorly on
the professionalism of our legislative bodies. A letter protesting this
blatant
politicization of the freedom of speech has been signed by more than 500
faculty
from all of the country’s academic institutes, with views ranging across
the
political spectrum from Right to Left, and is to be presented to
Education
Minister Gideon Sa’ar later this week.
And the letter signed yesterday by
such senior public figures as former education and justice minister
Amnon
Rubinstein, former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg, former education
minister Yossi
Sarid protesting the onesided actions of the police against
demonstrators in
Sheikh Jarrah, not because of any illegal actions on their part but
because of
the political views expressed at the legally held demonstrations, is yet
another
alarm bell which is being sounded in this respect.
Even more disturbing
is the fact that some university managements have failed to adequately
protect
their own faculty members when they are faced with threats and abuse,
some of
them by their own Board of Governors members, many of whom live abroad
and think
that they can dictate university policy from afar based on their
personal likes
and dislikes of the views of faculty members. These same people would
never dare
to utter such comments or send such e-mails to university faculty in
their
country of residence, if only because they would be accused of being
antidemocratic, closing down on free speech and, in some cases, could
face
criminal prosecution for the issuing of hate and even death threats
through
their actions.
It is this sort of action on the part of our “friends”
which causes our universities much greater damage than all of the failed
attempts to implement mass boycotts and undertake collective action,
most of
which can be measured in terms of hot air rather than any form of
significant
implementation. The freedom to debate, to state one’s opinions – however
obnoxious they may seem to others – is paramount to any free and open
society,
and all the attempts to clamp down on this and to close down the debate,
be it
through the attempt to deny tenure or promotion to academic faculty, or
the
prevention of research organizations to raise funding from bona fide
international agencies because of their suspected political leanings,
places us
among the group of countries with which we would never wish to be
associated.
ONE OF the few university heads to have had the courage to
make a statement to this effect is the rector of the University of
Haifa, Prof.
Yossi Ben-Artzi. One of the founding activists of Peace Now in its
formative
years, he has equally come out strongly against the post-Zionist
critique of
Israel and roundly condemned those Israeli academics who promote an
anti-Israel
boycott. But he has come to their defense, not because of their views,
but
because of the clear dangers he sees in allowing this form of brute
verbal
force, aimed at disengaging them from the debate, to continue
unchallenged.
Ben-Artzi will also be hosting many of our professional
colleagues from the international geographical community, who are
arriving for
the IGU meetings, over the next two weeks. It is important for our
guests,
regardless of whatever criticisms that some of them may have concerning
Israeli
and Palestinian national politics, to see the vibrancy, openness and
diversity
of opinion on the campus and in the street. And for this continue to be
the
case, we must stand up against all those who would wish to impose their
own
narrow, unquestioning, world view on the rest of us, and who would
pretend that
they are more loyal citizens of the state than those with whom they
disagree. It
is a challenge for democracy and we cannot remain silent.
The writer is
professor of political geography at Ben-Gurion University and editor of
the
International Journal of Geopolitics.