I am no fan of the current government but its ambassadors should
be accorded the same respect as those of any other country, including
states whose policies towards ethnic minorities and human rights are
far more dubious than anything Israel has to offer.
By DAVID NEWMAN
The two most prestigious universities in the UK, Cambridge and Oxford,were the scenes of some major anti-Israel sentiment last week. AtOxford, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon was verbally threatenedwith anti-Semitic remarks during his speech at the Oxford Union, whilethe presence of Hamas activist Azim Tamimi, a supporter of terroristactivity, at a lecture in Cambridge gave rise to a high degree ofanti-Israel sentiment.At the same time as this was taking place, I was holding a series ofmeetings with British university principals and vice chancellors,meetings which have been going on for a number of years and are aimedat gauging the official position of the universities to the proposedacademic boycott attempts. Over 30 of these meetings have taken placeand, rather than focus solely on the negative, they have also beenused to promote and strengthen both ongoing and new researchcollaboration and links between British and Israeli universities. Thiswas partially reflected in last week’s reception hosted by the BritishForeign Office for the UK-Israel bilateral research project BIRAX,funded by the Pears Foundation and with formal support of the Britishgovernment and the British Council.In the meetings, all of the university principals and vice chancellorsstate the same mantra, namely that they are opposed to any form ofacademic boycott, they reject any form of anti-Semitism (or any otherform of racism) on their campuses and that they believe in theprinciples of free and balanced speech at their institutions. For mostof them, Israel is simply not on their agenda as they struggle to dealwith the economic recession and the government cutbacks in the fundingof higher education.ONE OF the universities most closely associated with anti-Israelsentiment in the UK is SOAS, the School of Oriental and AfricanStudies, at the University of London. In recent weeks, it has hostedboth Tamimi and the maverick UK member of Parliament George Gallowayin public meetings which are not so much pro-Palestinian as they areanti-Israel and spilling over into blatant anti-Jewish sentiment. Andyet SOAS has one of the few full chairs in Israel Studies which alsoarranges a diverse and well-balanced seminar series on contemporaryIsrael, attracting top scholars and large audiences. The diverseparticipants ask hard questions but prove, time after time, that acivilized discussion can take place, providing that one is not out topromote their own political viewpoint in the guise of an academiclecture, as is too often the case with visiting Israeli or Palestinianspeakers.Israel’s ambassadors to the US and the UK have both been faced withhostile audiences at universities in these countries. Readers of thiscolumn will know that I have little sympathy for the policies of thepresent government as represented by its deputy foreign minister orits ambassadors, who do no more than state government policy, but thatdoes not mean that they should not be accorded the same respect andattention that ambassadors of any other country are, includingcountries whose policies towards ethnic minorities and human rightsare far more dubious than anything Israel has to offer.THIS LACK of balance on campuses is feeding into the growing sentimentwithin the Anglo-Jewish community as a whole that anti-Semitism is onthe rise and that it is increasingly difficult, almost impossible, todifferentiate between criticism of Israel on the one hand, andanti-Semitism on the other. Not a week goes by without the two majorUK Jewish newspapers – the Jewish Chronicle and Totally Jewish –reporting new incidents of anti-Semitism, many of them on universitycampuses.That does not make it unsafe to walk the streets as a Jew or as anIsraeli, nor has it resulted in a sudden desire to leave the UK forIsrael or elsewhere. The community is well represented through a hostof public organizations, it knows how to stand up for its rights, andis it not physically threatened as such.And yet, one cannot deny the growing sentiment amongst British Jewsthat the atmosphere has changed – and the fact that much of itemanates from the bastion of liberalism and free speech on some of thecampuses, rather than from the traditional right wing and fascists,makes it all the more difficult to deal with. Nothing different wasever expected from the racist right wing, but much more was expectedfrom those places where free speech and balanced discourse is a basicprinciple of their existence.The dissonance between what the vice principals and chancellors say intheir private meetings with me and other representatives of Israeliuniversities, and that of their public actions and statements isbecoming too large to tolerate. Academic freedom and the freedom ofspeech and debate is an important principle, a principle which cannotbe discarded every time one disagrees with a particular politicalpoint of view expressed by a speaker. But academic freedom has its redlines, and this requires some form of balance in the presentation ofdiverse and contesting opinions.The use of the mantra “academic freedom” or “freedom of speech” cannotbe used as an excuse for the promotion of racism, anti-Semitism,incitement against ethnic or religious minorities, or the promotion ofviolence in any form, physical or verbal.If the leaders of the UK universities wish to preserve the rapidlydiminishing public reputation of their institutions, they need to act,and act soon to put their houses in order. They must draw the linesbetween acceptable academic discourse and difference of opinion,between those who would use their institutions as a guise forpromoting unacceptable and dangerous views. and those who wish toundertake a harsh, but legitimate, criticism of the policies of thisor that government.They should actively promote those programs which bring the diversityof opinion before their student and faculty audiences. And while theyshould not give in to every attempt by external political andcommunity lobbies to silence or ban speakers with whom they do notagree, they must become more proactive in ensuring that incitement,violence and hatred are excluded.Recent events, such as those faced by Ayalon at Oxford, or Michael Oren in the US, do not bode well for the reputation of these universities and it is in the self-interest of the university principals, regardless of their own personal views concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to ensure that the principles of civil discourse are maintained. Failure to do so will, in the long term,damage the reputation of some of the world’s most prestigious institutions.The writer is professor of political geography at Ben-Gurion University and editor of the International Journal of Geopolitics.
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