From Sean W. O'Malley
What supporters of a European academic boycott of Israel like Steven Rose and Rita Giacaman fail to consider is that any such action will almost inevitably result in a counter-boycott by many non-Israeli Jews of European institutions that support it (11 December 2004, p 26).
One also has to consider what the response of the US government would be to such a boycott. I could easily see the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health refusing to fund travel to any conference which excludes Israelis, and cancelling all joint research with European institutions that discriminate against Israeli researchers.
The worst-case end result could be a European academic community from which Jews become excluded and yet another huge European-American row. Opening this Pandora’s box is simply a very, very bad idea.
The sponsors of this approach also overestimate its potential for influencing events in the Middle East. The possibility that the Israeli government, which has been suffering from three years of suicide bombing, is going to change its policy because a bunch of European academics disses them is remote to say the least.
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It is also hard to see why Israel should be singled out. Using the same logic we should boycott Chinese academics because of the country’s treatment of Tibet, Sudanese academics because of Darfur and Iranian academics because of Iran’s atomic bomb programme.
Academia, and academic science even more so, is the place that has come the closest to achieving a genuine multicultural/post-national outlook. Most universities teach students from all over the world with a minimum of friction and fuss. A boycott would make a hash of this achievement and turn academia into just another arena for nationalistic competition.
New York, US
