ideological criminal

This is from Harry Mairson on the “concerned list” at Brandeis:

The Gaza bombing has brought a war of words even to this mailing list.  I judge the Israeli attack as barbaric, disproportionate, an egregious violation of the Geneva conventions, and the most recent horrific episode in the ongoing collective punishment of the residents of Gaza.  Yet there’s opposition to these judgments.

No dialectic has yet produced resolution—only a monumentally growing slag heap of overheated words—so step away from political disagreement for an instant, and instead consider the following:

The BBC, among other mainline news sources, reports that Israeli jets bombed the Islamic University in Gaza (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7802515.stm).  This university has departments of Medicine, Engineering, Information Technology, Nursing, Science, Commerce, Education, and Arts.  In other words, it does what we do—here is its web site and its Wikipedia entry:

http://www.iugaza.edu.ps/en/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_University_of_Gaza

Since when do universities receive aerial bombing?  And since when do we countenance it?

Recall the statement of Columbia University’s President Lee Bollinger in June 2007, when British academics were considering merely a boycott of Israeli universities (”Boycott Israeli Universities?  Boycott Ours, Too!”).  Does any of this still apply?  Wrote President Bollinger,

As a citizen, I am profoundly disturbed by the recent vote by Britain’s new University and College Union to advance a boycott against Israeli academic institutions. As a university professor and president, I find this idea utterly antithetical to the fundamental values of the academy, where we will not hold intellectual exchange hostage to the political disagreements of the moment. In seeking to quarantine Israeli universities and scholars this vote threatens every university committed to fostering scholarly and cultural exchanges that lead to enlightenment, empathy, and a much-needed international marketplace of ideas.

At Columbia I am proud to say that we embrace Israeli scholars and universities that the UCU is now all too eager to isolate — as we embrace scholars from many countries regardless of divergent views on their governments’ policies. Therefore, if the British UCU is intent on pursuing its deeply misguided policy, then it should add Columbia to its boycott list, for we do not intend to draw distinctions between our mission and that of the universities you are seeking to punish. Boycott us, then, for we gladly stand together with our many colleagues in British, American and Israeli universities against such intellectually shoddy and politically biased attempts to hijack the central mission of higher education.

Bollinger’s statement was endorsed by several hundred university presidents, whose concurrence was publicized in the New York Times:

http://www.ajc.org/atf/cf/%7B42D75369-D582-4380-8395-D25925B85EAF%7D/NYT_ISRAEL_BOYCOTT_AD_080807.PDF

How many presidents would sign on to an appropriately paraphrased version of this statement now?  And if not, what substance was there to these principles?  What was it for?

As university professors, I’m sure all of us “find this idea [of bombing a university] antithetical to the fundamental values of the academy, where we will not hold intellectual exchange hostage to the political disagreements of the moment,” and that bombing a university threatens every university, hijacking the central mission of higher education, etc.—as in the words above.  That’s the least of it right now, given the appalling carnage—what an understatement.  “Bomb Palestinian Universities?  …” ?  We’re watching madness take place.

Also relevant is “Where’s the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?”, by Neve Gordon, chair of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.  Also, “Why would Israel bomb a university?” and “‘Creative anarchy’ in the Gaza Strip“ by Akram Habeeb, a Fulbright scholar and professor of American literature at the Islamic University of Gaza.

.