Academics face boycott pressures

Organizers say they use nonviolent ways to back struggle of Palestinians

Israeli anthropologist Dan Rabinowitz is a leader in his field, heading a prestigious school of environmental studies at Tel Aviv University, authoring dozens of publications and holding visiting teaching positions over the years at leading North American universities.

But the British-educated Rabinowitz fears that his younger counterparts may not enjoy the same professional opportunities for a very personal reason: They are Israeli.

As a global boycott movement against Israeli universities gains steam, Israeli professors said they are feeling the pressure from their colleagues overseas. Although the movement ostensibly targets universities, not individuals, Israeli academics said they are often shunned at the personal level. They experience snubs at academic conferences, struggle to get recommendations and can experience difficulty publishing their work in professional journals.

"This is highly personal and personalized," Rabinowitz said.

The academic boycott is part of the broader pro-Palestinian "BDS" campaign, which advocates boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Inspired by the anti-apartheid movement, BDS organizers say they are using nonviolent means to promote the Palestinian struggle for independence.

Israel says the campaign goes beyond fighting its occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and often masks a more far-reaching aim to "delegitimize" or destroy the Jewish state. But the BDS movement's decentralized organization and language calling for universal human rights have proved difficult to counter.

The BDS website says "the vast majority of Israeli intellectuals and academics have either contributed directly to the Israeli occupation and apartheid or at the very least have been complicit through their silence".

And yet Israeli universities are widely seen as liberal bastions, and their professors are some of the most vocal government critics.

Already enjoying significant support in the United Kingdom, the academic boycott has chalked up a series of accomplishments in the United States.

In recent years, the Association for Asian American Studies and the American Studies Association have approved boycott measures.

In November, a meeting of the American Anthropological Association overwhelmingly endorsed a motion supporting a boycott of Israeli universities.

Peretz Lavie, president of the Technion, Israel's premier science and technology university, said the effect of such decisions has so far been minimal.

Lavie, who chairs the Association of University Heads in Israel, said relations between Israeli and US universities remain strong at the institutional and leadership levels, and praised this month's decision by the Association of American Universities reaffirming its opposition to the boycott. The group, which represents 62 leading US universities, said the boycott "violates academic freedom".

Nonetheless, Lavie said the boycott movement has become a top concern for Israeli university leaders, particularly as it gains support at the "ground level" from US student unions and academic associations.

"There may be a domino effect," he said. "If we do not deal with it, it will be a major problem."