israel boycott campaign:
In a July 25 article for Electronic Intifada, Margaret Aziza Pappano points out the hypocrisy of those calling for academic freedom for Israeli academics while failing to call for corresponding freedoms for Palestinians: "Surely if university presidents are up in arms over a proposed boycott of Israeli academics, they must have something to say about the shutting down of universities, jailing and shooting of students and faculty, daily impeding of students and faculty from getting to classes, denial of student permits to attend universities, and revoking of visas to visiting scholars and researchers that characterizes academic life in Palestine. If a boycott of academic institutions is considered unfair, what does one call the methodical destruction of an educational system?"
(...) [silence as complicity] Tom Hickey, who led the proposal for an academic boycott, points out that Israeli universities are not neutral institutions but rather are actively complicit in perpetuating the occupation. "No Israeli college or university has publicly condemned what is being done in the occupied territories in the name of every Israeli citizen. Some Israeli educational institutions have established campuses for settlers on illegally confiscated land; others conduct archaeological digs on land from which Palestinian farmers have been expelled."