You report on the growing strength of the movement for an academic boycott of Israeli universities (Universities around the world cut ties with Israeli academia over Gaza war, 13 September). Comments from the Royal Society and Universities UK show that, 21 years after it was launched, they still fail to understand what the boycott targets. A Royal Society statement talks of “blanket boycotts of scientists or other academics”, and the risk of “denying scientists or other academics their rights to freedom of opinion and expression … and of inhibiting the free circulation of scientists and scientific ideas”. Universities UK, the article says, “do not endorse blanket academic boycotts” as this represents “an infringement of academic freedom”.
Clearly, these comments are about the specific academic boycott of Israel. But that boycott unambiguously targets Israel’s higher education institutions, not the academics who work there.
Israeli universities are deeply complicit in the regime of apartheid, denial of rights, repression and now genocide carried out by Israel. Boycotting them institutionally in no way interferes with collaboration between individual Israeli academics and their colleagues in other countries. What is targeted is any involvement of Israeli universities in that process – no funding streams, no publication in journals based there, no academic references for appointments and internal promotions, no international conferences held there. The impact is on the institutions, not the flow of ideas.
Jonathan Rosenhead
London
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