NOTICES OF THE AMS VOLUME 49, NUMBER 11
Letters to the Editor
Universities under Curfew
When some of us decided in early April
to circulate a statement announcing
our refusal to cooperate with official
Israeli institutions in the wake of the ongoing
Israeli military reoccupation of
most of the Palestinian autonomous
zones, we anticipated, and indeed
hoped, that our initiative would provoke
a substantial discussion of our
reasons for taking such a difficult step,
in the pages of the Notices or elsewhere.
We did feel entitled to expect, however,
that the discussion would be based on
the text of our statement rather than on
the thoroughly misleading interpretation
presented in the letter entitled "A
boycott by passport" published in the
November 2002 issue. The letter quotes
our statement briefly, leading the
reader to believe that our intention was
"essentially [to] bar all serious contact
with Israeli nationals." This interpretation
is so far-fetched that we have to
assume that many of the signatories
simply did not read our statement.
Certainly few of them can have
read the explanatory material at
http://www.pjpo.org/. Regarding
the Mona Baker incident which occu-
pies most of the text of "A boycott by
passport", we do not believe that it is
our role to comment on the decisions
of individual signatories of our
statement, and we decline to do so in
this instance. Mona Baker herself did
not consult us either before or after
taking her action. Nevertheless, our
own position is clear. A letter posted
at http://www.pjpo.org/letter_ opposition.html
in response to a
petition opposed to our initiative reaffirms this commitment and makes it
more precise:
The letter from Etingof
states that "Targeting innocent fellow scientists is
unacceptable." We agree.
The final sentence of our
statement affirms our
intention to continue
collaborating with, and
hosting, Israeli scientists,
and it goes without saying
that this intention applies
to all Israeli colleagues,
regardless of their political
perspectives. In particular
we are aware of the
"harm", in our opinion
limited, our initiative may
cause individual Israeli
scientists, and are determined to do everything in
our power to avoid doing
harm, especially to
younger colleagues whose
resources are limited.
On the other hand, many individual
scientists who signed our statement
have been subjected to harassment by colleagues. Some of us, both
junior and senior scientists, have received threatening messages,
including threats to boycott scientific activities with which we are involved
and journals on whose editorial
boards we serve.
We also draw your attention to the
following response, posted at
http://www.pjpo.org/faq.html, to
the question, "Is the boycott compatible with scientific responsibilities?"
We signed the "Call for a
boycott of Israeli scientific
institutions" as individuals only. This means it
remains subordinated to
our duties and will in no
way affect our conduct in
any official capacity such
as editor of a scientific
journal, organizer of a
scientific conference,
director of a scientific
group or institution, or
officer of a university or a
scientific society or in
any directly or indirectly
related matter.
Given the original text and the
above clarifications, it is hard to see
how anyone can honestly construe
our statement as a call for a "boycott
by passport". We thus cannot consider the letter published in the
Notices a contribution to a substantial
discussion: it does not address our
statement. For the same reasons,
Peter Shalen's letter to the Notices is
irrelevant to our petition.
The "boycott by passport" letter
does, however, raise an important
point. Of course we too "condemn all
actions that deny academic freedom
to individuals solely on the basis of
their nationality." Palestinian universities were subjected to repeated
closures from the beginning of the
Israeli occupation to the creation
of the Palestinian authority. With
the current military reoccupation
of the Palestinian autonomous zones,
closure has again become a fact of
daily life for Palestinian colleagues.
To quote a recent statement signed
by academics and others from
around the world and published
at http://www.birzeit.edu/, "Following Israel's military re-occupation
of West Bank towns (including
Ramallah) in mid-June 2002, all
Palestinian educational life within
the re-occupation zones has been
brought to a grinding halt by a
blanket curfew imposed on the
civilian population."
Before the Oslo process, the Council of the AMS refused on several
occasions to take a position against
the closure of Palestinian universities. The we hope temporary
opprobrium of the readers of the
Notices, due to a misrepresentation
of our objectives, would be a small
price to pay if the AMS were to make
known its intention henceforward
to support academic freedom for
Palestinians as well as for colleagues
of other nationalities.
Viviane Baladi
CNRS (Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique) and Institut
de Mathématiques de Jussieu
Ivar Ekeland,
Université Paris IX
Michael Harris,
Université Paris 7
(Received September 13, 2002)
Editor's Note: The above letter was
endorsed by twelve mathematicians,
whose names are listed on the Web at
http://www.pjpo.org/AMS.html.
Harold P. Boas