Academic Boycotts of Israel - Criticism

Criticism

Proposed academic boycotts of Israel have been the subject of contentious debate. Some issues that have been highlighted are:

  • Are academic boycotts of Israel ethically justified?
  • Would they be an effective and positive agent of change?
  • Are there overriding issues of academic freedom?
  • Are the proposals a cover for anti-Semitism?
  • Is Israel being unjustly singled out?

A prominent Palestinian academic, president of Al-Quds University, Sari Nusseibeh, has argued against academic boycotts of Israel, telling Associated Press "If we are to look at Israeli society, it is within the academic community that we've had the most progressive pro-peace views and views that have come out in favor of seeing us as equals... If you want to punish any sector, this is the last one to approach." He acknowledges, however, that his view is a minority one amongst Palestinian academics.

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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:

    Good criticism is very rare and always precious.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.
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    To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.
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