Boycott condemnation commendable
Dear Editors,
According to a recent Kingston Whig-Standard story, Principal Hitchcock’s strong denunciation of the British University and College Union’s (UCU) proposed boycott of Israeli universities has prompted some members of the Queen’s community to call for public dialogue about the position she has adopted. One reasonable starting point for such a dialogue might be to compare Principal Hitchcock’s position to that taken by other leaders of Canadian universities. Hitchcock’s opposition to the proposed boycott is in fact widely shared.
In a June 20 statement, University of Toronto President David Naylor expressed “profound disagreement” with the “ill-advised” UCU proposal. “The University of Toronto does not condone academic boycotts of any kind” because they are “antithetical to the university’s most fundamental values.”
On June 19, McGill University Principal and Vice-Chancellor Heather Munroe-Blum wrote that, “The boycott of Israeli universitites which is being considered by the United Kingdom’s University and College Union (UCU) should be thoroughly condemned … if you choose to isolate Israeli universities, you should add McGill to your boycott list.”
On June 15, University of British Columbia President and Vice-Chancellor Stephen J. Toope stated that, “the threatened boycott of Israeli universities by Britain’s University and College Union is a dangerous and unsupportable attack on the core values of academic life. The attempt by one group of scholars to stifle the views of another is an affront to modern society, and must be condemned wherever it arises.”
At least 15 other Canadian universities have similarly expressed opposition to the proposed boycott, including the Universities of Alberta, Calgary, Guelph, Manitoba, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec à Montreal, Waterloo, Western Ontario and Winnipeg, as well as Concordia, Dalhousie, Ryerson, Simon Fraser and York Universities. U.S. universities such as Columbia, UC Berkeley and New York University, and U.K. universities such as Oxford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics also oppose the proposed boycott.
As an alumnus, I am proud of Principal Hitchcock’s compelling defense of academic freedom. Like other major Canadian and world universities, Queen’s recognizes the threat to the Academy created by proposed boycotts against academics based on nationality.
Steven Seligman
ArtSci ’05
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