Where Is Rick Levin?
The National Review takes Yale's Rick Levin and Duke's Dick Brodhead to task for not signing the anti-Israeli boycott petition....
But—whoops—there's a statement from Rick Levin on the front of Yale's webpage, dated August 10. (Guess that was too much investigative effort for the National Review—you know, typing in www.yale.edu.)
Here's Levin's statement:
I certainly agree with the sentiments expressed in President Bollinger's statement, and I am happy to say so. But I am not comfortable signing group statements or petitions, in this case and as well as hundreds of other similar situations where my participation has been requested.A boycott of Israel's educational institutions serves no useful purpose. It violates the principle of academic freedom that all universities should practice and defend. We should continue to promote to the fullest extent the opportunity for discussion, collaboration, and exchange with Israeli institutions, as well as with other universities in the Middle East and around the globe.
I have to say, that is less than forceful and less than eloquent. A boycott "serves no useful purpose"? This feels defensive and perfunctory.
President Levin, you can do better than that.
Oh, and whoops, two clicks brings us to Dick Brodhead's statement on the boycott, dated July 27.
Durham, NC -- Britain’s University and College Union voted in late May to move forward with a proposal to boycott Israeli academic institutions, as called for by Palestinian trade unions for Israel’s “40-year occupation” of Palestinian land. (See http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/worldwide/story/0,,2091769,00.html.) In response, Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead has issued the following statement condemning the proposed boycott, which the British union has not yet officially ratified:I view the proposed academic boycott of Israeli universities by Great Britain’s University and College Union as a threat to all institutions of higher education, and I condemn it as such.All ideas are not equal, but it is a foundational principle of American life that all ideas should have an equal opportunity to be expressed. The protection of free speech is the protection of the notion that people can teach each other and learn from each other through the free airing of differences and the mutual engagement of opposing points of view. To disbelieve that is in some fundamental way to disbelieve in education itself. Duke University has a proud tradition of upholding the free exchange of ideas, including discussions that involve the bitter, unresolved conflicts in the Middle East. The idea of forbidding partnerships and exchanges with Israeli universities and scholars contradicts the high value we place in the pursuit of knowledge on our own campus and in the importance of robust intellectual integrity more broadly. I oppose efforts to suppress the free exchange of ideas at Duke and in university communities around the world. It's such writing that makes me like Brodhead, despite his misfirings in the rape case. Eloquent, passionate, and right. Also, you have no doubt that he wrote this himself, something you can not always say of many university presidents....
