Academic

For the last six weeks, I have been teaching legal philosophy at the Center for Advanced Legal Studies at the University of Tel Aviv. My Israeli students were bright, engaged, and wonderfully argumentative. I also had amazing conversations with my teaching colleagues as we tested our latest ideas on one another in vigorous but friendly conversations.

It was a typical university experience. What mattered was ideas, not citizenship.

I, a Canadian, interacted not only with Israeli students and teachers but with visitors from other countries. Some of the students told me they hoped to study law in at the University of Toronto through an exchange program or as graduate students. I told them that I hoped to see them in my classes in Toronto, where we could continue our discussions and our disagreements.

University life is no longer local. It has become international. This has made it more vital than it ever was.

Teaching law in Israel is unique in one respect. Legal issues that may be abstract elsewhere have a concrete immediacy there. Everyone is aware of the extraordinary challenges that the country's security situation poses for the rule of law. Israeli professors have diverse views about these challenges. They express these views with great independence of mind.

Toward the end of my stay, the union that represents British university teachers announced that it would encourage a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The boycott proposal is based on the absurd notion that Israeli academics are collectively complicit in government policies of which the British professors disapprove.

The boycott proposal made me wonder whether the British university teachers understand what university teaching is.

Teaching is a sublime expression of our common humanity and of our dignity as thinking beings. Its importance attests to the role that thought plays in our lives, in our personalities, in our identities, and in our relationships. It is a peaceful activity that connects us with others through a shared commitment to the free discussion of ideas.

In teaching we transcend space, time, and difference. What matters to us as teachers is the quality of ideas, not their country of origin. We are partisans, not of particular political causes, but of the very activity of thinking. This activity is inclusive of all who can contribute to it.

A boycott excludes participants for reasons that have nothing to do with the value of their contributions. Of course, it injures those who are excluded. But it inflicts even greater injury on those who exclude, because it shows that they are not to be taken seriously as university teachers. But the greatest injury is suffered by the university community at large, because it undermines international confidence in academic integrity. This sense of integrity is the community's lifeblood.

Israeli academics are as diverse and as independent of government as any in the world. The contributions that Israeli universities have made to international academic life are astonishing, especially given the country's size and the embattled conditions of its existence. The four Nobel prizes won in the last five years by Israeli-trained academics are ample evidence. 

The proposal by the British university teachers of a boycott against Israeli university teachers is a betrayal of the ideals of teaching. The boycott elevates division over harmony, exclusion over co-operation, ideology over ideas, and discrimination over dialogue.

I hope that faculty associations in Canada and elsewhere register their outrage to our British colleagues. The boycott proposal is a disgrace to British university teachers and an embarrassment to university teachers everywhere. Our common vocation as university teachers requires us to repudiate this perversion of the activity to which we have devoted our lives.