Thursday, January 29, 2009

For first time, U.S. professors call for academic and cultural boycott of Israel

Haaretz reports:
In the wake of Operation Cast Lead, a group of American university professors has for the first time launched a national campaign calling for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel.

While Israeli academics have grown used to such news from Great Britain, where anti-Israel groups several times attempted to establish academic boycotts, the formation of the United States movement marks the first time that a national academic boycott movement has come out of America. Israeli professors are not sure yet how big of an impact the one-week-old movement will have, but started discussing the significance of and possible counteractions against the campaign.
You couldn't confuse the American academic establishment's feelings about Che and Cuba with Israel.