UCT’s Max Price in a catch-22 situation over boycott

NICOLA MILTZ

The internationally highly-rated university, which has for decades consistently attracted Jewish students, is facing the possibility of a full-scale academic boycott of Israel. During the past several days there has been an active campaign on campus to sever all ties with the Jewish state.

Posters have appeared on campus advertising a “festival of talks”, hosted by Israel Academic Boycott, which is a programme of UCT’s Palestinian Solidarity Forum (PSF).

This pressing issue is shortly to be pronounced upon by UCT’s Academic Freedom Committee (AFC) – an organisation which aims to protect and promote free speech on campus – of which Dr Price is a member.

A delegation of UCT’s South African Union of Jewish Students (SAUJS), made a presentation to the AFC last week calling on the university to scrap any plans to entertain a boycott. They called instead for the university to “build bridges towards engagement, not boycott”.

SAUJS Cape chairperson, Jordan Seligmann said: “If UCT endorsed the academic boycott, it would potentially result in serious harm to the university’s reputation in the international academic community.”

He and colleagues, Jesse Soicher, Tamir Shklaz and Yakov Schleider, cited a number of reasons against the support of a boycott.

“Refusing to work with Israeli institutions would be to pass by great potential to solve problems facing South Africa currently. One such example is the drought happening in the Western Cape.

“Israel is a leader in water management and desalination technology, and it would greatly benefit South Africa if our universities collaborate with their Israeli counterparts on water research,” they told the AFC.

In a written submission to the AFC, SAUJS explained that a boycott would “punish the most progressive voices in Israeli society, block dialogue and exchanges between Israelis, Palestinians and others which would make peace less likely.

“Boycotts trample the academic freedom that universities stand for and deprive students of their right to international viewpoints. Many South African universities engage with Israeli institutions. Even Nelson Mandela has an honorary doctorate from an Israeli university,” continued SAUJS.

In a haunting case of déjà vu, Dr Price faced this exact predicament in 2014 when calls for an academic boycott were first made in response to the Gaza conflict.

At the time, he announced: “While there are many in our community who may support BDS and other boycotts, UCT (through its Academic Freedom Committee) takes the view that academic boycotts are in a category of their own and should almost never be supported by universities.

“The day we ban people from speaking on our campus because we do not agree with their politics, is the day we sacrifice our commitment to academic freedom and the ability to protect different, unpopular, and dissident views…

“While UCT as an institution is unable to support the call to take a stand on the specific issues condemning Israel, we uphold the rights of individual academics and students to do so and will facilitate the promotion of all views and serious debate,” according to his statement in 2014.

Addressing a capacity crowd at Limmud Johannesburg on August 6, Price emphatically stated he was against academic boycotts. He said he could understand trade and cultural boycotts, but academic boycotts were counterproductive and highly damaging in terms of future advancement in all areas of life and thought.

Chairman of the Cape SABJD, Rael Kaimowitz, said this week: “This matter has been raised for discussion at the UCT Academic Freedom Committee (AFC). If the AFC  is in favour, it can only make recommendations for consideration by the UCT Council.

“We are hopeful that the AFC will see the absurdity of the proposal and stop it in its tracks. This is not only an issue for the university or for the Jewish community, who will be shocked at any boycott, but something which the academic community around the world will take exception to.

“Academic freedom is a pillar of any self-respecting university and any initiative to promote or enforce a boycott, is discriminatory and inconsistent with universal academic standards as well as undermining the right to freedom of expression, as laid out in Section 16 of the South African Constitution.”

It is understood that several members of the Academic Freedom Committee (AFC) are supporters of BDS and UCT-PSF’s call for a boycott.

 A prominent American law professor said that UCT would be placing its partnerships with its US counterparts in jeopardy if it succumbs to pressure from BDS activists to adopt the boycott.

Professor David Bernstein of the Scalia Law School at George Mason University, told the Algemeiner that if passed, UCT would be obliged to cut all ties with Israeli faculty and academic institutions – a move which would “trigger outrage” among US academics and their colleagues in other countries.

“They are trying to isolate Israel, but they may find that UCT is internationally isolated instead,” he said.

“There would be a substantial number of professors like myself who would have nothing to do with UCT should they adopt an academic boycott of Israel,” he is reported to have said.

It is understood that UCT currently has partnership agreements with several American universities that facilitate student and faculty exchange programmes and other joint projects, and that some of these same universities have passed anti-BDS legislation. 

SAUJS further stated that the South African government has signed agreements concerning developmental engagement with Israel in fields such as health, tourism, energy, engineering, water, and agriculture, to create a better life for poor and historically disadvantaged South Africans.  The African National Congress supports engagement with Israel, it said, particularly on issues of peace building.

In its submission, SAUJS said: “Anti-Israel boycott campaigns create division, hostility and tension on university campuses. BDS events over the past few years have shown that anti-Israel boycott initiatives have consistently generated hostility between fellow students, including numerous incidents of anti-Semitic abuse.

“SA universities should support an ‘invest in peace’ agenda to help use its expertise to bring Arabs and Israelis together in dialogue. A boycott will further inflame tensions on campus,” it continued. 

Rowan Polovin, chairman of the SA Zionist Federation, Cape Council, said the “overwhelming majority” of universities around the world have rejected calls for academic boycotts of Israel on the basis of them being “discriminatory, bigoted and counter to the ideals of academic freedom, the pursuit of knowledge and the freedom of ideas”.

He said: “One hopes that sanity prevails at UCT, which falls under South Africa’s world-class Constitution, its outstanding anti-discrimination laws and the excellent Higher Education Act, which specifically promotes academic freedom and the advancement, not derailment, of academic values.”

He added: “It was deeply worrying that the AFC, a body currently tasked with making a recommendation to the university on whether or not to impose this boycott, contains individuals who have made anti-Zionist and in some cases blatantly anti-Semitic comments in the past, yet will not recuse themselves from the decision.”

Dr Price has his work cut out for him in the coming days, his decision being paramount to the debate, places him squarely in the firing line.