BDS campaign questions academics' courage

heads down and avoid controversy.

From around the world, academics do speak out. A graduate from Hebrew University wrote, 'I support those members of the Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies at Sydney University who decide to refrain from institutional cooperation with Hebrew University. Unfortunately, that university, my alma mater, has been complicit in numerous violations of human rights, including Israel's criminal and illegal land grab policies in the occupied territories.'

The Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Sydney University, Professor Duncan Ivison, did write to The Australian, that academic freedom applies as much to issues 'about which there is deep disagreement as it does when there is broadu consensus.' He defended Jake Lynch's right to debate such issues 'in a rigorous and searching way.'

All university academics and executives could depart from cosy establishment perspectives. Instead of Sydney University management rushing to say they did not agree with Lynch's response to Avnon, they could have commented on that small Centre's David against Goliath record of standing up for the underdog on so many human rights issues, in West Papua, Sri Lanka, in Palestine and Zimbabwe. That would have been an encouraging departure from the easy mainstream and would have revived ideals about the nature of a university.

If academics and managers could re discover a touch of courage on the sort of human rights issues raised by the Lynch / Avnon affair, then perhaps journalists from The Australian will, inadvertently, have taught us all a valuable lesson.