OPINION: UCT should uphold beacon of freedom and vote against a boycott of Israel | by Ansel Brown
UCT has earned a reputation as a beacon of intellectual progress. This reputation will be set back if it indulges a politically-motivated and ideologically biased agenda to unfairly alienate the democracy of Israel, writesOn April 2, 2019, I had the privilege of giving a lecture at the University of Cape Town .
Of foremost concern, academic freedom demands that UCT not stifle the intellectual liberty of members of its community to engage in scholarship and other collaborative efforts with faculty and students at Israeli academic institutions. It is the unique and sacrosanct space of the academy where ideas and relationships should freely flow without fear of censure and retaliation. Further, there is absolutely no evidence that Israeli academic institutions are engaged in the kind of discourse, i.e.
Boycotts are not inherently flawed when they are rightly and appropriately directed. It was the boycotts against segregationist businesses in the United States that helped to bring repressive Jim Crow laws to a grinding halt. It was the boycotts of the apartheid regime in South Africa that helped to bring about the political freedom of millions of black South Africans.
Nonetheless, there has remained an unbroken Jewish presence in Israel from 2000 B.C.E. until the present. Notwithstanding this long-established history, the people of Israel have accepted nearly every proposal to partition their homeland as an olive branch to their Arab neighbours.
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