While American Studies Association Want to Boycott Israel, Israel Universities Support Palestinians
Whose side is the ASA on?
The university recently decided that Robert J. Aumann, a professor emeritus of mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who shared the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, would not receive the honor. He said in a 2010 interview that Jerusalem “must stay Jewish” and that Jews and Arabs should live in different countries.
People involved in the university’s decision to deny him the honor told Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, that his views were out of line with the university’s values, which are widely regarded as left-wing. But 160 faculty
members signed a statement calling the decision “embarrassing,” saying that it had done “enormous damage to the university’s image and public standing.”
In a document sent to university president Amos Shapira and the chairman of the university’s executive committee, Ami Ayalon, the signatories said, “this public statement is being written out of deep concern for the situation in which the university finds itself as a result of this affair and its aftermath.”The statement expressed a need to set clear criteria for the awarding of honorary doctorates and to delineate the values of the university.“We very much hope that all the parties concerned will come to grips with the issue quickly and decisively, so that the status and reputation of the University does not deteriorate further,” they wrote.