Higher Ed Law Prof Blog

Academics Divided Over Posture Toward Israel

This week's Chronicle of Higher Education features a piece on British academe's attitude toward Israel and the potenial for a boycott of Israeli universties, and the American academy's response:

Trans-Atlantic Rift

British academics' threat to boycott Israel perplexes American colleagues

By AISHA LABI

Last May delegates to the inaugural annual conference of the University and College Union, which represents 120,000 British academics, stoked international controversy by voting to consider a boycott of Israeli institutions and academics. The move was the latest attempt by British faculty unions in recent years to penalize Israeli universities. And, like previous efforts, it has angered and puzzled many academics in the United States.

Americans and Britons have long enjoyed a "special relationship," as it is called, in the professorial as well as the political arena. But no issue has created as gaping a trans-Atlantic gulf between academics as the Israeli-Palestinian question.
[For the full article go to the Chronicle of Higher Education website.]

Even in the United States, academics are nowhere near being of one mind on the Israel/Palestine question. When one of the authors of this Blog accepted an Academic Fellowship on Terrorism from
the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, he --- like some of the other 43 2007-08 fellows --- found some colleagues at his institution questioning his acceptance of the honor from an organization deemed to be a neo-con think tank.

The action by the Brits brings to the front several significant, inter-related but also independently important issues:
1. Israel's right to defend itself as a tiny democracy surrounded by far-more-numerous neighbors who deny its right to exist.
2. The limits on that right in terms of the human rights of Palestinians. The broader question is one which reverberates down the decades from the Cold War era: "How nasty can a democracy get in meeting the threats to its existence, before its behavior undermines and calls into question its claim of legitimately defending its democratic values?"
3. Does a boycott of another nation's universities ever comport with principles of academic freedom?

The relationship of questions (2) and (3) above is an interesting issue in its own right.

Is Time Running Out for Hiwassee College?

Tennessee's Hiwassee College has been battling the effort to yank its accreditation for years. In early June the federal district court ruled that an injunction, blocking the accrediting agency's effort to strip the small college of its accreditation, be lifted. However, in virtually his next breath, the district judge stayed his own order, pending Hiwassee's appeal to the circuit court. Unless the college prevails, this could be its last litigation gasp. Herewith, Hiz Honor's order:

HIWASSEE COLLEGE, INC., Plaintiff,
v.
The SOUTHERN ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS, INC., Defendant.
Civil Action No. 1:05-CV-0951-JOF.
June 8, 2007.

Kent M. Weeks, Weeks, Anderson & Baker, Nashville, TN, Peter M. Degnan, Alston & Bird, Atlanta, GA, for Plaintiff.
Jason Richard Edgecombe, Letitia A. McDonald, King & Spalding, Atlanta, GA, Patrick W. McKee, Sammie Mark Mitchell, Patrick W. McKee & Associates, Newnan, GA, for Defendant.

FORRESTER, District Judge.

ORDER
*1 This matter is before the court on Plaintiff's emergency motion to stay [148-1].

On June 1, 2007, the court entered an order granting SACS' motion for entry of judgment. The court also directed that the temporary restraining order, that had been in place since Hiwassee's initiation of the lawsuit and which required SACS to reinstate Hiwassee's accreditation, be lifted in fifteen days from the date of the order.

Hiwassee then filed the instant emergency motion to stay the court's June 1, 2007 order during the pendency of Hiwassee's appeal. Hiwassee also requests that the necessity for bond be waived. Counsel for SACS has informed the court and opposing counsel that SACS does not oppose Hiwassee's motion.

Therefore, the court GRANTS Plaintiff's emergency motion to stay [148-1]. Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 62, the court STAYS its June 1, 2007 order pending Hiwassee's appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Pursuant to Hiwassee's request, the court also waives any requirement of bond.

N.D.Ga.,2007.
Hiwassee College, Inc. v. Southern Ass'n of Colleges and Schools, Inc.
--- F.Supp.2d ----, 2007 WL 1745621 (N.D.Ga.)

END OF DOCUMENT