Student council calls for Technion boycott
HAIFA’S Technion – Israel Institute of Technology has just been named the sixth-best university in the world for entrepreneurship and innovation, but that hasn’t stop the University of Sydney’s Student Representative Council (SRC) from trying to boycott it.
HAIFA’S Technion – Israel Institute of Technology has just been named the sixth-best university in the world for entrepreneurship and innovation, but that hasn’t stopped the University of Sydney’s Student Representative Council (SRC) from trying to boycott it.
The SRC last week passed a motion endorsing the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel and supporting an end to all ties with the Technion.
In a statement, the SRC said it was “endorsing Associate Professor Jake Lynch’s academic boycott of Israel”.
A prominent BDS supporter, Lynch came under fire last year for refusing to assist an Israeli professor, who works to build bridges between Israelis and Palestinians, in his application for a fellowship on the basis that he was Israeli.
The SRC also accused the Technion of being “uniquely and directly implicated in war crimes”.
The Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) has called for the SRC to rescind the “divisive and counterproductive” motion, with national chairperson Andrew Goldberg labelling it “an attempt to force the extremist, anti-Israel BDS policy onto the entire student body without a mandate and without any real debate among students on campus”.
“The SRC has let down the students it should be representing by indulging in empty posturing on foreign policy issues which they do not understand and have grossly oversimplified,” he said.
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff labelled the motion “an exercise in meaningless symbolism and immature invective”.
“Ironically, the Technion university happens to have a significant percentage of Arab faculty and students, which makes boycotting it illogical.
“If it’s appropriate for Al Quds University in the West Bank to work with the Technion, then it’s certainly appropriate for all other universities to work with it.”
A spokesperson for the university’s vice-chancellor said the university did not support the SRC motion. “The University of Sydney does not consider the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions policy appropriate and it is not University of Sydney policy.”
Technion Society of Australia president Ken Lander said the motion “demonstrates that the SRC is out of touch with the realities of the world”.
UPDATE: Sign AUJS’s petition for the SRC to rescind the boycott motion: http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/the-university-of-sydney-src-rescind-the-motion-supporting-the-boycott-of-an-israeli-university
GARETH NARUNSKY
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff calls the motion “an exercise in meaningless symbolism and immature invective”.
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