Martin Luther wanted to make sure that his strong opinions were heard and understood by the Catholic Church he held responsible for policies he deplored, so he nailed his “Ninety-Five Theses” onto the front door of the Wittenberg Church. In another age, when 55 Patriots convened to announce that their patience with the Crown was at an end and that they were declaring their independence from the mother country, they composed a document of grievance and sent it directly to the King of England. This they did at great personal risk, and eventually consequence, to themselves and their families.
And today, when a group of academics are excluded from a community of scholars on the basis of their national identity, it is indeed encouraging to see more than 300 American college and university presidents, under the leadership of Columbia University’s president, Lee Bollinger, stand up and say so in a full-page advertisement in the New York Times, which ran on Aug. 8. The ad was sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and the list of signatories continues to grow after the fact.
Britain’s University and College Union (UCU) is attempting to isolate Israel and boycott her institutions and academics by excluding them from any relations with the British educational establishment. There has been a response to the promotion of this misguided policy and a number of Connecticut’s institutions of higher learning signed onto a statement issued by President Bollinger which said, in part:
“I find this idea (the boycott) utterly antithetical to the fundamental values of the academyÖAt Columbia, I am proud to say that we embrace Israeli scholars and universities that the UCU is now all too eager to isolateÖTherefore, if the British UCU is intent on pursuing its deeply misguided policy, then it should add Columbia to its boycott listÖboycott us, for we gladly stand together with our many colleagues in British, American and Israeli Universities against such intellectually shoddy and politically biased attempts to hijack the central mission of higher education.”
Strong words pointedly delivered.
There is one problem with the list. (The local signatories are listed in our story on page 6.) A major one. The largest and most prestigious university in Connecticut is missing from it. Yale University and its president, Richard Levin, are not there.
A call to President Levin’s office directed us to the university’s web site where a terse statement explained that President Levin, though “agreeable” with the Bollinger position, was not comfortable signing group statements. Fair enough. But we also note that his 50 or so words about the boycott were merely posted on his web site and not pinned to any door or sent directly to a responsible party. They were just posted there on the site on Aug. 10, two days after the ad appeared in the paper. It’s possible that the longest serving president of an Ivy institution thinks that the UCU checks his web site regularly and would know about his statement and Yale’s position. We don’t know about that, but feel sure the method of distribution sends its own message and diminishes the urgency of the words and the conviction of the message.
Harvard University was also missing from the Bollinger letter in the Times, and the president of that institution also states that she too hesitates signing statements not her own. But Harvard’s president, Drew Faust, expressed herself on the issue admirably and in a completely different way than did President Levin. There was no meekness or hesitation and the strength of her words were reinforced by the timeliness of her action and directness of her approach:
“On my second day as President, July 2, I wrote directly to Sally Hunt, the First General Secretary (president) of the UCU, stating my strong opposition to this measure. I expressed my conviction that such a move subverts the academic values and freedoms necessary to the free flow of ideas that are the lifeblood of universities and, ultimately, that of the societies and world we serve. To be clear, my own view is that academics should be promoting, not undermining, the fullest possible collaboration with Israeli universities as well as other universities in the Middle East and elsewhere.”
This is not the first time that Levin has backed away from a controversy that goes to the heart of the issues of freedom in the academy. We politely omitted that fact in a January 2003 editorial when unlike Harvard’s then President Lawrence Summers, Levin was nowhere to be found during the move to make Yale’s endowment divest itself of investments with any connection to Israel.
As we noted then, Yale’s faculty and students rallied magnificently to defeat that misguided directive, but in the struggle to do that, Levin wasn’t visible. In fact, the leadership in that fight was left to two deans who stepped forward: Dean Jeffry Garten, of the School of Management and Dean Anthony Kronman, dean of Yale’s Law School. They, not Levin said, “We support vigorous debate at Yale on important issues of the day. But the ëdivest from Israel campaign’ is a travesty of reasoned, balanced and accurate debate about what is surely one of the most serious issues of our time, peace in the Middle East.” Kronman and Garten successfully moved the campus to support the counter petition against divestment, and they did so in large numbers.
We don’t know if Levin posted anything on his website then, but we think the idea of abdicating leadership on matters of serious academic concern is misguided. Merely posting positions on a website is in this case, as it was on divestment, tantamount to abdication.
There were many schools that did not sign onto the ad. We don’t know if they were asked to or not or if they relied on other methods to express their opinions, but Yale is not just another school. Along with Harvard, and a few others, it has a leadership role in these kinds of issues that transcend the personal desire of its president to abstain or the institution’s reflex to keep a low profile. Levin has to know this and should be held responsible for what is a muted non-response on an issue that is vital not just to academia, but to society as a whole.
–nrg

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