Academics should not have to provide details of Israeli contacts

After a meeting of Trinity College Dublin’s Heads of Schools on December 9, a request was sent to college departments seeking “your help on the best way to collect data on existing formal and informal arrangements that your school and colleges may have with universities, research institutions, NGOs and government bodies in Israel and Palestine.

These relationships may include research, publication, consultancy, external examiners and so on”.

This was followed on January 4, by a request that academics provide their department heads with information on contact with fellow academics in Israel and Palestine.

This imposition on individual scholars to, as I see it, ‘inform’ on colleagues is the antithesis of academic free speech, a privilege universities around the globe prize beyond any other.

Therefore, this action by TCD should be resisted as an affront to academic integrity by scholars who see it for the capitulation to an insidious BDS that it is.

This fixation on Israeli universities, academics and NGOs is outrageous.

For example, where is the condemnation and demand to boycott institutions in Saudi Arabia, which has just executed 47 clerics and activists for daring to express dissent?

Where is the condemnation and demand to boycott Iranian institutions because their leaders support the terrorists of Hezbollah?

Where is the demand to boycott Quatari institutions because their government has overseen the exploitation and deaths of hundreds of workers to build stadiums for the World Cup?

Dr Kevin McCarthy,

Kinsale

Co Cork