SPME Statement of Concern for Institutional Civility and the Preservation of Free Speech on University Campuses

By SPME Board of Directors, Approved February 11, 2010

CLEVELAND, Feb. 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- There has been a recent upsurge of public attacks upon, and disruptions of, Israeli diplomats and scholars, as they seek to present their views in the "marketplace of ideas" and at institutions traditionally committed to the preservation of free speech. Recent events at the University of California-Irvine, University of California-Los Angeles, Oxford University, and Cambridge University have targeted these speakers in the most racist and hostile terms, and have seriously damaged these universities' right to call themselves "institutions of higher learning".

We believe that the failure to prevent such disruptions and the feeble response to them after the fact is cause for deep concern. Speaking for academics worldwide, the Board of Directors of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (representing nearly 30,000 faculty worldwide) strongly condemns these calculated and venomous acts.

The SPME Board also urges the presidents and leadership of these universities (and all others) to strongly condemn these actions and to prosecute offenders to the full extent that their institutional policies and community legal standards will allow for. The SPME Board believes that such incitement deserves indictment.

We also urge university officials worldwide to adopt the principles outlined in The Civility Project (http://www.civilityproject.org/ ), and to make the "Civility Pledge" a requirement for all their faculty and students:

• I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior.
• I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them.
• I will stand against incivility when I see it.

Approved, SPME Board of Directors, 2.11.10

Dear Chancellor Drake,

I am writing in my capacity as president of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), an independent, faculty-driven, not-for-profit community of some 30,000 scholars.  Our mission is to inform, motivate, and encourage faculty to use their academic skills and disciplines on campus, in classrooms, and in academic publications to counter ideological distortions, including anti-Semitic and anti-Zionism, that are preventing serious discussion of Middle East peace, especially the Palestine-Israel conflict.  The peace we seek in the Middle East is consistent both with Israel's right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state within safe and secure borders, and with the rights and legitimate aspirations of her neighbors.

It is from this perspective that we have been witnessing the recent reception of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren on your campus.  Dr. Oren was himself an academic and well respected historian before he was asked recently to take on the post of Israel's ambassador to the United States.  He is a well-informed and articulate intellectual who has his own perspective on what is transpiring in the Middle East today. 

We fully understand that one might disagree with the current Israeli government or some of its policies.  At the same time, what Michael Oren has to say is worth hearing and we are distressed at the attempt to eliminate his voice from the campus discourse.   More worrying is that this tactic is threatening to go viral and seems to be happening at more and more places (UCLA is another recent example).

We urge you and UC-Irvine to take leadership in showing that this type of behavior is not to be tolerated on any university campus, let alone one of the stature of UC-Irvine. As you can well imagine, if this type of tactic becomes the norm, then our campuses will fail to be spaces of learning and will turn into partisan battlefields.  

SOURCE Scholars for Peace in the Middle East