College heads oppose slap at Israel

Presidents of 286 American colleges in a full-page advertisement yesterday in the New York Times decried a proposed boycott of Israeli colleges backed by British academics. But the leaders of several prominent Boston-area schools did not join in the ad.

The heads of Boston University, Boston College, Amherst College, Wellesley College, and Harvard did not sign the petition, sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, even as presidents of other Boston-area schools, including MIT, Brandeis, and Tufts, did.

Headlined with the words "Boycott Israeli Universities? Boycott Ours, Too!", the petition criticized the 120,000-member University and College Union, for a proposal that would cut off relations with Israeli academic institutions because of concerns about Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

The letter accompanying the petition, written by Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger, suggested that the British union should boycott the US institutions joining the petition if the union goes forward with the ban on Israeli schools.

The letter follows a similar effort by 51 Nobel laureates, led by author Elie Wiesel, following the May vote of the British union to back the potential boycott.

Wiesel, a humanities professor at Boston University, said there was no excuse for BU or other schools to not sign the American Jewish Committee's petition.

"This is not a complicated situation; it's very simple," Wiesel said, adding that the British union's proposal showed "such a disdain for intellectual life."

A spokesman for the British union emphasized yesterday that the proposed ban had not yet been approved, and that union representatives are encouraging an exchange of views by allowing the issue to be freely discussed.

Officials from BU and other colleges said yesterday that their omission did not indicate a lack of support for the principles in the petition. Northeastern officials signed the petition shortly after seeing the ad yesterday, and Boston University and Wellesley officials have pledged to sign.

Harvard and Boston College officials said that as a matter of policy, the schools generally do not sign petitions. Amherst officials said they were not aware that the letter had been circulated and were not sure whether they would add the school's name to the roster.

BU officials pointed out that BU president Robert Brown was an early critic of the proposed British boycott and signed a similar petition sponsored by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, a nonprofit academic group.

"The fact is that President Brown already did this many weeks ago, and he would have signed this petition if he'd seen it," said Colin D. Riley, a BU spokesman.

Marc N. Sperber, a 1992 graduate of Boston University School of Law, said he would not donate money to his alma mater until Brown signed the petition.

"He should stand up and be counted," said Sperber, a high school history teacher in New York. "He needs to go on record, as the head of a major research university, in favor of academic freedom and against political overtures that interfere only with learning."

Harvard's president, along with the heads of Yale and Brown, was among three of the eight Ivy League schools' leaders who did not sign the petition.

Harvard president Drew G. Faust, who took office July 1, sent a private letter to the British union on her second day in charge, calling the boycott "deeply inimical to academic values worldwide," according to Harvard spokesman John D. Longbrake. The university has no plans to sign the petition, Longbrake said.

A Yale spokesman said yesterday that the university's president, Richard C. Levin, opposed the boycott, but the spokesman did not say why the university had decided not to sign the petition.

Alan M. Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School and a vocal critic of the boycott, said that he was happy to hear of Faust's letter of support, though he would like to see more university presidents sign on publicly.

"This involves academic freedom and academic values, and I'd like to see all universities send this message," he said.

The proposed boycott is the latest effort by British academic unions to cut off ties with Israel. Over the past several years, British unions have staged similar efforts, arguing that Israeli academics have not adequately condemned alleged human rights abuses by the Israeli government. In 2005, a British union repealed its decision to implement a boycott after facing internal and external protest.

Regional chapters of the union are set to debate the boycott this fall before voting on it, according to a posting on the union's website.

Eight presidents of US colleges, including Tufts University's Lawrence S. Bacow, organized the petition.

The group sent the petition and a June 12 statement by Bollinger to American universities.

"Scholarship knows no geographic or political boundaries," Bacow said.

"I think faculty need to be free to collaborate with different people from countries throughout the world."

Javier Hernandez can be reached at jhernandez@globe.com.