Statement by President Richard H. Brodhead Condemning Proposed Boycott of Israeli Universities

The following statement was issued in response to a recent vote by Britain’s University and College Union

Friday, July 27, 2007

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Durham, NC -- Britain’s University and College Union voted in late May to move forward with a proposal to boycott Israeli academic institutions, as called for by Palestinian trade unions for Israel’s “40-year occupation” of Palestinian land. (See http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/worldwide/story/0,,2091769,00.html.) In response, Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead has issued the following statement condemning the proposed boycott, which the British union has not yet officially ratified:

I view the proposed academic boycott of Israeli universities by Great Britain’s University and College Union as a threat to all institutions of higher education, and I condemn it as such.

All ideas are not equal, but it is a foundational principle of American life that all ideas should have an equal opportunity to be expressed. The protection of free speech is the protection of the notion that people can teach each other and learn from each other through the free airing of differences and the mutual engagement of opposing points of view. To disbelieve that is in some fundamental way to disbelieve in education itself. Duke University has a proud tradition of upholding the free exchange of ideas, including discussions that involve the bitter, unresolved conflicts in the Middle East. The idea of forbidding partnerships and exchanges with Israeli universities and scholars contradicts the high value we place in the pursuit of knowledge on our own campus and in the importance of robust intellectual integrity more broadly. I oppose efforts to suppress the free exchange of ideas at Duke and in university communities around the world.