AUB Anti-Normalization Petition

The American University of Beirut is one of the most important educational institutions in the Middle East and a university in the heart of a city and community devastated repeatedly by Israeli military aggression. Historically, AUB has been a centre of intellectual resistance to Zionisms colonial ambitions in the region.

As members of this academic community, we reject all forms of normalization of relations with Israeli institutions. We support moreover the call of Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel including the academic and cultural boycott as one of the few non-violent strategies to bring to an end Israeli military occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territories.

We note regretfully that the name of the University has recently appeared in the volume The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories published by Zone Books (2009), under the auspices of the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem and co-edited by the AUB sociologist Sari Hanafi. We note that beginning the first of March of the year 2010, Dr. Hanafi will be traveling in Europe with Dr. Adi Ophir of Tel Aviv University to promote their edited book at several universities including the London School of Economics, the University of Cambridge and the School of Oriental and African Studies. The use of the name of the American University of Beirut lends institutional legitimacy and intellectual authority to these efforts in a manner that sets an alarming precedent. We expect that this association will be used abroad to signal that normal academic exchange between institutions in Lebanon and Israel is now an accepted practice, leaving a distinct impression that we have transcended the conflict and its root causes. It sends a message to our colleagues, our students, our public, and the world at large that there is no real issue between us and that we can enter into a normal relationship of academic collaboration.

Therefore, we the undersigned ask the American University of Beirut, its President and Board of Trustees, its Provost and Deans of the Faculties, to join with us in acknowledging that the University recognizes that normal academic exchange with Israeli academic institutions and their faculty is not an option open to AUB faculty and staff.

Recalling the 2006 Israeli bombing of schools and libraries in Lebanon, the bombing last year of the Islamic University in Gaza, and the much longer history of isolation and closures of the West Bank universities as part of the destruction of cultural and academic resources and leadership in Palestine, we call on the AUB administration to issue a statement clarifying the rules to be respected by its members with regard to collaborative work with Israeli academic institutions.