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Israel To Join CERN As First Non-European Member

Posted by samzenpus on from the join-the-party dept.

First time accepted submitter WorldPiece writes "More accurately, first non-European full member. This comes with some opposition from groups pushing to boycott Israel academia in response to the Israeli government's policies. 'It is a vital part of our mission to build bridges between nations. This agreement enriches us scientifically and is an important step in that direction,' CERN's Director General Rolf Heuer, a German physicist, told the signing ceremony."

1 of 351 comments (clear)

  1. Re:politics a vital part of the mission? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "It is a vital part of our mission to build bridges between nations."

    I thought CERN was all about science. What's this about building bridges?

    International co-operation is pretty critical in science, without touching on politics at all. That's one of the great things about conferences. I went to a conference in the US earlier in the year, and met someone doing a PhD in hydrology. After chatting with them, it turned out that as part of their work they had collected a pretty comprehensive set of deep-sea water samples for an area I was interested in. I work on marine microbiology, and my university has no way of collecting deep-sea water samples. After a little discussion and a few polite emails later to her P.I., they kindly gave me pretty hefty aliquots of water from as deep as 5,600m below the sea surface. That stuff has been pretty central to the work in my PhD and like I said, I had no way of getting it on my own.

    International co-operation, collaboration and exchanges of ideas and equipment/samples is incredibly important and doesn't have to involve politics one bit.