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Israel To Join CERN As First Non-European Member
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."
Politics have no business in science.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
BDS is one piece of weapon in an arsenal diplomatic warfare. Yes, weapons can be used to push peace, but they are not, generally, considered a "peace device".
BDS is particularly evil for several reasons. The most ironical is that it attempts to collectively punish all Israelis for what Israel is supposedly doing, thus using collective punishment to protest collective punishment. Presumably, this is okay because it's done by "the good guys"(tm).
More to the point, BDS strives to prevent the other side from voicing its opinion to argue whether the acts protested are real, or just products of propaganda and distortion. In that respect, BDS is just another propaganda employed against Israel. Weapons may, in some rare circumstances, bring peace, but propaganda seldom does.
More to the point, however, BDS strives under all that is "Academia". I can sometimes agree that economical sanctions are in order (nothing that Israel has justified, but I can see how others might disagree with that sentiment). I can understand a cultural boycott, though don't see how it ever does any good. An Academic boycott, however, is never justified.
True discourse and exchange of ideas, some of which you might not like, is the cornerstone of academia. Shutting down someone else's voice is never an academic thing to do, least of all for political reasons.
Shachar
"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.
Wow, what a condescending reply.
Israel is not a "military state" in the sense that the military controls politics. It's a pretty dynamic democracy with a highly-diverse set of viewpoints. It also has a very educated labour force and a high number of high-tech companies and startups.
Israel has long been known for innovation. Just google "Israeli Innovation".
Those who propose BDS on the spurious basis of "Israeli Apartheid [sic]" are blind to reality, either out of ignorance or malice. While Israel is not perfect and its Arab citizens do suffer discrimination, it's nowhere near the level of South African Apartheid, and those same Arab citizens have more civil rights in Israel than in any Arab country.
I wonder how many potential Palestinian scientists have gone undetected, untrained and unfunded?
Probably dozens. Lebanon keeps Palestinians in poverty in refugee camps instead of integrating them into society. There were no universities at all in the West Bank prior to 1967. Hamas spends money on weapons that could be spent on education.
Yes, indeed. Palestinian society, much like the rest of the Arab world, allows a criminal waste of human potential by diverting energy towards a conflict instead of towards building up civil society. That's why most Arab states have a low (and usually declining) human development index and shockingly inefficient economies compared to Israel.
Devoting your energy to conflict and bitterness will destroy you before it destroys your enemy.
Funny.
I suggest you take a look at, e.g, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-up_Nation. Here's one paragraph (the source is backed by reference):
"How is it that Israel -- a country of 7.1 million people, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources -- produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom?[4] The Economist notes that Israel now has more high-tech start-ups and a larger venture capital industry per capita than any other country in the world."
Or, e.g., browse the list that ranks the top-100 computer science departments in the world and observe where and how many times the Israeli flag appears in the list. (FYI, Israel has only 6 universities.)
etc. etc.
Politics IS a science. And science has politics. I wonder how many potential Palestinian scientists have gone undetected, untrained and unfunded?
As a student at the Technion, Israel's premier university, I can tell you that Arabs are very disproportionately overrepresented there. That's fine, there is good reason: the Arabs have strong motivation to work hard and push ahead. Despite the huge number of Arabs in Israeli universities, I do not recall a single political or racial event in my time at the Technion. Not one.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
It is intended to remind them, peacefully, that they have the power to change this by electing a government whose policies do not violate international laws.
But what if I disagree with you that my government is, indeed, violating international laws? If you will not hear what I have to say (because you are boycotting my academia), then how will you find out in case you are wrong?
BDS is about saying "there is no chance we can possibly be wrong, and no further discussion is necessary", which is another way of saying it is just propaganda. It is also the anti-thesis of the most fundamental core academic value.
Shachar