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Columbia Professor Karen Froud Only Boycotts The Wrong Types of Israelis
(Jews)

David Lange | Mar 8, 2022

Gary Leisman, Full Professor & Research Fellow at ‎the University of
Haifa, writes the following:

It is not just tyrannical Russia, “wokism” and “cancel culture” that is
creating the decline and fall of western civilization. It is also the
tyranny of loss of freedom to think and conclusions drawn on the basis
of media soundbites, political agendas, and a general lack of
intellectual integrity. I share with you an email sent by a faculty
person at Teacher’s College of Columbia University to numerous
colleagues of mine who are potential contributors to a project in
Neuroeducation. I also include my response to her. I would suggest that
each of my friends understand the gravity of this event. As you know, I
am Professor & Research Fellow at the University of Haifa and Professor
of Restorative Neurology at Universidad de Ciencias Médicas in Cuba.

GL:

Hi, I am the guest editor of a special issue of the Journal Brain
Sciences and we are producing a special issue of the journal entitled,
“The Brain Goes to School, details for which can be found at the
following link:

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https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mdpi.com%2Fjournal%2Fbrainsci%2Fspecial_issues%2Fbrain_school%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0ylNOMfs6vShv9a9uyrx6hSWu-whnNaqdz-hjnr9k0bF2OskTFTOx7Z3Y&h=AT0cOQaW7-diDUbTCfEYUYTmWD88fKZdPVD_Q6btUy8ubCc7n0ApsA8c-cqVE9biKQv20mTSgDARtnnUx26z5s1t2jxw07sq9s-DmeNnHcb1khbZgkFlrga4Mffw9VA_1g&__tn__=-UK-R&c[0]=AT1Fm5uaTNHdQ9fDldcfyqlfSSiQ0BealH8faj0Nnc-ZTHNbqG310Yzj_QDnP_NGwoD7Z1Obdp7O-j_tcHXCmAvx2vK8MPHVLk1yLHVg1quaCTX15PuCeqP5sB3dn9YhnNrzPTpqnNU0Q_-qhCmR
We are recruiting both reviews and results of experimental studies that
relate to human learning, its difficulties, remediation strategies,
models, cognitive science, cognitive neuropsychology all essentially
attempting to translate 150 years of cognitive neuroscience into
classroom applications…….

Karen Froud, PhD (Columbia University Teacher’s College):

“Dear colleagues – I urge you to consider this request in light of the
Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions Movement for freedom and justice in
Palestine. Like many / most academic institutions in Israel, Haifa
University is an apartheid institution.
https://bdsmovement.net/tags/haifa-university

I recognize that many of you work within this institution and hope you
are also doing your part for academic freedom.

Warm wishes for a peaceful and just world – which after all is where
educational neuroscience as a field points us.

Karen Froud, Ph.D.

Program Director, Neuroscience & Education

Columbia University Teachers College”

Gary’s response to this Karen Froud is worth reproducing:

1. Firstly, it is quite audacious of you to claim that you support
academic freedom by requesting others to shut down academic freedom.
Before I begin, may I call your attention to the UN Declaration of Human
Rights (1949) Article 19, which you obviously have not read, that
states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression:
this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers.” (So much for your understanding of Human
Rights and Academic Freedom).

2. What you want is not a boycott but rather political pressure on
second parties to pressure third parties to affect policy-change by that
third party (i.e. the government the State of Israel). That is not even
a secondary boycott but rather just simply bullying. So much for
academic discourse on your part on an issue that has nothing to do with
the project in Neuroeducation. What makes your opinions valid and those
of others not? Some website? Do you base your actions on an order on a
website? Your actions are inconsistent with the notion of Academic
Freedom, but rather with an opinionated individual raming his/her
political agenda down the throats of academics on a mailing list. This
behavior does not seem to me to be supportive of Academic Freedom, but
rather more consistent with the behavior of German schools and
Universities of 1930’s. Would you like to ban books too – I think
certain school districts in the United States already have (e.g. Maus).
This is surely not how we proceed in the world of science and ideas. Now
to the facts.

3. Israel is not an “Apartheid” state as you claim. Well over 40 percent
of the students at the University of Haifa are of Arab descent. The Arab
population of Israel is 21 percent. The enrollment of Arab minorities in
higher education is approximately 17 percent – pretty close to the
proportion in the population. Had you had the intellectual integrity to
fact-check, you might have found that out yourself from OECD data. The
same data shows that the number of students who work toward
undergraduate and master’s degrees is rising. Does that sound like
Apartheid to you? You should probably read a about what happened to
non-“white” South Africans under Apartheid before you employ that term.

4. The recently appointed justice to the Supreme Court, Tel Aviv
District Court Judge Khaled Kabub, is a Muslim. Bedouins, Israel’s
indigenous Arab population, serve in the Army and many have given their
lives in that regard. Israel’s population is a tapestry of Arab Muslims,
Maronites, Coptics, Arameans, Assyrians, Druse, Caucasians (not the
one’s on your university’s diversity forms), Circassians, Samaritans,
Vietnamese, not to mention refugees from Eritrea, South Sudan, as well
as refugees (non-Jewish) from Bosnia and Kosovo, besides the Jewish
population, 60 percent of whom derive from Arab lands and Egypt as well
as from non-Arab Muslim countries. Did you not know that?

4. The present government consists of a coalition that includes Dr.
Mansour Abbas, leader of the Ra’am party and who de facto serves as a
“kingmaker” and could easily bring the government down in a
no-confidence vote.

5. Rana Raslan is an Israeli Muslim Arab woman who in 2021 became Miss
Israel – that, Karen, does not happen in an Apartheid state.

6. Arab Israeli’s Hossam Haick has successfully developed technologies
for sniffing out disease; Kossay Omary and Rabeeh Khoury developed
miniature computers; Jamil R. Mazzawi founded Optima Design Automation,
a startup developing software for self-driving cars and Mahmoud Huleihel
made a breakthrough in the field of male infertility. Oh I could wax on,
but investigate yourself.

7. Israel is a multi-ethnic society with its citizens sharing equal
rights and hopefully equal opportunity.

8. Sixty percent of the Jewish population were heave-hoed from Arab
lands. What do you have to say about that?9. In 1948 the UN partitioned
the area into a Palestinian and Jewish State, the West Bank was occupied
by Jordan. I guess you had no problem with that. A year prior, 25 August
1947, the UN did the same when it created West and East Pakistan (later
Bangaladesh), Muslim countries, and separated them from India. The
largest population move in human history occurred as result. The
partition displaced between 10 and 20 million people along religious
lines, creating overwhelming refugee crises in the newly constituted
dominions. The result of that is still ongoing and violent and it is the
Punjab. Got nothing to say?

9. Maybe I should boycott your institution for suppressing the voices
and academic freedom of people who oppose your views. Maybe I should
boycott US universities because your government has lied since its
inception about the ideals of equality to wit, 3/5 human being, Alien
and Sedition Act, Jew quotas in universities (including yours),
lynchings of ethnic undesirables oh, and slavery. Maybe the USA should
start thinking about giving back the Kingdom of Hawaii. Maybe you should
boycott the University of Hawaii and all other American universities to
pressure the US government to give it back.

10. More importantly right now, you have the audacity to attempt to shut
down the free exchange of scientific ideas assuming that I am a
full-time member of the faculty of the University of Haifa in Israel.
Had you even bothered to look at my affiliation you might have noted
that I hold a dual appointment at the University of the Medical Science
of Havana in Cuba (appointment letter attached). Please read it and you
will note that although Cuba and Israel do not have diplomatic
relations, I was appointed by the Cuban Ministry of Health and by the
Rectorate of Universidad de Ciencias Médicas de la Habana, of the
Communist Republic of Cuba AS AN ISRAELI ACADEMIC (see link). Seems that
the Cubans who understand embargo and have tough life largely owing to
political forces in the USA, of which you seem to have no interest,
especially understand the importance of Academic Freedom and the notion
of the need to, “receive and impart information and ideas through any
media and regardless of frontiers.”

11. With the world in the present state that it is in and possibly
heading to WW III and nuclear threats coming from Russia, please relate
to the concept of proportional thinking.