[VTJP] Haifa University threatens to fire Ilan Pappe - Please Sign the Petition

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 19:41:51 -0800

From Ilan Pappe:
 
Dear Friends,
 
I have received today an invitation to stand for a trial in my university, the university of Haifa. The prosecution, represented by Haifa's Dean of Humanities demands my expulsion from the university due to the positions I have taken on the Katz affair. It calls upon the court "to judge Dr.Pappe on the offences he has committed and to use to the full the court's legal authority to expel him from the university." These offences are, in a nutshell, my past critique of the university's conduct in the Katz affair, the MA student who discovered the Tantura massacre in 1948 and was disqualified for that. The reason the university waited so long is that now the time is ripe in Israel for any act of silencing academic freedom.
 
My intent to teach a course on the Nakbah next year and my support for boycott on Israel has led the university to the conclusion that I can only be stopped by expulsion.
 
Judging by past procedures this is not a request, but already a verdict, given the position of the person in question in the university and the way things had been done in the past. The ostensible procedure of a 'fair trial' does
not exist and hence I do not even intend to participate in a McCarthyist charade.
 
I do not appeal to you for my own sake. I ask you at this stage before a final decision has been taken to voice your opinion in whatever form you can and to whatever stage you have access to, not in order to prevent my expulsion
(in many ways in the present atmosphere in Israel it will come now, and if not now later on, as the Israeli academia has decided almost unanimously to support the government and to help silence any criticism).
 
I ask those who are willing to do so, to take this case as part of your overall appreciation of, and attitude to, the preset situation in Israel. This should shed light also on the debate whether or not to boycott Israeli academia.
 
This is not, I stress, and an appeal for personal help - my situation is far better than that of my colleagues in the occupied territories living under the daily harassment and brutal abuses of the Israeli army. It is an opening gambit and many of colleagues, especially my Palestinian Israeli colleagues, can be next. A testimony to the tragic circumstances of my own university is that I know there is no use in distributing this letter on its internal web-site, as all of my colleagues in the past when it came to the crucial moment - for understandable reasons - felt they could do very little to help me, without risking their own position in the university.
I know many of you have access to world media and can help to expose the already dismal picture and false pretense of Israel being the 'only democracy in the Middle East.'
Yours Ilan Pappe
 
Supporting Acadmic Freedom
Sign the Petition  http://www.petitiononline.com/pappe/petition.html

To:  Haifa University, Israel

We the undersigned, members of both the Israeli and international academic communities, wish to express our dismay at Haifa University's decision to subject Senior Lecturer Dr Ilan Pappe to a trial.

We have strong reservations about the attempt being made by the University Prosecutor and the Dean of Humanities Professor Yossi Ben Artzi to revoke Dr Pappe's tenure and fire him because he made harsh statements sent by e-mail about individual professors and has allegedly defamed the institution as well as asked for intervention of some professional associations.

Dr. Pappe, who holds a rank roughly equivalent to a tenured Associate Professor, criticized the institution and its procedures following the nullification of a highly controversial Master's thesis that documented the fates of 5 Arab villages in northern Israel during the 1948 war. The thesis, which was originally approved with an excellent grade, was later nullified following pressure from veterans groups. These groups threatened a libel suit because the thesis portrayed them as possibly being responsible for a massacre. Dr Pappe unequivocally asserted in his e-mail postings that the thesis was nullified not on professional or scholarly grounds, but for personal and political reasons.

While we do not take a position on either the nullification of the thesis or on Dr Pappe's assertions, we call on the University of Haifa to rescind its prosecution of Dr Ilan Pappe for the following reasons:

* First and foremost, the revocation of tenure is usually conditioned upon a legally proven criminal act or deviance from academic standards. If there was an ethical violation, it lacked the severity to justify use of academia's ultimate weapon, the revocation of tenure.

* The University of Haifa must avoid the appearance of using its institutional powers to exact revenge on an individual faculty member engaging in legitimate criticism of authority. This is the very core of academic freedom. Without such freedom, the continued existence of the university itself is in jeopardy.

* Dr. Pappe is considered a political dissident. Revoking his tenure cannot be viewed but as political persecution -- an act which completely contradicts the idea of university.

* Establishing a precedent for firing a faculty member on such weak and unusual grounds constitutes a grave danger both to higher education and the entire Israeli society. Especially in these days, when freedom in Israel is under attack, the university should be a stronghold of freedom.

Therefore, out of respect and concern for academic freedom in Israel and the image of the University of Haifa, we strongly urge that Haifa University authorities reconsider this decision.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned


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