Re: A Look At New Collaborations Between Dartmouth and Israeli Institutions
In response to several opinion pieces written by students, which have appeared in The Dartmouth recently and have harshly criticized the Kalaniyot program at Dartmouth, I would like to state the following. The purpose of the program is simply to bring outstanding Israeli scholars to campus to interact with faculty and students, share their research and showcase the best of the current Israeli scholarship. By the way, there are already several Israeli scholars teaching at Dartmouth with no opposition to that whatsoever from any faculty or students. If the students who are so critical of the Kalaniyot program believe that all Israeli scholars invited to Dartmouth must be boycotted, they should be honest and just say so. In that case, I wonder if they would also oppose bringing Chinese, Russian or Iranian scholars to campus, given the severe oppression of citizens’ rights in these countries. And what about Dartmouth’s study abroad in China or Kuwait? At the very least, students should acknowledge the inconsistency of condemning one set of scholars on political grounds while remaining comfortable with Dartmouth’s other academic partnerships in countries with serious human-rights abuses.
Sergei Kan is a Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth. Letters to the editor reflect the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
