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British
Scholar Who Dismissed Israelis Fears For Job
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hope publicity draws attention to the Palestinian cause: Baker.
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LONDON,
July 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The British professor who
dismissed two Israeli scholars from her journals as part of an
academic boycott of Israel now fears dismissal from her university
post for her action, a U.K. newspaper reported Sunday, July 14.
Professor
Mona Baker, the director of the center for translation and
intercultural studies at the University of Manchester Institute of
Science and Technology (UMIST), dismissed the Israeli academics from
the boards of her two independently-owned journals after signing an
academic boycott of Israeli institutions, reported the British daily
newspaper, the Telegraph.
The
decision prompted a wave of international condemnation and Prof Baker
told The Telegraph: “I will almost certainly get the sack
from UMIST now.” Her action has been denounced both by Jack Straw,
the Foreign Secretary, and Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist
at Oxford University.
The
authorities at UMIST are believed to have privately urged Baker to
reinstate the Israelis or leave her university post.
The
university stated: “UMIST has always had a clear position on this
issue: we strongly believe that discrimination is unacceptable, that
the Israeli academics should not have been removed and that this
decision was wrong.” It said a “wide-ranging” inquiry would
determine “any further necessary action.”
Dawkins,
who has removed his support from the 700-strong petition for a boycott
of Israel, said that Baker’s actions “leave me with a nasty taste
in my mouth.”
He
urged Baker to change her mind. “As someone who has publicly changed
his mind and not suffered any odium, my advice to her would be to
admit she has made a mistake.”
Other
signatories of the petition also expressed their regret at her action
and claimed that she had “discredited” the campaign, the paper
said.
Colin
Blakemore, a professor of physiology at Oxford University, said that
her decision had “reduced this symbolic action to one of
recrimination against individuals.”
Patrick
Bateson, the provost of King’s College, Cambridge, said: “[Prof
Baker] decided to take a unilateral action, not thinking very clearly
about what the original boycott was about. Her understanding of its
principles is muddled.”
Straw
said: “I think it is disgraceful. Would [the journal] have done this
to someone who was Arab or black? They should be reinstated
immediately.”
Baker’s
husband, Ken, said last night that his wife was seeking legal advice.
“This is none of UMIST’s business. They are getting involved now
only because of pressure from outside.”
“It’s
not fair, we are just ordinary people,” he says. “We just wanted
to do something to highlight the atrocities in Palestine. Instead, my
wife will probably lose her job and the media is vilifying us.”
“I
just hope that the publicity eventually draws attention to the
cause,” Baker said.
“We
didn’t intend it to happen this way,” says Baker. “We thought we
were making a token gesture. We were joining a boycott along with
everyone else.”
He
told the paper that his wife was reading The Guardian over
breakfast one morning in April when she spotted an item about an
academic boycott of Israeli institutions.
The
petition was launched by Steven Rose, a Jewish professor at the Open
University. Baker added her signature to the list.
“But
it wasn’t just Steven Rose’s petition that sparked us off,” says
Baker. “We joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in London in March
and started to gather information about the conflict. we had been
dimly aware of the situation and although we felt sad about the fate
of the Palestinians, we hadn't actually done anything.”
The
crunch, he says, was footage they watched about the April invasion of
the Jenin refugee camp, considered a haven for suicide bombers by the
Israelis: “We saw this film in Cairo. It showed horrific pictures of
dead children.” His wife was so disturbed by the footage that she
fled to the bathroom and vomited.
Later,
Baker decided that merely adding her name to 700 others was simply not
enough: to carry the spirit of the campaign to its logical conclusion,
she felt that she should act practically.
She
later wrote an e-mail to the two academics asking them to resign.
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