The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) condemned a decision by the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in South Africa to sever its ties with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), calling it "misguided and shortsighted."
It said this academic boycott "would ill-serve South Africans, Palestinians and Israelis, and do nothing to promote reconciliation and understanding."
For its part, the South-African university denied that the decision to stop ties with its Israeli counterpart amounted to academic boycott of Israel.
BGU and UJ enjoyed a formal partnership, and experts from both institutions were working on projects related to water purification and algae management – efforts which were of tremendous importance to clean water-starved South Africa.
With this decision, the formal memorandum of understanding will be severed as of April 1.
“In demonizing and rejecting BGU solely because it is an Israeli academic institution, this highly political decision does nothing to promote Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation and understanding. Moreover, it will deprive all South Africans of the new technologies being developed by BGU scientists to purify water,” said ADL national director Abraham H. Foxman.
Over the past year, a group of anti-Israel activists in South Africa – including activists Desmond Tutu and Adam Habib – launched a campaign calling on UJ to sever its formal relationship with BGU as a means to promote the academic boycott of Israeli institutions.
In October, ADL called on the University of Johannesburg’s University Council to "make a stand for academic freedom and fairness and reject these efforts to politicize its relationship with BGU."
In a reaction, Johannbesburg University Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Prof. Ihron Rensburg, declared: "I need to make this quite clear. UJ is not part of an academic boycott of Israel. UJ holds the view that given the current situation in the Middle East the formal institutional agreement between UJ and BGU is an insurmountable obstacle to either institution facilitating a wider dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian academics."
He said this position was discussed with the BGU President Rivka Carmi during his visit to the university in Israel in January.
"It has never been UJ’s intention to sever all ties with BGU, although it may have been the intention of some UJ staff members. Rather, the UJ Senate voted to bring an end to the formal institutional agreement between the two universities which at this particular time, in the Senate’s view, creates an obstacle to cooperation between academics in Israel and Palestine."
"This resolution does not prevent individual academics from continuing and engaging in research and other partnerships with their peers from BGU and other institutions around the world, as is currently the practice in many cases," Rensburg said.