by aletho
What
would you do if the Canadian university you attended was planning to
enter into a partnership with a university in another country whose
persecution of your people meant you couldn’t speak out publicly – in
Canada – for fear of reprisals against you and your family?
What
if, further, the proposed partnership included course delivery for a
degree in public safety management inside a country conducting a nearly
50-year-long occupation in contravention of international law? An
occupation in which basic freedoms – of movement, speech, and
self-determination – were denied your people, and in which security
forces routinely imprisoned, shot, and killed civilians, including
university students and children, with
near total impunity.
Strange as it may sound, this is the reality facing Palestinian students at the University of Regina today. As part of a new MBA
program in public safety management geared toward police service
professionals, the Faculty of Business Administration is considering a
partnership that would see students take optional courses at Israel’s
Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
An
open letter to administrators from University of Regina faculty
highlights the kind of instruction on offer in the Policing and Homeland
Security Studies program in the Faculty of Law at Hebrew University:
“faculty expertise in this program includes ‘Policing terrorism,
Political violence and protest policing, Minorities and law enforcement,
Terrorism and crime, and Terror and society.’”
An
article in the student newspaper
The Carillon in late January alerted students to the proposed collaboration.
Speaking
on condition of anonymity for fear of complications when returning to
Palestine, a University of Regina alumnus and Regina resident says,
“It’s a shame that the Board [of Governors] or the administration within
the Faculty of Business kept it so low key. An educational institution
is supposed to keep open channels of communication.”
According
to the alumnus, “It says a lot about the nature of this co-operation
[with Hebrew University] or even of the nature of this Faculty of
Business. Maybe they know that this is bad publicity for them.”
Palestinians line up at an Israeli checkpoint near Bethlehem. Photo: Flickr/delayed gratification
The president and the dean
Following a 2012
trip to Israel
as part of a delegation of Canadian academics, University President
Vianne Timmons praised the work of Israeli academics in the fields of
justice and police studies. “Israel is a leader in innovation,” she told
the
Canadian Jewish News.
President Timmons has declined interview requests regarding the potential MBA arrangement with Hebrew University, directing inquiries to the Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration, Andrew Gaudes.
When
asked what Palestinian students on campus thought of the proposed
partnership, Gaudes said in an interview, “I don’t know of any
Palestinian students here on our campus.”
Asked
if Palestinian students would be able to participate in courses
delivered at Hebrew University, or if they could face unique travel
restrictions, Gaudes said he had not looked into the matter: “There’s no
point in me looking at something that’s not relevant to the program.”
But
this rings hollow for Palestinian students. The Palestinian alumnus as
well as a current Palestinian graduate student in the Faculty of
Business Administration say that as Palestinians with dual
(Palestinian-Canadian) citizenship they cannot enter Israel, nor can
their Palestinian family and friends in the West Bank enter East
Jerusalem, where Hebrew University is situated.
“They
might approve [the visas] here, but that’s not what matters,” says the
alumnus, stressing that it’s not Hebrew University but the Israeli
military that has final say on travel and entry permits.
The current MBA
student adds that millions of displaced Palestinians around the world
are denied entry to their homeland. “So how is Dean Gaudes going to get
them the visas to enter? It doesn’t make any sense,” she says.
Noting
President Timmons’ remarks following her official visit to Israel in
2012, I asked the Dean which university administrators were behind the
proposed partnership with Hebrew University. He said that the entire
process was internal to the Faculty of Business. This account is not
convincing for some.
The
alumnus, who travels home to the West Bank annually, says, “The Faculty
of Business does not make decisions for the university. [The President]
knows exactly what’s going on.” He’s also skeptical of the Dean’s
position that course content is the only consideration in such an
arrangement.
“I’m
taking courses in project management,” he says, “where they teach us
that before entering into procurement agreements, it’s best practice to
look at the firm’s history, to look at their policies, to look at their
culture. You don’t just look at what you’re going to be getting from
them, you look at everything in the background of that institution or
corporation you’re going into a contract with. That’s important. If
you’re skipping that step, you’re entering blindly.”
He points out that earlier this month, just days after my interview with the Dean, Israeli security forces
stormed the campus of al-Quds Open University in the West Bank, firing at least 70 rounds of tear gas at students.
No ethics, no problem
When I sat down with the Dean in his office, I drew his attention to a recently published Amnesty International
report
called “Trigger-happy: Israel’s use of excessive force in the West
Bank.” The report states, “Israel’s security forces have displayed a
callous disregard for human life by killing scores of Palestinian
civilians, including children, in the occupied West Bank over the past
three years with near total impunity.”
I
asked Gaudes how he reconciled this information with selecting an
Israeli institution as an appropriate place for his students to learn
public safety management and policing.
After
an initial pause, Gaudes said he hoped that students from the program
who “become mid to senior managers in the area of public safety” would
be “more mindful of the impacts [of their decisions] at the ground
level.” Referring to the Amnesty report, he said, “My hope is that if
we’re educating managers [who] make decisions that can lead towards that
possible outcome, they think twice.”
The
irony of Gaudes’ remarks about mindfulness and the implications of
decisions “at the ground level” is not lost on students. When reminded
that undergraduates in the Faculty of Business must take courses in
ethics and decision-making, Gaudes reiterated that his only
consideration at this stage is the course content Hebrew University
offers.
“It’s shocking that he would make that comment,” says the Palestinian alumnus.
“I’m
worried about the content of what’s going to be delivered,” he says.
“And not just the content. If it’s being conducted, where’s this
research going to be put to test? Where’s it going to go? In
decision-making in Canada or is it going to influence decision-making in
Israel? That’s a big thing.”
It’s
a chilling question for Palestinian students. “To me the content of
what Hebrew University wants to do makes me think of a guinea pig
experiment,” continues the University of Regina graduate. “From a
Palestinian perspective, I look at myself right now as a guinea pig,
because the policies that come out of Israeli universities inform the
decision-making within the army. It serves the army that’s enforcing the
occupation.”
Palestinian children stand in the rubble of a school in Gaza destroyed by Israeli shelling. Photo: Ashraf Amra/APA images
It is also of concern to Indigenous activists here in Canada, who are key targets of policing and surveillance operations. The
website
of the Office of the President at the University of Regina proudly
incorporates Indigenization into the university’s mandate and vision.
Yet, policies to
impose Israeli curriculum on Palestinian students in East Jerusalem have resonances with Canada’s residential school system.
It’s
part of an attempt “to slowly erase Palestinian identity,” says the
former student. I asked the Dean how the partnership with Hebrew
University would fit with the university’s commitment to Indigenization.
He seemed confused by the question, before saying that he didn’t know.
The university’s reputation
The MBA
student, meanwhile, is surprised by the Dean’s apparent lack of concern
about the Faculty’s reputation and credibility. “I’ve been here a long
time,” she says, “and all the instructors come into the class in the
Faculty of Business Administration and say ‘we have to link all the
courses together. What you learn in organizational behavior has to be
linked to human resources, ethics has to be linked to statistics.’”
There
is a sense of betrayal in her remarks: “Now if I’m sitting in the
classroom and someone is standing in front of me lecturing from the
Faculty of Business Administration about ethics? I would stand up and
say that’s hypocrisy. You guys are teaching one thing and you’re doing
something else. They will lose credibility with their students. It’s
going to affect them really badly. I can’t believe they didn’t consider
ethics in this way.”
Andrew
Stevens, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Business
Administration and a signatory of the open letter from faculty, has
expressed similar concerns: “a partnership with Hebrew University,
especially in the area of public safety and policing, could do damage to
our reputation.”
Academic boycott
The MBA
student says that had she known such a partnership might become
reality, she never would have enrolled in the Faculty of Business at the
University of Regina. She is likely not alone in this view, especially
as the international campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions
against Israel continues to build momentum on campuses worldwide.
Even in the U.S., where pro-Israel sentiment and propaganda is pervasive, the American Studies Association recently voted to
endorse a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
“The
academic institutions and the [Israeli] army are interconnected and
they influence one another. You cannot separate them,” says the MBA
student, before underlining her central point: “The Faculty of Business
Administration is actually supporting the occupation if it goes ahead
with the partnership with Hebrew University.”
There
has been no final decision on the proposed partnership, and it is not
too late for administrators at the University of Regina to find more
appropriate, more inclusive, and more respectable institutional partners
abroad.
~
Join
concerned students and faculty at the University of Regina t in calling
for this partnership to be abandoned, please write to:
Dean Andrew Gaudes: Andrew
DOT Gaudes AT
uregina.ca
Associate Dean Ron Camp: Ronald
DOT Camp AT
uregina.ca
President Vianne Timmons: the
DOT president AT
uregina.ca
Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, sanctioned by the NBA on Tuesday. Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
