Page 4-The Michigan Daily-Thursday, September 13, 1990
EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
420 Maynard Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
NOAH FINKEL
Editor in Chief
DAVID SCHWARTZ
Opinion Editor
Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board. All other cartoons,
signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily.
University Closures
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Palestinians are denied academic freedom . .
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"Universities will remain closed."
-Text of a closure notice
THE EDUCATION MINISTRY OF THE
Israeli Civil Administration recently
issued yet another three month
closure notice to Birzeit University,
a Palestinian institution with which
the Michigan Student Assembly has
established sister-university ties.
Birzeit has been closed by such
orders since January 1988.
This denial of the Palestinians'
right to education has not been
limited to the university level.
Throughout the course of the
Intifada, the Israeli authorities have
closed every public, private, and
United Nations Relief Works
Agency (UNRWA) school in the
West Bank-from kindergartens
through the secondary level-for
prolonged periods of time.
The closures mean that no classes
or meetings of any kind can take
place on campus. In addition, off-
campus class meetings as small as
three students and one faculty
member are illegal and punishable
by imprisonment, interrogation, and
torture. Use of university libraries,
laboratories, and other research
facilities is also forbidden.
The Israeli authorities attempt to
justify this complete disregard for
international law by saying that
Palestinian schools and universities
are "centers of unrest" (Jerusalem
Post, 9/9/88). This justification
would be untenable even if Israeli
"security concerns" were sincere:
like their counterparts in occupied
Palestine, university campuses in
the United States have been centers
of protest throughout their history;
but even during the most tu-
multuous and violent periods of
campus unrest, the closure of every
university by the U.S. government
would be universally condemned
and resisted.
But the Israeli security argument
is not sincere, as evidenced by the
banning of small off-campus
classes, on campus research by
university faculty, kindergarten
activities, and other measures which
cannot possibly be justified under
the security pretense. The real
reasons that Palestinian universities
are closed are much more insidious.
issued by the Israeli Civil Administration
The mass closure of schools is
first and foremost a form of
collective punishment. According to
the Jerusalem Post, the authorities
of the military occupation have
closed schools and universities
because "The matter is perceived to
be an effective means of pressuring
the population, the effectiveness of
which increases as time passes"
(6/14/88).
The closures also represent an
attack on universities as
independent Palestinian institutions,
which, like all such institutions, are
rightly seen as a threat to continued
Israeli domination. The lack of ed-
ucational opportunities increases
Palestinian dependency on Israel for
high technology and professionals.
International condemnation of its
actions has forced the occupying
authorities to consider reopening
Palestinian universities. However,
it is important to stress that the
threat to Palestinian academic
freedom does not end with the mere
reopening of the universities.
In the process of reopening small
institutions such as An-Najah
National Intermediate Community
College, the Israeli authorities have
attempted to reimpose restrictions
mandated under military order
854-an illegal Israeli amendment
to Jordanian law which was
"frozen" in 1982 after widespread
protestations from both Palestinian
and international educational
institutions.
Military order 854's measures in-
clude restricting universities to
teaching only "authorized subjects"
with authorized materials, and
requiring universities to receive
permission from the authorities for
any curriculum or enrollment
changes. In addition, the univer-
sities are held responsible for any
protests, meetings, or exhibitions of
a political nature which occur on
campus, or within its vicinity.
The Israeli authorities' violations
of Palestinian academic freedom
and other fundamental human rights
must be vigorously resisted until
these rights are fully restored.
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'Keeping in touch' is an important part of college life.
By Adam Miller
Hey, I'm a new sports writer. What
then you wonder, am I doing here? I know
most of you won't relate to this, but it's a
story that needs telling anyway.
Last weekend, after my first two days
of classes, as a first year student, I went
home. I live not too far from here, my
house's pool was just about to close and
some of my old high school friends were
coming by to swim.
It all sounded like a good idea. I come
from a small high school, our graduating
class was 43, and I liked the idea of seeing
my old classmates "one last time." This
get together, however, was quite different
from what I expected.
It was there that I heard the news about
Monica (not her real name). Everyone in
Miller is a first-year student and a
member of the Daily Sports Staf..
our class had wondered about her all
summer, since she was an ordinarily
bright, out-going person and had drifted
into total seclusion.
As it turned out, Monica was sick.
Seriously sick. And she was trying to hide
her illness from everyone else. When I
heard the news, through the grapevine, so
to speak, I was at first shocked .
thinking. Now that we've left high school
and are in college, what do we do with the
past four years? As first year students are
we "stuck in the middle" between the 614
and the new? What if one of your old
classmates became ill or had some other
trauma? Would you know about it? Would
you care?
'Now that we've all reached that great plateau we call
college, do we entirely abosorb ourselves with our
'new lives' and blow-off the ones that we had before?'
You see, I had been critically ill last
summer and had initially tried to hide my
disease. Once I re-contacted my friends I
was pleasantly surprised and cheered by
their support. I only wish that Monica had
allowed us the same opportunity..
Not that I mean to bore all of you with
my my mushy story, but this did get me
Now that we've all reached that great
plateau we call college, do we entirely abz
sorb ourselves with our 'new lives' add
blow-off the ones that we had before? Or,
is there someway, in between fifty pages
of Homer and 102 Calculus problems, to
keep in touch with our 'old lives' and old'
friends'? I don't know if it's possible, bul
I for one am willing to try.
PSC delegation defenses under attack
... The University of Michigan needs to respona
"Everyone has the right to education... higher education shall be equally accessible to
all on the basis of merit."
-Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26
To the Editor:
Let's hope David Levin and Luis
Vazquez never become statisticians.
All issues aside, backing any argument
with number-game logic (PSC delegates
answers critics, Sept. 11th) amounts to an
intellectually immature argument at best.
It is laughable to compare the amount of
U.S. money sent to Israel to that of
MSA's funding of this "delegation."
I don't want to jump to any conclu-
sions, but I think the U.S. annual budget
is a wee bit larger then that of the MSA
summer budget.
At best, any comparison is completely
skewed. In addition, the U.S. government
has different responsibilities, priorities and
obligations.I know some may find it hard
to believe, but MSA doesn't run the coun-
try.
I highly doubt the U.S. would send
10% of its budget on a single biased fact-
finding delegation. To assume that Israel
spends its entire U.S. aid package on se-
curing the occupied territory is indicative
of the bias held by both "delegates".
It is rather embarrassing that one can
receive a masters degree from the Univer-
sity of Michigan and have such a poor un-
derstanding of simple math.
Jonathan Greenberg
University Alum
Still skeptical
To the Daily:
David Levin and Luis Vazquez, in their
Daily article ("PSC delegates answer crit-
ics", Daily 9/11), argue that condemna-
tions of their delegation are "dubious in
content" and premature.
The justification they propose is essen-
tially that the U.S. government spends
$15 per taxpayer on Israel every year. The
relationship between U.S. government
spending and MSA spending never having
been elucidated, I find this justification
highly suspect.
Levin and Vazquez have neglected the
fact that the University of Michigan, in
general, and the MSA, specifically, are not
international organizations and do not have
a foreign policy, and therefore should not
be financing junkets to foreign nations.
They further suggest that the cost of
this trip breaks down to .6 cents per
speech. To this I respond that it is not the
cost of the trip or the value of a speech
that matters as much as the principle of
financing trips for student representatives.
Daniel Weiner
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" R
THE LONG-TERM CLOSURE OF
Palestinian universities challenges
academics everywhere to defend the
universal right to education and
academic freedom. This challenge
has been answered by universities
across the globe that have opposed
the Israeli state's violation of these
fundamental rights.
At the University, this opposition
has been led by the Palestine
Solidarity Committee and the
Michigan Student Assembly, which
deserve commendations for their
efforts to establish sister-university
relations in the region. The severity
of the situation, however, requires
increased involvement by every
facet of the University.
The recent extension of Birzeit
University's closure should be
vigorously condemned by MSA and
all other student governmental
bodies, the Senate Advisory
Committee for University Affairs
(SACUA), the regents, and
President Duderstadt.
Each of these authorities should
ties. In addition, they should send
these messages to Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir, President
Bush, and Fawaz Kamal, the head
of the Education Ministry for the
Occupied Territories. Solidarity
statements should be sent to Birzeit
University as well.
University bodies should also
take additional steps in the struggle
to secure academic freedom. The
sister-university relationship
established by MSA should be
expanded to include faculty links
through SACUA and, additionally,
formal administrative ties.
These measures defend both
humanitarian and self-interested
sentiments.
The closure of Palestinian
universities represents a threat to
academic freedom everywhere,'and
is only made possible by the bil-
lions of dollars in U.S. aid that
Israel annually receives. If the U.S.
government's willingness to finance
the denial of academic freedom
abroad is not vigorously resisted,
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