News

Council Statement on Access to Institutions of Higher Learning for Palestinian Scientists and Students

February 7, 2007

The Council of the National Academy of Sciences has long promoted access to education and scientific cooperation and opposed academic boycotts, including those aimed at Israeli institutions of higher learning. (See statements of August 27, 2002, and May 12, 2005.)   Since 2000 the Council has followed with concern the increasingly stringent restrictions imposed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on Palestinian students and scientists seeking to study in Israel and the West Bank.

We applaud and support recent efforts by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (statement attached) and the majority of the heads of Israel’s major universities and institutes of higher education supporting relaxation of these restrictions.  We urge, as has the Israel academy, that “cases where security considerations are deemed to require placing restrictions on a person’s movements should be adjudicated as such, on an individual basis and with all due consideration for a person’s human rights.” 

We also continue to urge, as we did in our August 2002 statement on the critical importance of continuing international collaboration in science, that “the members of the world scientific community ... actively support scientific exchanges, collaborations, and education as a wise and humane investment for peace in the future.”

COUNCIL OF THE ISRAEL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Statement Regarding Access Restrictions Imposed on Palestinian Students and Scientists

October 31, 2006

On the 24th of October, 2006, the Council of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities took up the issue of a practice recently instituted by the Israeli military authorities, to deny or restrict the passage of Palestinian students and scientists to their venues of academic study or research. The Council took note of the various letters opposing this policy and calling for its abolition that have been dispatched to the Israeli government and to international science organizations, including those written by Rectors of Israeli universities, by Presidents of Palestinian universities, and by two ministers serving in the current Israeli government (the Minister of Education and the Minister of Science). The Council was also apprised of the proceedings in the hearing by Israel’s High Court of Justice of a petition by a Palestinian graduate student who was being denied access to the Hebrew University, where she is enrolled. Discussion culminated with a resolution, adopted unanimously, as follows:

The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities shall be on record in vigorous and unrelenting opposition to any measures, by any government, restricting or impairing the ability of scientists and students to carry out their scientific work and to discharge their scientific or academic responsibilities. In particular, the Council of the Academy calls on the government of the State of Israel to refrain from instituting any policy that hinders any group of scientists or academics, whether Palestinian or otherwise, from properly discharging their academic responsibilities. Cases where security considerations are deemed to require placing restrictions on a person’s movements should be adjudicated as such, on an individual basis and with all due consideration for a person’s human rights.