Daniel Kurtzer, a Princeton professor and former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Israel, told the Daily Princetonian that the petition reflected a basic misconception of the Mideast conflict“To choose sides at this time is to trivialize history,” Kurtzer told the paper.( He served as U.S. ambassador to Egypt during the term of President Bill Clinton, and was the U.S. ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005 during the term of President George W Bush.)At least he took a mini-step here but does not realize that his bloviation about a 2 State Dissolution are useless and most recently (August 2014) touted the 2002, an Arab “Peace” Initiative as a “road map” for peace in the mideast…..rsk
Princeton University professors have opened a new front in the battle over Israel on campus with a petition signed by 60 tenured faculty members calling for the university to divest from companies backing the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.
The explosive protest, the most powerful faculty-led effort at an Ivy League school in recent years, has triggered a wideranging debate over the Middle East conflict within the Jewish community at the bucolic New Jersey campus and sparked pro-Israel counter petitions from both students and faculty.
“The intention of our petition was to clarify that there is faculty support for divestment,” said Max Weiss, a professor of History and Near Eastern Studies at Princeton and one of the five authors of the petition. “There is already student activism which is operating on its own terms.”
The pro-divestment professors unveiled their petition in a campus newspaper early this month with 48 names. Weiss says the number of signatories has since risen to at least 60. Organizers say they limited the list to tenured faculty to protect junior faculty from having to take a stand on such a controversial topic.
The organizers plan to present the petition to Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber before Thanksgiving.
After the petition was published, pro-Israel professors responded with a petition of their own opposing divestment that was signed by at least 63 tenured and non-tenured faculty. A pro-Israel student group has gathered 300 student signatures on an anti-divestment petition and pro-Palestinian groups are working to build support too.