As Jewish faculty at the University of Utah, both current and emeritus, and speaking only for ourselves and not for the university, we oppose the decision of the university to enter into a partnership with Ariel University in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as covered in a recent Tribune article.
Ariel University is located in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, established in the 1970s on Palestinian land as part of a campaign to settle and ultimately annex the West Bank to Israel. A key goal of the settlement-and-annexation movement is to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank alongside Israel. Ariel University was established in order to legitimize and advance this settlement-and-annexation project.
Ariel University has been highly controversial in Israel. Notably, the Council of Presidents of Israeli Universities opposed the Netanyahu government’s decision to upgrade the institution from college to university status, and more than 1,000 Israeli academics also signed a petition against the upgrade. In recent years, dozens of Israeli academics called on the European Union (EU) to avoid any cooperative ventures with Ariel University such as the one proposed by the University of Utah. The U.S. government and the European Union have banned funding to Ariel and other academic institutions based in Israel’s West Bank settlements.
The University of Utah should not step into the middle of this internal Israeli dispute, particularly in support of a side that seeks to deny Palestinians a state and prolong the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead, the university should leverage its reputation and potential for positive impact through partnerships with one or more of the many world-class universities in Israel, such as the Weizmann Institute of Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Bar Ilan University, or any of the dozens of smaller colleges located throughout Israel.
Bob Adler, Kris Campbell, Alan Fogel, Aaron Fogelson, Bob Goldberg, David Goldenberg, Jay Jacobson, Laura Kessler, Beth Krensky, Uri Loewenstein, Rob Mayer, Monty Paret, David Sandweiss, Maeera Shreiber, Don Strassberg, Liz Tashjian, Joanne Yaffe