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| Boycott of Israel is a personal choice | Boycott of Israel is a personal choice |
| (4 months later) | |
| In their letter (15 May), condemning Professor Hawking for not going to a conference in Israel, professors Michael Yudkin and Denis Noble state that the international code that governs the conduct of all scientists requires them to refrain from discrimination "based on such factors as ethnic origin, religion, citizenship, language, political or other opinion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, or age" (statute 5 of the International Council for Science). I think that they are being a little ingenuous. I have been attending scientific meetings and congresses in all parts of the world for over 50 years, and have even organised a few; I have never heard of ICSU, nor have I ever heard that as a scientist I am bound by their code of conduct. A quick straw poll of colleagues came up with the same degree of ignorance. | In their letter (15 May), condemning Professor Hawking for not going to a conference in Israel, professors Michael Yudkin and Denis Noble state that the international code that governs the conduct of all scientists requires them to refrain from discrimination "based on such factors as ethnic origin, religion, citizenship, language, political or other opinion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, or age" (statute 5 of the International Council for Science). I think that they are being a little ingenuous. I have been attending scientific meetings and congresses in all parts of the world for over 50 years, and have even organised a few; I have never heard of ICSU, nor have I ever heard that as a scientist I am bound by their code of conduct. A quick straw poll of colleagues came up with the same degree of ignorance. |
| What Yudkin and Noble should realise is that actions against the state of Israel are personal ones. I have never visited Israel or gone to a scientific meeting there. For many years I have refused to referee scientific papers coming from institutes in Israel, refused to referee grant applications emanating either from Israel or from American bodies collaborating with Israel, and I have also on one occasion refused to referee in an academic promotion exercise of an Israeli scientist. These are all personal choices; they are not part of "my job description", and I have every right to make them. | What Yudkin and Noble should realise is that actions against the state of Israel are personal ones. I have never visited Israel or gone to a scientific meeting there. For many years I have refused to referee scientific papers coming from institutes in Israel, refused to referee grant applications emanating either from Israel or from American bodies collaborating with Israel, and I have also on one occasion refused to referee in an academic promotion exercise of an Israeli scientist. These are all personal choices; they are not part of "my job description", and I have every right to make them. |
| I have not restricted myself to Israel. I had visited Libya and examined there, but following the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London and the Libyans' refusal to bring anyone to justice, I severed all links with that country and its students. Emeritus professor Anthony Milton Royston, Cambridgeshire | I have not restricted myself to Israel. I had visited Libya and examined there, but following the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London and the Libyans' refusal to bring anyone to justice, I severed all links with that country and its students. Emeritus professor Anthony Milton Royston, Cambridgeshire |
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