(Boston Globe) - Five professors who helped launch a national movement to pressure colleges to divest from Israel defended their cause in the face of emotional protests from an audience of 400 students and others - many of them pro-Israel - at Harvard Law School. The student group that organized the forum, Justice for Palestine, chose not to invite an antidivestment speaker, and permitted critics of divestment to ask questions only after the speeches concluded. Some audience members belittled the professors as ivory-tower academics who were simplifying the conflict in the Middle East by placing blame on Israel. Suzanne Gershowitz, a Harvard junior who helped organize a pro-Israel rally with students from MIT, Boston University, Brandeis, and other schools, criticized the forum as an ''attempted teach-in'' with the five professors controlling the discussion and slanting it in favor of divestment.
2002-10-25 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive