War, מלחמה, guerre, война

Dear friends, colleagues, друзья, amies et amis, חברים

I was absolutely overwhelmed by the flood of emails, what’s-app and telegram messages full of anxiety for our well-being in all languages. I am physically unable to answer them all, so I use this blog platform to answer all of you. Many thanks for your warmth and concern!

To clarify the current situation. What happened on October 7 in the early morning was our analog of Pearl Harbor, 9/11 or a deja vu of the event that happened precisely 50 years ago, the beginning of Yom Kippur war when Israel was surprised by the attack of Egypt and Syria. That was the bloodiest war among all waged by Israel, but half a century ago the price in blood was paid by the troops guarding the Suez channel and the Golan heights.

This time the main blow was suffered by the civil population. While the country was under barrage of rockets of unprecedented intensity for long four hours, this was relatively harmless because of the incredible efficiency of the “Iron Dome” air defense system: we had to spent this time in bomb shelters, it was not something unusual (events like this happen to us every few years and result mostly in accidental wounds to half a dozen of people).

This time the most horrible events took place near the Gaza border fence: under the cover of the rocket salvos about 1,000 armed terrorists on jeeps and motorbikes burst through the border fence, killing a few border guards, and spread over a couple of dozen of civil communities within few kilometers from the border. What followed then was a massacre of incredible cruelty. Squads of few dozens of monsters walked on streets killing everybody on their way. Then they started breaking into closed houses, murdering entire families at point blank.

Yet the worst was the bloodbath. There was a music festival under the open skies, attended by several thousands of (mostly young) people. They were murdered by the automatic gunfire in huge numbers.

The current body count is close to 1,000 killed (mostly civilians, but a few policemen and soldiers who happened to take the fight), 2,500 wounded (of them a couple of hundreds in the critical state). Some 700 people are yet unaccounted for. Even worse is the fact that about 150 civilians (including elderly people, women and children of age 3 and above) were taken hostages to the Gaza strip. Their prospects are very gloom, unfortunately.

There are many questions, – why it took our army the infinite long 6 hours to bring the special forces to the scene and use the aviation (helicopters e.a.) to stop the carnage, where was our intelligence which had no cue about this operation, obviously very thoroughly planned… We will learn, of course, but later.

For the moment the initial shock is behind, the country resumed its stamina, the army is planning a massive operation to destroy the military power of HAMAS (something that never was done during the 18 years of uncontested HAMAS rule in Gaza, despite numerous rocket attacks). There will be more victims among our military (and for me “military” means our children, our students, our younger friends, – in 24 hours some 300,000 people were called up from the reserves). But for the rest (“usually civilians like us and most our friends) the danger is essentially extremely low (assuming standard safety precautions).

I will add here more if things will take an unpredictable turn.

Once again, – we very much appreciate and value your moral support. Thank you! Спасибо большое, תודה רבה!

P.S. In Israel there are very strict rules concerning publication of the names of fallen soldiers, victims of terror e.a.: it is believed inconceivable if relatives learn about the death or serious wounding from the media and not from an army messangers (accompanied by psychologists, social workers, to help absorbing such a terrible blow). On the contrary, once this sad custom is observed, all papers, TV, radio publish the names of the fallen and their photos.

This link leads to the gallery of the slain military/policemen, those whose death is the easiest to confirm by the nature of their duty. Look at these smiling faces, sometimes uniformed, sometimes in plain clothes, to see whom our country had just lost. And this is only the tiny fraction of the much longer martyrologue, – most victims are civilian and require identification (burned and dismembered or mutilated corpses).

Call to all members of the Israeli mathematical community

Dear colleagues, friends,

With utmost horror we watch the events unfolding now in Ukraine. The atrocities committed by the Russian aggressor army against the civil population were thought unimaginable in the 21st century.

Yet the Russian side, while bearing full responsibility for the war crimes, is not monolith. There are many people who do not want to be part in this war. They are fleeing Russia, which with the lightning speed morphs into GULAG 2.0.

Currently flights to Israel by El Al are essentially the only escape route from Russia. Many of the prospective refugees are Jewish or fall under the provisions of the Law of Return, but even gentiles deserve some help in this tragic situation.

Below follows the letter that I wrote to the Weizmann Institute leadership team headed by professor Alon Chen, the President of WIS. I think that a similar call could be addressed to all Israeli universities. Some colleagues already expressed their wish to help the refugees from Russia on a private basis (zillion thanks!)

Don’t hesitate to share the link to this post to anybody who might help in saving the innocent people from the other side: although their homes are not ruined yet, their lifestyle is definitely ruined.

May I recall that the Jews who tried to escape from the Nazis in Germany, knocked the doors of foreign embassies and consulates with German passports. Don’t confuse the criminal rule with the small fraction of the population that is fiercely opposite to this rule and frightened by its actions.

---

Dear Alon,

You certainly follow the awful aggression unleashed by Putin’s Russia against Ukraine. The Israeli academia together with all Israelis is united in an attempt to help Ukrainians, especially Ukrainian Jews, especially those who decided to repatriate to Israel.

Yet there is another side to this sad story. The authoritarian rule in Russia in two weeks became an openly oppressive regime: independent media are closed, spreading truth is criminalized by up to 15 years in jail, participants in the street protests are arrested. Mere public use of the word “war” is now a criminal offence, it should be referred to as a “special operation”. What is worse, there is a forced induction to the army of people aged 18-50 and it is used as a punishment for protesters.

Add to it the Iron Curtain 2.0: there are very few escape routes from Russia now. The European airspace is closed for Russian-bound and outgoing flights, border crossings are still available but have very limited throughput.

Connection to Israel is essentially the only lifeline available for the escape from Russia for those who do not want to be the part of the criminal policy and spend the rest of their lives behind the iron curtain. I hope that the wise policy of proclaimed neutrality will allow Israel to maintain this lifeline as long as it is logistically possible.

Among those who flee Russia there are many Jews and people eligible for the Law of Return, many of them excellent scholars. I don’t expect the repetition of the huge immigration wave as in the early 1990-ies, but the Israeli academia should prepare for a sharp increase of scientists of the highest world level that would suddenly look for jobs in Israel.

I believe that the least the WIS should do in this situation is a sharp increase in the number of visiting positions, ranging from a couple of months and up to a year. In parallel we should be ready that a number of the highest quality scientists would become interested in permanent positions. I know that similar arrangements were already made regarding the Ukrainian students and postdocs (Jews and gentiles alike). In my view, it’s time to extend such measures to established scholars, and include also the refugees from Russia who flee the war from the other side of the battlefront.

Being not an administrator, I have no idea on how this can be implemented logistically. I just remember that in 1990-1993 by efforts of a few far-looking scientists (may them be blessed), Israel came prepared to the wave of emigration from fSU much better than USA and many other European countries, which allowed an amazingly large number of ex-fSU scholars to land in Israel and contributed to the subsequent Israeli breakthroughs in STEM. I very much hope that today’s tragic developments in the Eastern Europe could lead to similar benefits for our country. In contrast with that past experience, today we know pretty well who is who in Russian/Ukrainian science and can avoid gambling/errors of judgement while sticking to the highest WIS hiring standards.

Please don’t hesitate if you need any clarifications or particular information: these days I try to maintain the most close contacts with my Russian colleagues and friends.

With the best personal regards,

–Sergei.

---

Post Scriptum

The response from the Presidents of WIS and Hebrew University was quick and energetically supportive. G-d help them and us to act quickly and efficiently.

A non-paper on the spread of the SARS-Cov coronavirus

There is some problem with currently used SIR-class models describing the spread of the corona virus. The initial exponential growth slows down much earlier than these models predict, well before a significant portion of the population acquires immunity after contracting the Covid-19 disease and healing from it.

Here is my attempt to understand the situation, a short (8 pages) non-paper (all academic standards are violated, not intended for publication).

Any criticism will be most appreciated.

Real numbers (notes)

Supplementary notes: completion of rational numbers

On the previous (pre-war) lecture we discussed, how number systems were extended to meet various demands from natural to integer, rational and eventually some algebraic irrational numbers, adding solutions of equations which were previously unsolvable.

This process, however, turned out to be insufficient for some reasons, because any such number system had infinitely many gaps between them, not corresponding to solutions of any equations.

We suggested to use inequalities, or, more precisely, infinite systems of self-consistent two-sided inequalities, to introduce the new numbers when such systems turned out to be unsolvable.

This idea is realized by the so called Dedekind cuts.

While the principal ideas were explained in the class, the accurate construction would require lots of simple checks guaranteeing that we don’t create logically forbidden monsters.

In the new lecture notes I tried to present the road map for this journey. It consists of short informal motivations, accurate formulations of definitions and the ultimate theorems, the rest being split into several dozens of simple and very simple problems, sometimes accompanied by immediate solutions.

Each of you is able to solve these problems, their main purpose is to inform you that we need to do a lot of routine job when progressing accurately. First you should understand that the question raised in each problem, is really a question that needs to be answered (usually by one-line argument).

The (home take) exam will be similar: it will consist of several meaningful and interesting statements split into simple steps. You can have an idea what expects you.

How to solve these problems? In most cases, you know you have a solution when you scribble it for yourself. In rare cases where you have doubts, whether your arguments are complete or perhaps contain a vicious circle, you are welcome to discuss it in one of the several possible ways.

I would most encourage you to write your questions, remarks, tentative solutions e.a., in comments to the respective posts and read what your colleagues respond. This would be the kind of group work which would be beneficial both for those who ask and those who answer (and even for the silent readers). Alternatively you may ask Itamar, or give him written solutions for a brief check. I will also follow the discussions and intervene if necessary.

Once again I stress. There is no need to write solutions to all problems: this will not affect your final grade in either direction. Don’t be afraid to suggest wrong solutions: it is inevitable in any learning process, nobody would shame you on that and no negative implications would be drawn. Release your brain power!

Alexandre M. Vinogradov 18.02.1938–20.09.2019

Yesterday, on his 82nd year, passed away a wonderful mathematician and pedagogue Alexandre Mikhailovich Vinogradov.

In 1977/8 in Moscow University he taught me a course (formally it was “Exercises”, not a full-fledged course) which contained in its DNA most of the ideas that I used much later for the course “Calculus on Manifolds”, which is featured on these pages.

At the same time A.M. was among the founding fathers of the “Jewish People’s University“, an unofficial attempt to give access to the modern mathematics to the Jewish candidates who were turned down at the entrance examinations to the Moscow University because of the state-sponsored antisemitism.

The last years of his life he spent in Salerno, investing his inexhaustible energy to organization of mathematical schools and workshops on modern theory of PDEs.

May his memory be blessed, יהיה זיכרו ברוך

Numeric indicators and real achievements

It is sometimes argued that the level of scientific research can be measured by various kinds of numeric indicators (number of publications, citations, the total of research grants obtained, PhD theses written etc.).

If you sincerely believe in this nonsense, here is how it works in another area (hat tip Yu.Sh.).

According to FIFA, the yesterday’s semifinal game Brasil vs. Germany in the mirror of numbers looked as follows:

Indicator	Brazil	Germany
Total attempts	18	14
Deliveries in the penalty area	19	11
Ball possession	52%	48%
On-target attempts	13	12
Saves	7	5
Score	1	7

Perhaps some navel gazing is required, dear administrations?

Applied Mathematics: How-Not-To

The November 2013 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, the journal which purports to appeal to the most broad community of mathematicians of all walks and denominations, published a paper by T. L. Saaty and H. J. Zoffer, “Principles for Implementing a Potential Solution to the Middle East Conflict”. This publication attracted opinion of many readers of the Notices, who expressed their concern about politicizing the journal and lending its pages for a biased and controversial text.

Addressing these concerns, the President of AMS, Prof. David Vogan, responded that in his view there is nothing wrong with publication of papers which arise public interest, even if their conclusion is questionable.

“It is my belief that the Notices should publish articles describing reasonable mathematical modeling of interesting problems, even if the conclusions reached are controversial or disagreeable. The real world is a complicated, controversial, and sometimes unpleasant place.”

Let me express my strongest disagreement. I believe that, rather than being a reasonable mathematical modeling of interesting problems, the paper in question is a travesty of applied mathematics.

I will briefly recall the main points of the authors’ model for achieving an agreed solution to the conflict. They believe that both sides possess a number of “bargaining chips”, concessions that they can make towards the other side, but the value of these bargaining chips is different for each side (a symbolic gesture with zero cost for one side may be of immense practical value for the other and vice versa). The authors see the main problem of negotiations in the fact that possible “bundles of concessions” which can be traded for each other, are too numerous and too difficult to the sides to determine themselves, and hence a highbrow science should be called for the rescue.

The area of conflict resolution is not new: the Game Theory is one of the best developed fields between Applied Mathematics, Mathematical Economics and Operations Research. Its success in developing a system of key notions changed the way mathematicians and strategists think about competition and cooperation; several Nobel prizes in Economics were awarded for works in this area. However, the authors of the discussed paper ignore some basic principles which are necessary to make such analysis valid.

First, mathematical modeling is all about eliminating ambiguity of notions and terms or at least reducing it to the minimum. In this sense the list of possible “concessions” (Table 1a) is surprisingly obfuscating. Its terms are at best vague, and at worst intentionally misleading.

What exactly concede Israelis by “abandoning the idea of a Jewish state”? Is it the same what the Palestinians expect when reading these words? Attorneys could fill tens of pages by the legal fine print, defining the precise meaning of this “concession”, and achieving an agreement on terms of reference may itself be a subject of protracted negotiations. Simply throwing it “as is” would only plant the seeds of contention at the stage of implementation (if ever reached).

Another “concession”, this time on the Palestinian side, is to “acknowledge Israel’s existence as an independent state”. Well, you can hardly concede something which is beyond your control, exactly like approving the next day’s sunrise cannot be considered as a “concession”, and you can’t expect much in reward for such a “concession”. In a similar way, another Israel’s possible “concession” is to “comply with all applicable UN resolutions”. These resolutions themselves were subject to differing interpretations, most famous is the absent definite article “the” in the Resolution 242, requiring Israel to withdraw from territories (not “the territories”) acquired in the defensive 1967 war. Formally Israel already accepted “all applicable UN resolutions” to the extent the other side fulfills its obligations. What remains to concede then? The term “Eastern Jerusalem”, appearing several times in “concessions” of both sides, is also ill-defined: is the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and the Western Wall part of the Eastern Jerusalem to be “conceded”?

Some “concessions” are actually troubling: “Evacuate settlers of Jewish settlements claimed by the Palestinians with or without compensation” is not a “concession”, but in today’s world is considered as an ethnic cleansing in everything but the name and can well bring the “conceding side” to the International Court (in the past things looked differently). Can one seriously contemplate such “concession”? If yes, then why should it be one-sided only?

All these remarks actually mean that it is not the definite options that are offered for mutual concessions, but rather empty slogans open to different interpretations. Politicians are well familiar with such things, but they are not the kind of objects admitting mathematical analysis.

Second, even stronger objection is that the model has a built-in flaw. It treats the two sides of the conflict as if they were two centrally commanded warring parties or two economic agents with well defined preferences which could be theoretically revealed by resorting to experts’ opinion. Nothing can be more distant from reality. Each of the two sides is a multi-million people, very heterogeneous. Any idea that five or six self-appointed experts can give a reliable assessment of the gain/cost of “concessions”, is ridiculous: Judea and Samaria dwellers clearly have a different attitude towards the “concession” of getting expelled from their houses than the Tel-Aviv residents, and inhabitants of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon most certainly have the set of priorities strongly different from the established Ramallah bureaucracy. In the democratic society the process of revealing preferences of various groups of population is implemented via elections. Instead of the anonymous experts deciding what can and what can’t be disposed off, the model should analyze the platforms of various political parties and aggregate them with the weights obtained at the ballot box. This approach will be very difficult even under the assumption that elections are honest and held in time, which is not the case with one of the sides in the conflict.

These two objections are already sufficient to discard not just the conclusions, but the model itself (or, to be more precise, the current attempt to apply the AHP as the authors call their approach to this particular conflict resolution). However, several minor instances raise the question about the possible bias of the authors. Attempting to resolve a conflict, one has at least to pretend to be impartial to its sides. Looking at the illustrations to the paper and the accompanying captions, one can easily see that even the vocabulary used by the authors (settlers vs. Palestinians, – an example of dehumanization, “occupied” vs. “disputed” lands, in disagreement with the principal UN resolutions) clearly follows the narrative of one side rather than uses a neutral language. It is far from obvious whether arbiters with such credentials would pass for jurors in a court.

The world in which we live may indeed be nasty and unpleasant. Still, certain things seem to be impossible to spell out even as a conjectural solution. If a realistic model (which could easily be built on much more solid foundations) predicts that the cheapest way to deal with the problem of the Earth overpopulation is to let starve to death 80% of the Third World population, would Prof. Vogan still consider analyzing such a model a legitimate discourse in addressing this (no doubt, much more pressing) problem? will he make a “concession” and agree to publish a paper with such proposed conclusion in the Notices of AMS?

Last but not least. Prof. Vogan sees no harm done by discussing a controversial mathematical model as soon as the proposed solution is not implemented.

I do.

Today mathematics is still considered as one of the last bastions of objective knowledge, and mathematically justified conclusions are generally accepted by the public opinion as a reliable truth modulo a possible human error, unlike many other areas, e.g., climate science, political science etc. The imprimatur given by publication in the respectable and peer-reviewed mathematical journal will carry with itself two very sad consequences. First, the parties at the real negotiation tables will be pushed in the wrong direction: indeed, how can you argue against “the optimal solution obtained by rigorous mathematical methods”? But such misconception may and most likely will distort realistic expectations of the sides and result in more protracted (or even failed) negotiations. The other implication, more sad for our professional community, will be an unavoidable conclusion that mathematics can be twisted to the whim of politically driven people, and mathematicians are no more honest in their work than scientists massaging or even fabricating their experimental data or sociologists who derive pre-designed conclusions from biased polls. Of course, mathematicians are also humans and may hold very polar views on various subjects, however, any attempt to justify their views by invoking the authority of the sterling mathematical models is plain wrong and harmful.

---

Post Scriptum. Several colleagues asked me why I don’t send this text to “Notices” as a response to the paper of Saaty and Zoffer. The short answer is: it would be inconsequential. One of the main points of the text is absolute inadmissibility of politicizing math and sciences. Sending this unscientific protest to the professional journal would be in itself a step towards further politicizing the atmosphere.

However, if any journal or blog would like to copy this text or disseminate its content in any form, there are no restrictions to it.

Save the Russian academics

Several weeks ago the Russian scientific community was stunned by the news that the Russian Ministry of Education and Science plans to legislate a series of drastic measures to “reform” the Russian Academy of Sciences, the structure under whose aegis the main bulk of research (and a good part of scientific education) is done. The measures included merging the Academy with two other academies (medical and agricultural) and stripping the Academy from the “property management” (including, but not limited to, the real estate).

The existing Russian Academy is not ideal as a governing body for scientific research (nothing is). It was essentially created (again, by cardinally redesigning its precursor, the Imperial Academy) by Stalin to solve the engineering and technical problems dictated by the arms race (the space and nuclear research). These huge industrial and engineering challenges required military-like subordination and hierarchic structure. To establish a clear chain of command, two categories of  members (academicians, members of the Academy, and corresponding members), were to become the chief officers of the new combat arm and de-facto promoted to super-scientists. These super-scientists were empowered with super-authority in everything related to research and relevant logistics. They were made directors of research institutions, chairs of committees allocating funds, the most influential of them had the ear of the highest rank Soviet leaders in matters of national priorities. They were granted the perks only a few in the Soviet Union could boast (luxury housing, provisioning, even some intellectual freedom).

The system proved its efficiency then by reaching the claimed goals. Notably, although the main objectives were in the applied engineering areas, the academicians were fully aware about the need to develop the fundamental sciences and mathematics (the humanities and social sciences were a different story), and they succeeded in doing that beyond all expectations. Many members of the Academy were (and are) great scholars whose achievements were universally recognized, including the Nobel, Wolf and Dirac prizes.

On the other hand, the Soviet/Russian academic system has its own weak spots. Competition was practically eliminated: every research area has its own Mecca with its own Pope-en-chief. Scientific inbreeding, sometimes disguised as “famous scientific schools”, turned many areas into dictatorships (often enlightened, but nevertheless dictatorships) of a single person. No mechanisms for dead wood cutting were built in the system as long as the academician-protector was in power.

The composition of the body of the academicians is also uneven. Together with the deepest scholars and people of scientific vision, the system eventually accumulated a heavy ballast of politicians-cum-scientists, managers elected for their administrative clout and other birds of the feather. Integrity of many of a member of the Academy could be questioned, at least in what concerns their role in fair allocation of limited resources, awards, positions, publications in prestigious journals etc. In an “inexplicable way” some of the best representatives of the Russian scientific diaspora (e.g., several Fields prize laureates) time after time fail to get elected to the Academy despite their intensive cooperation with their Russian colleagues, often on the Russian soil.

The situation indeed requires serious soul-searching, debriefing and thorough discussion of the ways how these problems should be addressed.

Yet the proposed “reform” has nothing to do with any of the above problems. I do not know a single person working in Russia (apart from a few demagogues or idealists), who would buy the declared goal of “increasing the efficiency of scientific research” as the real rationale behind the proposed move. It’s a sheer profit, stupid! The reaction of the Russian academics was predictable [2,3].

The Russian scientific community was devastated in the early 90-es, when over a third of its members, the most mobile and energetic, abandoned their cold empty labs with disintegrating infrastructure and moved to the West. For a decade the scientific research was almost clinically dead. But relatively recently the government funding of the scientific research was increased considerably. The area that was practically abandoned since the early nineties suddenly was brought back to the fore of the national priorities (not clear for how long and how sincerely). Money began pouring in. In parallel the value of the real estate administered by the academic institutions, especially in the historical heart of Moscow, soared. All this made managing the property of the Academy a tidbit worth a few dirty tricks. This seemed to be an easy task: the current members of the Academy (full and corresponding) were to be bribed by disgraceful handout of $3000 per month to keep their mouth shut, the opinion of the “workhorses” really doing research was not even assumed to be heard. The plans were to introduce energetic “efficient managers” who would control the money allotted to the scientific research, thus sparing the precious academic brain force for the “pure science”. No doubt, these managers would soon institute the corporate ethics into what remains of the scientific culture, with the ill-famed citation indices being the main indicators of what has to be supported and what has to be “sanitized”. The ruling bureaucracy, no doubt, will find additional pleasure watching humiliation of the intellectually unruly Academy, punished for several recent affronts it dealt to the Kremlin-sponsored candidates.

Many scientists in the world, especially those who maintain close cooperation with their Russian colleagues, took the issue of the “reform” of the Academy close to their hearts and wrote letters to the Russian authorities, cf. [1,4,5] below. In these letters they politely state the obvious things: that the Academy is very far from the “failure” as it is painted by the “reformers”, that the measures proposed to increase the efficiency are unlikely to achieve the stated goals, that any steps should be first discussed by representatives of all sides, primarily of the scientists themselves. My most sincere gratitude and respect to the authors notwithstanding, I am afraid that these polite letters will have a very small impact on the decision makers, if at all. The “reform” is not an ill-advised step made by a good-willing czar out of ignorance. Instead, the truth should be told: it is a pre-planned (although hastily and quite stupidly, as often happens with things done by dirty hands) assault aimed to snatch a juicy chunk out of “shaky hands”.

There is a species of wasps, called the spider wasp, who attack their prey and rather than killing it, sting the neuronal ganglion which controls the spider’s motions. Immobilized by the venom, the spider remains alive, but cannot do anything when the newly-born larva starts gnawing into the living flesh. Of course, the spider eventually dies, but only after the larva completes this stage of its life cycle, when the health of the victim interests nobody. The “reformers” act exactly this way, – nothing personal, just business.

Pre-reform state (left) and post-reform state (right) of the Russian Academy of Sciences

The “reform” (better called putsch) should be stopped now. Not for the sake of shifts in the power sharing between the super-scientists and state bureaucrats, but because of the mortal blow it will deliver to the remaining body of academics (in the usual sense of this word, the scientists) currently working in the institutions affiliated with the Academy. It’s them who are most vulnerable and who will be the first victims of the sting. Perhaps, the spider is not a model of beauty, but I personally find the larva more  disgusting.

References

While the story is unfolding in the real time, its development is well documented (albeit almost exclusively in Russian).

1. Russian roulette: Reforms without consultation will destroy the Russian Academy of Sciences. Editorial, Nature (July 3, 2013)
2. V. M. Polterovich. Reform of RAS: an expert’s view (in Russian).
3. Russian Academy of Science. The protest chronicles. Ed. by A. N. Parshin (in Russian)
4. Ingrid Daubechies, President of the International Mathematical Union. Letter to S. Naryshkin, Speaker of the Duma.
5. Gunter Stock, President of ALLEA (Association of All European Academies), Letter to V. Putin
6. Michael Gelfand, What has to be done about the Russian science. Nature (August 21, 2013). Point of view of one of the people who advocated necessity of reforms (not to be confused with the “reforms”) in the Russian academy

Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft Vorderer Orient boycotts Ariel University Center

The German Middle East Studies Association (DAVO by its German acronym) represented by its President, Prof. Dr. Gunter Meyer (pictured) recently sent the following email to Dr. Ronen A. Cohen, a young Israeli scholar from the Ariel University Center.

From: Meyer, Guenter
Date: Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 3:07 PM
Subject: Cancellation of Participation in the DAVO Congress
To: Ronen A. Cohen

Dear Ronen A. Cohen,

I am very sorry to inform you that the Council of the German Middle East Studies Association (DAVO) has decided to cancel your participation in the 18th International Congress of DAVO in Berlin on 6-8 October 2011.

It is not acceptable that a representative of an illegally established Israeli university in the occupied territories is participating in this conference. The settlement of Ariel represents a clear violation of international law. This cannot be tolerated by DAVO.

I would like to stress that this decision of the DAVO Council has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Scholars from Israel are most welcome as participants of this international conference – but scholars from an illegal university in the occupied territories are not welcome.

Yours sincerely,

Guenter Meyer

Chairman of DAVO

I found this letter outrageous on several counts. The following response was sent today to the Prof. Dr. Georg Krausch, President of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, which hosts the DAVO, with copies to the Chancellor of JGU Mainz, Dr. Ronen A. Cohen from AUC and Univ.-Prof. Dr. Günter Meyer himself.

Dear Mr. President,

Recently I received a copy of the email sent by Prof. Dr. Guenter Meyer, President of DAVO, to an Israeli Middle East scholar Dr. Ronen A. Cohen from the Ariel University Center. In this email Prof. Meyer cancels participation of Dr. Cohen in the 18th International Congress of DAVO because of the latter being “scholar from an illegal university in the occupied territories” (I quote the email).

It is difficult to decide what is more disturbing, the mere fact that an academic is excluded from a scientific event based on purely political considerations, or the offensive rhetoric used by Prof. Meyer in his letter.

I do not believe I need to elaborate on the inadmissibility of all sorts of politically driven boycotts and other forms of discrimination in the area of scholar research, where all disputes can and should be settled in honest discussions.

Prof. Meyer writes in his email:

“It is not acceptable that a representative of an illegally established Israeli university in the occupied territories is participating in this conference. The settlement of Ariel represents a clear violation of international law. This cannot be tolerated by DAVO.”

Having spent my youth in a totalitarian Soviet society, I could not dream that twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall and dissolution of the Communist regimes in Europe, I would again see such sadly familiar expressions in official documents. The last time I heard of an “illegally established university” was when the KGB raided the Popular Jewish University established by a few activists in Moscow in mid-1980-ies. Besides, as a prominent Middle East scholar, Prof. Meyer should be certainly aware that the territories contested by Jews and Arabs in the historic Palestine are disputed and not occupied, since no legitimate state ever had any claims on them. Using such one-sided and patently anti-Israeli language is unacceptable in the scientific community, especially among the scholars studying so charged and sensitive issues as the Middle East realities.

I firmly believe that the cancellation of Dr. Cohen’s participation in the DAVO meeting should be immediately rescinded. Besides, I think that some form of apology or at least disavowal on behalf of Prof. Meyer would be well in place, as if to dispel the feeling of uneasiness about the scientific integrity of DAVO and its President.

With my most sincere respect,

Prof. Sergei Yakovenko,
Head, Department of Mathematics,
The Weizmann Institute of Science.

For those who might wish to voice their opinion on the academic integrity of DAVO, here are the relevant emails:
President of JGU Mainz, Prof. Dr. Georg Krausch:      krausch@uni-mainz.de
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Günter Meyer:                                              g.meyer@geo.uni-mainz.de
The office of the Chancellor of JGU:                                  regina.dietz@uni-mainz.de
Dr. Ronen A. Cohen, AUC:                                                      ronenco@ariel.ac.il
Prof. Michael Zinigrad, Rector, AUC:                                rector@ariel.ac.il

---

Update. Less then 24 hours after this post was published and the letter sent, Prof. Dr. Meyer rescinded the cancellation and apologized to Dr. Ronen A. Cohen:

It is a pleasure for me to inform you that the Council of DAVO and the organizers of the DAVO Congress have accepted the argument that academic freedom should have priority in comparison to considerations of international law. Therefore, you are welcome as participant of the DAVO Congress.
I would like to apologize personally for any inconveniences which you might have suffered from the rejection of your participation.
I look forward to meeting you in Berlin.

I thank all who took the issue as seriously as it deserved and helped to restore the genuine values to their proper place.

Petition for boycott of an Israeli college

Today we learned about yet another petition calling for the academic boycott of the College (University Center) of Judea and Samaria in Ariel. While neither the full text of the petition nor the complete list of signatories is  publicly available*, the excerpts published in the newspapers suffice to grasp the spirit of the petition, which calls to de-legitimization of Israeli scientists and teachers based on the geographic location of their college on the disputed land.

The phenomenon is not new, and calls for academic boycott of Israeli universities and schools are periodically launched on various occasions and without any pretext at all. This time the petition is trumpeted as being initiated and signed by representatives of natural sciences, which allegedly adds more credibility to the claim. This implicit allegation makes it impossible for me to remain silent.

Neither spreading hatred and discord, not contamination of knowledge with emotions and prejudiced stance is beneficial to the society or science. On behalf of those who share these seemingly obvious points, I wish to express regret about such actions of our colleagues. In my view, academic degrees and ranks, even the highest prizes, do not make their bearers immune to errors of judgment.  However, these decorations can dangerously misled the society on the validity of the erroneous conclusions.

As someone who on a couple of occasions was refused a handshake by a foreign colleague for simply being an Israeli, I find it most disgusting to learn that similar discrimination is advocated by my fellow colleagues, some of whom I deeply respect for their great achievements. On behalf of all scientists who think that scientific boycott is an obscenity pure and simple, I apologize before those who feel offended by the petition of 155. I promise that I will do my best to support the research of my colleagues in Ariel, if only to correct the wrongdoing.
___________________

*Update 13.01.2011: the list can be found here (in Hebrew).