The main aspiration of any totalitarian is for the population to become cretinized and buy into their mental framework, no matter how polarizing and illiterate it may be. This is what happened this week, when the governing council of the University of Barcelona approved breaking collaboration with Israeli academic institutions and companies supposedly linked to the conflict, as stated in a communiqué, "until conditions in the Gaza area guarantee a situation of absolute peace and respect for human rights." I applaud loudly the academics of the alma mater in Barcelona, because this decision will especially satisfy a politician as nefarious as Benjamin Netanyahu and the fascists of Hamas, both interested in profiting from a horrific conflict that feeds on transforming victim discourse into militarized revenge. Professors, you should go back to school.
There is no war that ends by bombing academic relations and skipping classes in order to spend the morning camping. On the contrary, the most powerful message against the junkies of conflict is precisely the university; it is a congress where a Jew and a Palestinian can chat amicably about their respective national literatures and a Catalan student can listen to them thanks to a collaboration agreement with, for example, Tel-Aviv University. There is not a single struggle between men and women that has been resolved with less education; there is no university in the world that has fostered peace by cutting ties with an institution (be it Israeli or from Mars) with whom it shares the beautiful function of culturizing people so that they pick up more books than machine guns. What the University of Barcelona has done is, contrary to what it might seem, a fatally warlike gesture.
I am tremendously in favor of stopping as soon as possible the barbarity that the Netanyahu administration is perpetrating in Gaza, and I would also like to see how the Jewish president ends up paying judicially for the atrocities he has committed against so many innocent victims. Also, of course, I wish that Palestine could address the civilized world as a full-fledged state, preferably governed by people much more sensible, secular, and tolerant than the unfortunate Hamas. And despite this, I do not cease to admire Israel for its rich culture and for constituting one of the few real democracies in the Middle East, even if now it is monopolized by a political coalition with which I wouldn't even go for a coffee and which already tried to appropriate the state with a fortunately aborted judicial reform. The government of Israel disgusts me, but Israelis –at least– can remove it through ballot boxes and votes.
What the University of Barcelona has done is, contrary to what it might seem, a fatally warlike gesturePrecisely because of all this, I want the public university where I studied to continue maintaining all possible brotherhood with the humanistic and academic culture of each side, because only then can we somehow help peace. Less boycotts and more Kant, dear professors. It is a real shame that 59 professors from the UB Cloister voted favorably to break relations with their Israeli colleagues, although it is even more shameful that in the vote where this barbarity was approved, 37 academics abstained. This is the most cynical position, because I am sure that many of these professors wanted to vote against and they shit their pants in the name of political correctness and to avoid angering the minority of students who have demonstrated thinking much more about their ego than about the future of the Palestinians.
The UB authorities are still in time to stop a measure that has nothing to do with university culture and that only harms their students, whom –I must also say– I sincerely pity for having such a profoundly unlettered faculty. The encampment wins, the classroom loses; this is usually not good news. Especially for good students, who will see their universe diminished. As for the bell-ringers, I don't worry much, because many of them –I have seen it from my own experience– will end up serving as parliamentarians. You and I paying the salary, of course…