Earlier this month, hundreds of universities rallied behind their Israeli counterparts and signed a petition in opposition to a proposed UK boycott of that nation’s academics. The presidents of Dartmouth, Cornell, and Princeton all signed on to the statement that Columbia President Lee Bollinger drafted. Heck, even Penn President Amy Gutmann, of faux suicide bomber photo op fame, signed on. Sure, it’s mostly just a feel-good resolution that might actually make things worse, but these kinds of things are the bread and butter of academia. Religion masquerading as science? Sign a petition. ROTC knocking at your campus’ doorstep? Sign a petition. A rape and/or use of racial epithets may or may not have occurred at a lacrosse team and/or private gathering? Sign a petition.

Except Harvard President Drew Faust does not roll that way, especially not in a way that would have her name printed a good 4 pts. smaller than this riff-raff Bollinger. You can almost feel the frigidity:

Finally, while I am most comfortable expressing my views on such matters directly in my own words as opposed to signing group statements or petitions, I obviously join many colleagues throughout the international academic community in denouncing unequivocally an action that would serve no purpose and would fundamentally violate the academic freedoms we must defend at all costs.

In other words, Faust may agree with what you say, but will defend to the death her right to say it separately. And indeed, a good 15 minutes of intense Google searching could not find a single, lone petition or joint letter that Faust has signed.

Of course, all that is still a bit more admirable than what’s been insinuated as Yale’s reason for not signing on: Fear of alienating big donors. Come on, Yale, you’ve got your racially-charged stereotypes all backwards!

[Via 02138]

–MICHAEL MORISY

EDIT: Thanks, G.T.