Hard to be a Palestinian Professor

Prof. David Newman, a staunchly left-wing Israeli professor at Ben Gurion University, explains why boycotting Israeli universities is a truly dumb idea. He offers a number of interesting reasons; I found this one particularly interesting:

In most cases, it is the Palestinian side which prefers to keep the project out of sight of the media. Important groups within Palestinian civil society, such as trade unions and academics, are highly critical of those who want to cooperate on a basis of equality when, in reality, there is no equality – political or economic. They are uncomfortable with the thought that through cooperation they are, de facto, legitimizing the occupation. Palestinian academics who work with Israelis find the political pressure to bow to the anti-intellectual logic of the boycott campaign difficult to deal with.