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UC professors deserve an “F”

Giora Stavi Berkeley
Thursday June 06, 2002

To the Editor: 

When our neighborhood shoemaker’s wife started making shoes, the shoes didn’t fit right anymore… When my high school math teacher became ill and her husband came to teach us, somehow, although he did know math, he wasn’t as good of teacher as she was. 

So, I learned at a very early age that one can get much better results from people who have expertise, if one only let people do what they know how to do. To take their place one needs to become very determined, study, and work hard to become an expert himself. 

The action by some 140 University of California professors, including 68 from UC Berkeley who signed a petition calling on the university to divest from Israel, joining professors at Harvard, MIT, Princeton and Tufts University who have taken similar action, defies that simple but proven common sense. Yes, one can assume that these people are knowledgeable in their fields or, they wouldn’t become professors at these well-known universities, but expertise in biology or history or even in mathematics doesn’t make you an expert in investment or world affairs.  

We all know that these people want to bring peace to the Middle East However, the assumption that the effect of divesting from Israel will cause what they think it will, is way off.  

These professors assume that if Israel will give back to the Arabs what the Arabs lost when they tried to take it all, it will bring an end to this war.  

Israel withdrew from Lebanon, giving “land for peace”. It didn’t stop the Hezbollah from shelling Israeli towns from Lebanon. The exact opposite is true. When Israeli soldiers moved away, the Hezbollah could reach farther into Israel and ever since used this opportunity for a new menu of daily shelling which is about to bring a new war between Israel and Syria. 

What the Arabs are calling “a just and equitable peace” is a slogan that was designed to keep the “cause” in front of the eyes of the people who pay the money to keep running their terrorist organizations and keep its top operators happy and well fed.  

Unfortunately, some 140 University of California professors just got an “F” in “World affairs” and sadly also an “F” in Investment criteria. The good news is that they care and for that we should give them a C+ for trying.