Livnat boycotts BGU due to faculty member's 'incitement'

From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material)

Anshel Pfeffer | Haaretz | 22 April 2004

Education Minister Limor Livnat is boycotting Ben-Gurion University of the Negev so long as it continues to employ political sociologist Prof. Lev Grinberg, she has told BGU President Prof. Avishai Braverman.
Following the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Grinberg wrote in an article that Israel was carrying out the “symbolic genocide of the Palestinian people.”
The article, which was published in a Belgian newspaper, stirred a number of protests against the sociologist, who heads the Hubert Humphrey Institute for Social Research.
In response to an invitation from Braverman to attend a ceremony at the end of the university’s board of governors events next month, Livnat wrote, “In light of the university’s decision to refrain from taking action against the grave incitement published by Grinberg, I cannot, in good conscience, stand alongside the directors of the university at such events – not so long as Ben-Gurion University continues to serve as the academic home of such a lecturer.”
This is not the first time Livnat has complained to Braverman about Grinberg. Two years ago, she sent the BGU president a letter, asking him to denounce anti-Sharon criticism written by the political sociologist in Tikkun magazine. In this incident, Braverman responded that Grinberg’s comments were “inappropriate, and it would have been better had they not be made.” However, he added, “the directors of an academic institution cannot control the statements made by all of its members, even if they exploit their rights to academic freedom.”