The University of Bari and the Italian scientist boycotted for working in Israel

It is with deep regret that we learn from Il Riformista, an Italian political and financial newspaper based in Rome, that Prof. Francesca Levi-Schaffer, an Italian scientist who lives and works in Jerusalem, was invited to present her research at a conference on asthma and then excluded.

The reason given had nothing to do with the quality of her work and everything to do with her affiliation: The invitation was withdrawn on the grounds of the institutional policies adopted by the University of Bari regarding academic collaborations with Israeli institutions.

Levi-Schaffer’s profile makes the decision all the more difficult to understand. She is the Professor Emerita of Immunopharmacology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, trained in Milan; earned her Ph.D. in Immunology at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot; and completed her postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School.

She is an internationally recognized authority on mast cells and eosinophils, the immune cells that drive the inflammatory processes underlying chronic and debilitating diseases such as asthma. She holds several patents, has authored hundreds of scientific publications, held leadership roles in the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (IUPHAR) and served as president of the European Mast Cell and Basophil Research Network. At the Hebrew University, she held the chair of immunopharmacology.

She is, without question, a source of pride for both Italy and Israel.

The Hebrew University itself counts numerous Nobel laureates among its faculty and alumni, and its research has given rise to drugs now used throughout the world. None of this appears to have carried any weight in the University of Bari’s decision. An Italian scientist found the door closed to her not because of anything she had done, but because of where she works.

I write these lines in a personal as well as professional capacity. Like Levi-Schaffer, I am Italian-Israeli. I teach histology and embryology at the University of Palermo and am a visiting professor in the Department of Immunopharmacology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I know firsthand the value of scientific collaboration between the two countries. And I know how unjust it is to reduce a person, and their work, to the institution printed on their badge.

Italian academia, however, is not defined by the choice made in Bari.

At the same time, another university in southern Italy welcomed Prof. Levi-Schaffer with full honors. On Oct. 8, at the historic Aula Nesci of the Palermo School of Medicine, I had the privilege of hosting her for a lectio magistralis as part of the Ph.D. program in biomedicine, neuroscience and advanced diagnostics at the University of Palermo.

Before an audience of colleagues, doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers, medical residents and senior clinicians, Levi-Schaffer presented her findings on an important cellular receptor. She also discussed data from an ongoing study on the tumor microenvironment of the salivary glands, the result of a collaboration between her laboratory and the Section of Histology and Embryology of the BiND Department, with which I coordinate this line of research.

In recent years, the BiND Department has built a network of international and intercontinental partnerships of rare breadth, and that day was a tangible demonstration of it.

Levi-Schaffer was also the guest of the Schools of Respiratory Medicine in Palermo and Catania, and on Oct. 9 and Oct. 10, she delivered a keynote address at a conference on asthma held in Palermo.

So, we are dealing with the same subject and the same speaker. The speaker was turned away in Bari and welcomed as a guest of honor in Palermo. It is regrettable that the University of Bari, a major southern Italian institution whose history and potential deserve far better, made a choice that did it no credit.

But this case goes well beyond a single university and challenges all of us.

Modern science rests on a simple principle, which the sociologist Robert K. Merton called “universalism”: The value of an idea is judged on the strength of its evidence and method, not on the origin, nationality or affiliation of the person proposing it.

The Italian Constitution itself, in Article 33, guarantees the freedom of the arts and sciences, and the freedom to teach them. To exclude a researcher because of her affiliation is to abandon this principle and replace it with a form of collective responsibility that universities, more than any other institution, ought to reject.

Foreign policy, armed conflict and institutional agreements can all be legitimately debated. But penalizing an individual scholar for the nationality of her university is something else entirely. It does not advance peace, it protects no civilian population, and it alters the course of no war.

What it does produce is certain harm. It interrupts scientific dialogue and isolates precisely those researchers who, like Levi-Schaffer, build bridges between cultures and countries every day. It also deprives students and young doctors of the opportunity to engage with those who are developing the therapies of tomorrow.

Diseases know no borders, and neither should the research that fights them. An asthma patient in Bari gains nothing from the fact that one of the world’s leading experts on their disease is not allowed to speak in their city.

Those of us who belong to both countries know that a scientist’s identity is not a flag to be raised or lowered. It is a wealth of experiences, languages and knowledge that enriches anyone curious enough to listen. To turn this dual belonging into grounds for exclusion is to lose precisely what makes it valuable.

History, moreover, should make us especially vigilant. Twentieth-century Italy witnessed the expulsion of scientists from their chairs and academies not because of the merit of their research, but because of who they were.

The point is not to equate different eras. It is to remember how quickly one can slide from judging an institution to judging a person, and how long the road to redress can be.

This is why Levi-Schaffer’s case must not pass in silence. We ask academics, researchers, students and all citizens not to regard it as a distant or partisan matter. We ask the governing bodies of the University of Bari to reconsider their position, drawing a clear distinction between institutional policy and the respect owed to individual scholars.

And we ask the Italian academic community to reaffirm, in word and in deed, that our lecture halls are open to those who have knowledge to share and something to teach, not closed due to the name on their badge.

Palermo has shown that another path is possible. Universities were founded to open doors, not to build walls. That is where we must begin again.