About a week ago there was an article in the New York Times stating that the U.S. State Department rescinded its Fulbright scholarships to 7 Palestinians living in Gaza. The Palestinian Campaign for the Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel issued a petition trying to reinstate these scholarships and a blog emerged agitating for the same thing. Amazingly something clicked and these students are now allowed to come to the U.S. to study next year. While certainly it’s great that these 7 students get to pursue their studies, as the Palestinian Human Rights Centre’s Narratives Under Siege makes clear: there are at least 700 other Palestinian students who are denied the right to travel to their universities whether abroad or in the West Bank. I don’t imagine the U.S. State Department or anyone else will intervene on this matter. I did a brief radio interview this morning for Naji Ali’s Crossing the Line on the subject and specifically how this illustrates why the academic boycott is so necessary.