Nobel Prize winner has principles

A Nobel Prize winner who engaged in principled behavior. Wow! Actually I shouldn’t be so surprised. It seems that it’s only Nobel Peace Prize winners who have problems distinguishing between right and wrong. (Right about now, I’m thinking of such “luminaries” as Mohamed ElBaradei, winner in 2005; Wangari Muta Maathai, winner in 2004; Jimmy Carter, winner in 2002; Kofi Annan and the United Nations, winners in 2001; and Yassar Arafat, a winner in 1994.)

Professor Steven Weinberg, however, is a winner for his work in physics, a hard science, which may explain his ability to avoid pesky moral nuances and go right to the heart of the matter:

An American Nobel prize laureate has withdrawn from a speaking engagement at a London university, citing anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment in the United Kingdom, a British newspaper reported Thursday.

According to The Guardian, Professor Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas told the Imperial College that his decision was motivated by a move by Britain’s National Union of Journalists to boycott Israeli products.

Weinberg had been due to honor Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam, a co-winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize for physics, The Guardian said.

The paper quoted Weinberg as telling the college that he believes the NUJ’s move stems from the “desire to pander to the growing Muslim minority in Britain.”

In his letter of withdrawal, Weinberg wrote that, “given the history of the attacks on Israel and the oppressiveness and aggressiveness of other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, boycotting Israel indicated a moral blindness for which it is hard to find any explanation other than anti-Semitism.”

The Guardian said that Weinberg also pulled out of a 2006 conference at Durham University due to a boycott of Israeli academics imposed by lecturers’ union NATFHE.

Hat tip: Richard Baehr