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Gideon Toury ("Mona Baker's double standard", THES , February 7) is right to note the perversity of Mona Baker's attempt to justify the boycott by a British "private citizen" (Baker) of an Israeli "public representative" (Toury). After all, both are professors. But this is not Baker's only double standard.

Does she also ban academics from countries such as Iraq, Syria and North Korea? I hope not. Any such act is anti-academic and lacks intellectual integrity. I would be ashamed to belong to the same scholarly community as Baker. But, then again, we are all "private citizens", are we not?

Ghil'ad Zuckermann
Gulbenkian research fellow
Churchill College, Cambridge