Boycotts and petitions

I've followed (with a modest amount of interest) the story of the British Association of University Teachers decision to boycott Israeli universities (and Israeli scholars) in protest against their government's treatment of the Palestinians.

I am not a supporter of the current government of Israel or its policies.  I am, however, appalled by the notion that Israel (out of all of the nations of the world) has acted with unique wickedness.  If the British left really had the courage of its convictions, they would surely want to boycott most American universities, given the Bush Administration's record in Iraq?  What about universities throughout the Islamic world?  What about Russian universities, given Chechnya?  It's not a defense of Israel to say that the Israeli government is not the "worst" in the world; why single out the world's one Jewish state for boycott?

I like this little op-ed from Israeli scholar Yediot Aharonot: Why Us?  Recognizing Israel's appalling treatment of the Palestinians, Aharonot acknowledges that Israeli academics have not gone far enough in speaking out against their government:

Perhaps it would be more worthwhile for the Israeli Academy to direct its anger (at the boycott) at the government and demand that it finally put a stop to this wall.

Agreed. But in the meantime, non-Israeli academics need to draw a distinction between the actions of a rogue government and the right of its scholars to participate in the world-wide intellectual community.  In this blog, I defended Jacques Pluss; in that same spirit of knee-jerk liberalism, I oppose this boycott.

Ralph Luker at Cliopatria notes that an on-line petition opposing the boycott has been created by Jeff Weintraub at Penn.  This morning, I was signer #262.  The petition simply recapitulates the stance of the American Association of University Professors:

Delegates to a recent meeting of the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) approved resolutions that damage academic freedom. The resolutions call on all members of AUT to "refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration, or joint projects" with two universities in Israel, Haifa University and Bar Ilan University. Excluded from the ban are "conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state's colonial and racist policies," an exclusion which, because it requires compliance with a political or ideological test in order for an academic relationship to continue, deepens the injury to academic freedom rather than mitigates it.

These resolutions have been met with strong condemnation and calls for repeal within the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The American Association of University Professors joins in condemning these resolutions and in calling for their repeal. Since its founding in 1915, the AAUP has been committed to preserving and advancing the free exchange of ideas among academics irrespective of governmental policies and however unpalatable those policies may be viewed. We reject proposals that curtail the freedom of teachers and researchers to engage in work with academic colleagues, and we reaffirm the paramount importance of the freest possible international movement of scholars and ideas. The AAUP urges the AUT to support the right of all in the academic community to communicate freely with other academics on matters of professional interest.

The highlighted bit is mine; it's what I found most egregious about the AUT's stance.  Mind you, I do think academic unions should take political stands. I do think universities have a right, even an obligation, to take moral positions on global issues.  But as the son of two college professors, the brother of another, raised in the academic world my whole life, I've always fancied the idea of professors as "stateless intellectuals".  We have politics, we have passports, but we also have the international, borderless, life of the mind.  We are -- or ought to be -- equally at home at academic conferences in Berlin and Bogota, Cape Town and Calgary, Tuscaloosa and Tel Aviv, Phnom Penh and Pasadena.  And when we meet each other, write to each other, argue with each other, we ought to see each other as individual scholars rather than representatives of the states in which we hold citizenship and whose policies we may or may not endorse.

Is that a woefully elitist vision?  I suspect my friends who support the AUT would say so. 

Please consider signing the petition.  As I did so, I prayed for the people of Israel, for the Palestinian people, and for all those (including the wonderful CPTers) who are struggling to make peace.

Comments

[djw]

Chris Bertram has written about this at crookedtimber.org. As a member of AUT, he's particularly appalled, and has been working to against this ridiculous boycott. His theory is that there was a lack of interest in involvement in AUT and as such a vocal minority managed to push through something most would have found unacceptable. Lesson: go to Union meetings, because if the only people who show up are misguided troublemakers...

[Pip]

I haven't attended AUT Council for several years, but had I been there I would probably have voted for the boycotts. An important thing to bear in mind is that this is not a boycott of Israeli academe in general, on the grounds that Israel is a uniquely evil or racist state. It's a boycott of two specific universities that the AUT regards as guilty of bad practice. There's nothing very unusual about this. We spent much of the last year boycotting Nottingham University (UK), because of its intransigence in contract negotiations.

Let's bear in mind that the AUT is something the AAUP is not -- a union. It views the relationship between academics and universities in terms of employees and employers. Part of the role of a union is to highlight and seek to redress bad practice by employers -- at home and abroad. In any other sphere of employment, this would pretty much go without saying.

[Hugo]

But the bad practice, dear brother, is essentially political rather than procedural, isn't it? Why not include, say, Bob Jones University here in the States for its unflagging opposition to homosexuality and Catholicism and fervent support for Bush's Mideast policy? It just seems so incredibly selective...

[mythago]

Anti-semitism is not new to the left, especially the academic left.

[Col Steve]

non-Israeli academics need to draw a distinction between the actions of a rogue government and the right of its scholars to participate in the world-wide intellectual community

Rogue:
1. Vicious and solitary. Used of an animal, especially an elephant.
2. Large, destructive, and anomalous or unpredictable: a rogue wave; a rogue tornado.
3. Operating outside normal or desirable controls

Yes, Mythago, you are right.

If the British left (AUT in this case) really had the courage of its convictions...they would demand their employers turn down, and have their members refuse to participate in activities funded by, the millions of dollars given by the US DOD and the far greater amount of pounds given by the UK MOD each year to UK universities for research and other activities. Money must fall into a different political or ideological test category in defining "bad activities."

[Pip]

From my personal political perspective, I think boycotting Bob Jones University and -- now that you mention it Col. Steve -- institutions that feed off defense money would be a fine idea. Unfortunately, I doubt I would be able to carry my colleagues in the AUT with me on those votes. Not, mythago, because we're a bunch of lefty anti-semites, but because the aforementioned institutions aren't acting in contravention of UN Resolutions (as Bar Ilan is, by propping up the illegal College of Judea and Samaria in the Occupied Territories) or guilty of the political persecution of their own staff (as Haifa is). Note that the AUT did not support the call for a boycott of Jerusalem's Hebrew University. The charge in that case was bulldozing Palestinian families out of their homes to build dorms. Pretty nasty, but not, it was judged, in the same leage with Bar Ilan and Haifa.

[Stentor]

This is a good example of what I call the "Mr. Jordan strategy." When someone in my 6th grade math class misbehaved, Mr. Jordan would give extra homework to the good kids. He told us if we didn't want the extra homework, we should use peer pressure to make the bad kids shape up. The Mr. Jordan strategy failed, because it just made the good kids resent Mr. Jordan. Similarly, the boycott will just make Israeli academics resent British ones.

But even if the strategy did "work," in the sense of getting Israeli academics to denounce their government's actions, it wouldn't help a single Palestinian. The opinions of academics have about zero influence on the actions of their governments. So we've got one group of intellectuals trying to strongarm another group into doing the correct meaningless posturing.

[mythago]

but because the aforementioned institutions aren't acting in contravention of UN Resolutions

Is that the only criterion which the AUT uses?

[NancyP]

The boycott would seem to be counterproductive, in that in general the universities have a broader range of dissent than most other institutions, and dissent is worth fostering. Boycotts tend to get people to close ranks and might well limit the range of publicly expressed dissent. Of course, if the univ. in question fired a teacher for expressing dissenting viewpoint in a non-violent fashion, then a labor action might be in order until the issue was resolved, since the issue was clearly within the univ.'s ability to change the outcome. But to blame the univ. for the Wall seems a bit dunderheaded.

Why not boycott agricultural products instead, particularly those types grown on the West Bank?

[David hirsh]

Engage, at www.liberoblog.com was set up in order to organise the campaign within AUT against the boycott decision. We have been successful in calling the Special Conference of AUT on May 26, and are currently organising in each AUT branch to send policy and delegates to the Special Conference. Please look at our website regularly for news, information and arguments.

[boaz sharon]

The AUT should begin by boycotting itself for not doing enough to stop UK participation in the Iraq war

Boaz Sharon
Professor, University of Florida