Boycotting Israeli universities: A victory for bigotry. By Alan M. Dershowitz. Haaretz, December 17, 2013. Also at Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. Also here.
The ASA Advances the Longstanding Anti-Zionist War on Academia. By Gil Troy. History News Network, December 15, 2013.
Backing the Israeli Boycott. By Elizabeth Redden. Inside Higher Ed, December 17, 2013.
Boycott by Academic Group Is a Symbolic Sting to Israel. By Richard Pérez-Peña and Jodi Rudoren. New York Times, December 16, 2013.
Lawrence Summers ASA boycott resolution on Charlie Rose show. Video. ASA Members for Academic Freedom, December 12, 2013. YouTube. Also here. Full interview at Bloomberg, Charlie Rose.
Tenured radicals cannot be trusted with our academic freedom. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, December 10, 2013.
Lawrence Summers: Academic boycott of Israel is “anti-Semitism in effect.” By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, December 13, 2013.
“American Studies” group to boycott Israel. By Leo Rennert. American Thinker, December 17, 2003.
5,000 US Profs Endorse “Ethical” Boycott of Israeli Colleges. By Cathy Burke. Newsmax, December 16, 2013.
Having Boycotted Israel, American Academics Must Now Boycott Themselves. By Liel Leibovitz. Tablet, December 5, 2013.
Leibovitz:
This is
atrocious stuff, but it’s hardly the gravest of the ASA’s failings. As the
association’s statement draws to its close, particularly attentive students are
treated to one more bit of anti-intellectual buffoonery. “The ASA,” reads the
statement, “also has a history of critical engagement with the field of Native
American and Indigenous studies that has increasingly come to shape and
influence the field and the Association, and the Council acknowledged the force
of Israeli and U.S. settler colonialism throughout our deliberations.”
Colonialists, as anyone who had stayed awake during an introductory history
course in college may remember, arrive from faraway lands to inhabit parts
unknown to which they’ve no other claim but that seized by force, and proceed
to strip the land of its resources for the benefit and glory of their
Motherland overseas. It would take a particularly muddled mind to argue that
Jews, even those returning to Zion after centuries in exile, fit this
criterion, what with the Bible and all. And it would take an even bigger dunce
to suggest that the Jewish pioneers who tilled the fields and tended the groves
and built factories and roads did so for any other reason than to cultivate the
land itself.
ASA Members Vote to Endorse Academic Boycott of Israel. American Studies Association, December 16, 2013. Facebook.
Dershowitz:
The
American Studies Association has just issued its first ever call for an
academic boycott. No, it wasn’t against China, which imprisons dissenting
academics. It wasn’t against Iran which executes dissenting academics. It
wasn’t against Russia whose universities fire dissenting academics. It wasn’t
against Cuba whose universities have no dissenting academics. It wasn’t against
Saudi Arabia, whose academic institutions refuse to hire women, gay or
Christian academics. Nor was it against the Palestinian Authority, whose
colleges refuse to allow open discourse regarding the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. No, it was against only academic institutions in the Jewish State of
Israel, whose universities have affirmative action programs for Palestinian
students and who boast a higher level of academic freedom than almost any
country in the world.
When
the association was considering this boycott I issued a challenge to its
members, many of whom are historians. I asked them to name a single country in
the history of the world faced with threats comparable to those Israel faces
that has had a better record of human rights, a higher degree of compliance
with the rule of law, a more demanding judiciary, more concern for the lives of
enemy civilians, or more freedom to criticize the government, than the State of
Israel.
Not a
single member of the association came up with a name of a single country. That
is because there are none. Israel is not perfect, but neither is any other
country, and Israel is far better than most. If an academic group chooses to
engage in the unacademic exercise of boycotting the academic institutions of
another country, it should do it in order of the seriousness of the human
rights violations and of the inability of those within the country to seek
redress against those violations.
By
these standards, Israeli academic institutions should be among the last to be
boycotted.
I
myself disagree with Israel’s settlement policy and have long urged an end to
the occupation. But Israel offered to end the occupation twice in the last 13
years. They did so in 2000-2001 when Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the
Palestinians a state on approximately 95% of the occupied territories. Then it
did so again in 2008 when former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered an even
more generous deal. The Palestinians accepted neither offer and certainly share
the blame for the continuing occupation. Efforts are apparently underway once
again to try to end the occupation, as peace talks continue. The Palestinian
Authority's President Mahmoud Abbas himself opposes academic boycotts of
Israeli institutions.
China
occupies Tibet, Russia occupies Chechnya and several other countries occupy
Kurdish lands. In those cases no offers have been made to end the occupation.
Yet no boycotts have been directed against the academic institutions of those
occupying countries.
When
the President of the American Studies Association, Curtis Marez, an associate
professor of ethnic studies at The University of California, was advised that
many nations, including all of Israel’s neighbors, behave far worse than
Israel, he responded, “One has to start somewhere.” This boycott, however, has
not only started with Israel. It will end with Israel. Marez’s absurd comment
reminds me of the bigoted response made by Harvard’s notorious anti-Semitic
president A. Laurence Lowell, when he imposed anti-Jewish quotas near the
beginning of the twentieth century. When asked why he singled out Jews for
quotas, he replied, “Jews cheat.” When the great Judge Learned Hand reminded
him that Christians cheat too, Lowell responded, “You’re changing the subject.
We are talking about Jews now.”
You
would think that historians and others who belong to the American Studies
Association would understand that in light of the history of discrimination
against Jews, you can’t just pick the Jewish State and Jewish universities as
the place to “start” and stop.
The
American Studies Association claims that it is not boycotting individual
Israeli professors, but only the universities at which they teach. That is a
nonsensical word game, since no self-respecting Israeli professor would
associate with an organization that singled out Israeli colleges and
universities for a boycott. Indeed, no self-respecting American professor
should in any way support the bigoted actions of this association.
Several
years ago, when a similar boycott was being considered, a group of American
academics circulated a counter-petition drafted by Nobel Prize Physicist Steven
Weinberg and I that read as follows:
“We
are academics, scholars, researchers and professionals of differing religious
and political perspectives. We all agree that singling out Israelis for an
academic boycott is wrong. To show our solidarity with our Israeli academics in
this matter, we, the undersigned, hereby declare ourselves to be Israeli
academics for purposes of any academic boycott. We will regard ourselves as
Israeli academics and decline to participate in any activity from which Israeli
academics are excluded.”
More
than 10,000 academics signed this petition including many Nobel Prize winners,
presidents of universities and leading scholars from around the world.
Shame
on those members of the American Studies Association for singling out the Jew
among nations. Shame on them for applying a double standard to Jewish
universities. Israeli academic institutions are strong enough to survive this
exercise in bigotry. The real question is will this association survive its
complicity with the oldest and most enduring prejudice?
