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<h1 class="entry-title"><small>Defending Zionism under the cloak of
academic freedom</small></h1>
<div class="entry-meta"> <em><a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/author/robin-d-g-kelley"
title="Posts by Robin D. G. Kelley" rel="author">Robin D. G. Kelley</a>
on January 4, 2014<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/01/defending-zionism-academic.html">http://mondoweiss.net/2014/01/defending-zionism-academic.html</a></small></small></b><br>
</em> </div>
<br>
<p dir="ltr">In a widely circulated<a
href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/19/opinion/la-oe-roth-academic-boycott-israel-20131219"> <em>Los
Angeles Times</em></a> op ed piece, Wesleyan University president
Michael S. Roth denounced the American Studies Association’s (ASA)
resolution to support a boycott of Israeli academic institutions as “a
repugnant attack on academic freedom.” Parroting near-identical
responses by other American university presidents, Roth’s ill-informed,
grossly distorted polemic took me by surprise. While I do not expect
him to agree with our stance, I did expect a more considered and
intellectually honest disagreement from the president of Wesleyan
University—a world-class institution with a long and distinguished
record of teaching (and doing) social justice, grounded in an
internationalist, humanist vision of liberal arts education; a school
to which I gave nearly a quarter of a million dollars of my hard-earned
academic salary so that my daughter (class of 2012) could learn what it
means to be an informed, critical, engaged citizen of the world.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Roth either misread or deliberately misrepresented the
resolution’s carefully considered language. He asserts that the ASA
targets Israeli academic institutions merely for their “national
affiliation.” This is not true. They are targeted for their complicity
in the illegal occupation and government policies of dispossession,
repression, and racism. He also claims that the resolution extends to
individual faculty. It does not. It strongly condemns any attempts to
single out and/or isolate Israeli scholars or any scholar of any
nationality. On the contrary, the resolution and its authors encourage
collaboration and dialogue, but outside the official channels of the
Israeli state-supported institutions that continue to directly benefit
from or support the occupation.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Roth repeats the well-worn argument that Israel is being
singled out because the ASA has not boycotted countries with documented
human rights abuses. But countries such as North Korea have no formal
institutional ties to the ASA, and in most instances our own government
has taken action, imposing sanctions and trade barriers or openly
condemning violations of human rights or war crimes. Of course, there
are egregious exceptions such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain—U.S.-backed
repressive regimes that some of our most prominent ASA members have
subjected to sharp criticisms.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But all of this is beside the point: Israel and the U.S.
have a “special” relationship. As <a
href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/blowback/la-ol-israel-academic-boycott-blowback-20131227,0,4082285.story">Carolyn
Karcher recently reminded us</a> in her rebuttal to Roth’s op ed, “the
U.S. not only gives far more military aid to Israel than to any other
country, but has also vetoed all U.N. resolutions in recent memory that
condemn Israel’s abuses of human rights. The ASA resolution
specifically cites the ‘significant role’ the U.S. plays in
underwriting Israel’s violations of international law.” Three billion
dollars a year, every year, is an awful lot of money. The money flows
despite the fact that Israel’s blockade of Gaza, the source of the
region’s immense poverty, is a clear violation of Articles 33, 55, and
56 of the 4th Geneva Convention prohibiting the collective punishment
of civilians and requiring an occupying power to ensure access to food
and medical supplies, and to maintain hospital and public health
facilities.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Roth, who takes great pride in being a historian informed
about and even critical of Israel’s policies, knows that these
intermittent wars in Gaza, not to mention IDF attacks and home
demolitions in the West Bank, violate our own Arms Export Control Act,
which prohibits the use of U.S. weapons and military aid against
civilians. And the most recent violent racist attacks on African
immigrants in Israel represent some of the worst examples of human
rights violations. Some 60,000 undocumented workers, many having fled
war-torn or economically devastated countries such as Sudan and
Eritrea, are denied refugee status, subject to deportation and
imprisonment for up to a year without trial, and endure horrifying
violence from racist mobs. The entire community is accused of
committing rape, robbery and other crimes, and in<a
href="http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/african-migrants-attacked-in-tel-aviv/?_r=0">
Binyamin Netanyahu’s</a> words, threatening to destroy Israel’s “image
as a Jewish and democratic state.”<a
href="http://f8wee1vvia32pdxo527grujy61.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ASA-logo-tiff-1-copy.jpg"><br>
</a></p>
<p dir="ltr">“Under the guise of phony progressivism,” Roth writes,
“the [ASA] has initiated an irresponsible attack on academic freedom.”
It is not clear what Roth means by “phony,” but the academic and
cultural boycott is a legal, legitimate, non-violent form of protest
that targets institutions only. The original call for an international
campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) came from
Palestinian civil society organizations in 2005, inspired by the global
solidarity movement that helped end apartheid and bring nonracial
democracy to South Africa. Since then, the movement has gained support
globally as well as from Israeli organizations such as<a
href="http://boycottisrael.info/content/letter-american-studies-association">
Boycott from Within</a> and<a href="http://www.whoprofits.org/"> Who
Profits?</a> The ASA membership voted overwhelmingly to support the
resolution, but it did not come to this conclusion cavalierly. The
implication that some deep-seated anti-Israel or anti-Semitic sentiment
was behind it is downright insulting. The resolution resulted from a
long process of debate and deliberation within our organization over
how to respond to the ongoing 46-year occupation (the longest military
occupation in modern history), the deadly blockade of Gaza, the
escalation of violence, the expansion of illegal settlements, the
denial of academic freedom to Palestinians and some Israeli scholars
critical of their government, and the massive U.S. military aid to
Israel that ultimately underwrites ongoing dispossession and an
entrenched system of apartheid. These discussions began some six years
ago, and they have not been easy.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Had Roth taken time to read discussions leading up to the
resolution, particularly the extensive critical analyses by Judith
Butler or the special issue of the<em><a
href="http://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/journal-academic-freedom/volume-4-2013/editors-introduction-volume-4">
Journal of Academic Freedom</a></em> devoted to the question of
academic boycotts, he may not have been so quick to indict the
resolution as an “irresponsible attack on academic freedom.” As a
matter of fact, the boycott will have no direct impact on the ability
of individual Israeli scholars to teach, conduct research, and
participate in meetings, symposia, or conferences around the globe. And
ASA members are not required to abide by the resolution—it really only
applies to official association business. The most important point,
however, is that the resolution expresses a fundamental demand that the
privileges of academic freedom extend to all: Palestinian teachers,
researchers, students of all ages, as well as Jewish and Arab Israeli
scholars, writers, intellectuals, artists, and students critical of the
regime. Roth is silent when it comes to the academic freedom of
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and within Israel itself.</p>
<p dir="ltr">While cognizant of the limited space afforded opinion
pieces, I still find it baffling that an intellectual historian who has
written about the Holocaust can treat academic freedom as an autonomous
category separate and above other freedoms. As<a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2013/12/scholarly-responsibility-academic.html">
Sarah T. Roberts</a> so eloquently explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">It is a peculiar sort of academic elitism that puts
academic freedom, a somewhat abstract concept in itself, in a position
of primacy before other types of very real and tangible physical
freedoms: the freedom to circulate unimpeded, the freedom to be treated
as an equal citizen, the freedom to even access spaces of higher
education, which must certainly be a prerequisite for the much-lauded
academic freedom that is causing so much consternation.<span
style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;"> </span></p>
<p dir="ltr">Palestinian people living in lands occupied by Israel
are barred from these things. There are precious few freedoms for
Palestinians, academic or otherwise, in Israel and in occupied
Palestine. In this sense, the boycott is, in fact, a response to an
actual lack of academic freedom for an entire people, not the creation
of a potential for loss of some higher-order freedom for relatively few
individuals. Supporters of academic freedom must side with Palestinians
or their position makes little sense and loses its meaning completely.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">The boycott is one of many actions in defense of
Palestinians who are denied the right to travel freely because of
checkpoints and roadblock. Palestinian students and teachers risk
harassment, arrest, detention, injury and even death just to get to
their institutions to perform basic tasks like teaching, research, and
learning. In fact, in the first half of 2013 alone, 13,064 students
were affected by access denial, and UNICEF documented egregious
incidents of Israeli settlers in the West Bank attacking Palestinian
students. In the realm of higher education, Palestinian scholars are
routinely denied the right to travel abroad to participate in
conferences and symposia, let alone travel between Gaza and the West
Bank.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Any consideration of “academic freedom” must acknowledge
the ongoing history of Israeli raids, closures, and constant
disruptions of Palestinian universities such as Birzeit and Al Quds, as
well as the hundreds of students currently detained in Israeli prisons
for political activity, or for reasons unknown based on “secret
evidence.” Israel can detain Palestinians for up to six months without
charge or trial, with no limits on renewal. Administrative detention,
as it is called, is based on three laws: Military Order 1651 which
empowers the army to issue orders to detain civilians in the West Bank;
the Unlawful Combatants Law which applies to Gaza residents; and the
Emergency Powers Detention Law used against Israeli citizens. These
laws violate Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR), which prohibits arbitrary detention, requires
that detainees be told why they are being held, and stipulates that
every person has the right of habeas corpus.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Violations of Palestinian academic freedom in higher
education are legion. In 2008, filmmaker and professor<a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/academic-freedom-not-arabs-israel/7398">
Nizar Hassan</a> was suspended from his teaching position at Sapir
College because he asked an Israeli student not to carry his firearms
and wear his military uniform to class. The administration appointed a
committee to investigate Hassan’s alleged anti-Israel teaching, but he
argued before his interrogators that he had acted out of the very
humanist values that undergird a liberal arts education. “They wanted
to believe that I object to the army uniform because I am Palestinian,”
he explained. “But I reject the uniform because it is opposed to my
universal and human values. I acted as I did because I am a teacher and
a human being.” However, the committee thoroughly rejected Hassan’s
argument. An “Arab” humanist was simply inconceivable. The report
concludes: “Nizar [sic] abused his status and his authority as a
teacher to flaunt his opinions, feelings and frustrations as a member
of the Arab national minority in Israel, cloaking himself in a ‘humane’
and ‘universal’ garb, whereas in fact he demonstrated a stance of brute
force bearing a distinctly nationalist character.”1 The administration
threatened dismissal if Hassan did not apologize to the student and
submit a written statement promising to respect and honor the uniform
of the Israeli Defense Forces. Hassan refused. The administration
eventually backed down in the face of international pressure; Hassan
returned to his post after a one-semester paid suspension.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Academic freedom includes the right to free speech and
assembly. In November of 2012, during Israel’s bombing of Gaza
[Operation Pillar of Defense], Palestinian students at Hebrew
University were<a href="http://www.right2edu.org/date/2012/11/">
arrested for holding peaceful demonstration</a> in front of the campus,
and at Haifa University Palestinian students were<a
href="http://www.right2edu.org/date/2012/11/"> banned from further
protests after gathering to observe a minute of silence</a> in
solidarity with the people of Gaza. Following the ban, Zionist students
and staff were allowed to assemble in support of the bombing and many
chanted “Death to Arabs” and other virulently racist slogans.</p>
<p dir="ltr">One of the worst examples of state suppression of academic
freedom is the notorious “<a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2011/03/the-nakba-law-and-erasing-history.html">Nakba
Law</a>,” passed in the Knesset in March 2011. The Nakba (“catastrophe”
in Arabic) refers to the violent expulsion of some 750,000 Palestinians
from 380 villages during the 1948 war, and the barring of the refugee
population from the right to return or reclaim lost land, homes,
personal property, bank accounts, etc. The law permits the minister of
finance to reduce government funding to any institution (including
schools and universities, civic organizations and local governments)
that commemorates either independence day or the anniversary of the
establishment of the state of Israel as a day of mourning (‘Nakba
Day’), or mentions the Nakba in school textbooks. Besides the Nakba
Law, right-wing parties have passed laws that directly infringe on the
freedom of speech and academic freedom of Arab and Jewish citizens,
including the so-called ‘<a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/israel-passes-law-boycotts">boycott
law</a>’, which allows citizens to file a civil suit against anyone in
Israel who calls for a boycott against the state or Israeli settlers in
the West Bank – whether or not any damages can be proved.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In other words, many of us support the boycott out of
concern for academic freedom—though, as I pointed out above, this does
not supersede the main objective: to end the occupation and extend
civil and human rights to all. The university presidents who have come
out so strongly against the resolution betray a pedestrian
understanding of academic freedom, both here and inside
Palestine/Israel. Indeed, I was a bit surprised that neither Michael
Roth nor Larry Summers nor any of the American university presidents
who are so concerned about academic freedom mentioned the important<a
href="http://academic-access.weebly.com/"> document issued five years
ago by Israeli scholars</a> Menachem Fisch, Raphael Falk, Eva Jablonka,
and Snait Gissis of Tel-Aviv University. They called on the broader
academic community—especially senior scholars—to protest government and
university policies that deny academic freedom to Palestinian students
and faculty in the Occupied Territories:</p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">We, past and present members of academic staff of
Israeli universities, express great concern regarding the ongoing
deterioration of the system of higher education in the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip. We protest against the policy of our government which
is causing restrictions of freedom of movement, study and instruction,
and we call upon the government to allow students and lecturers free
access to all the campuses in the Territories, and to allow lecturers
and students who hold foreign passports to teach and study without
being threatened with withdrawal of residence visas. To leave the
situation as it is will cause serious harm to freedom of movement,
study and instruction – harm to the foundation of academic freedom, to
which we are committed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Nor have the university presidents much to say in defense
of Jewish Israeli scholars, whose criticisms of government policies
have left them vulnerable to blatant violations of their academic
freedom. In December of 2012,<a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/06/israeli-academic-banned-by-netanyahu">
Rivka Feldhay</a>, a professor at Tel Aviv University, was banned from
participating in a scientific conference in Berlin because she signed a
petition four years earlier supporting Israeli soldiers who refused to
serve in the West Bank. The right-wing Zionist group, Im Tirtzu (Hebrew
for “if you will it”) launched a virulent<a href="about:blank">
campaign against Tel Aviv University philosophy professor Anat Matar</a>
for her opposition to Israel’s administrative detention of Palestinian
prisoners. Dr. Matar is also a member of “Who Profits?: Exposing the
Israeli Occupation Industry,” whose son spent two years in prison for
refusing to enlist in the military. Im Tirtzu mobilized dozens of
students to file complaints against her to the university, but rather
than defend her right to free speech and intellectual freedom, the
university decided to investigate her.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Another Tel-Aviv professor, Yehuda Shenhav, experienced
similar attacks for statements he made in his anthropology class. A
particularly high profile case involved the Department of Politics and
Government at Ben Gurion University, where what began as an<a
href="http://www.countercurrents.org/gordon270810.htm"> Im Tirtzu-led
campaign largely against Professor Neve Gordon</a> turned into a
state-sponsored witch hunt against the entire department. As early as
2008, Im Tirtzu accused some of the politics faculty of anti-Zionism.
Then in August 2009, Professor Gordon published an op ed piece in the<a
href="http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/20/opinion/oe-gordon20"><em>
Los Angeles Times</em> in support of the BDS movement</a> in an effort
to force Israel to move toward a two-state solution. Attacks on
Professor Gordon coincided with a national review of all politics
departments. After a couple of high profile resignations and
administrative reshuffling, a reconstituted review committee issued a
damning report on Ben Gurion’s politics department that pointed to
“community activism” as a central problem. Although the university
acceded to the committee’s recommendations, the government’s Council
for Higher Education appointed another committee and concluded that the
department had to be shut down altogether. Only international pressure,
including a powerful<a
href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/14/opinion/la-oe-myers-israel-academic-freedom-20121014">
op ed piece in the <em>L.A. Times</em> by my colleague David Myers</a>,
compelled Israel’s Minister of Education to withdraw the order for
closure.</p>
<p dir="ltr">To put it bluntly, under the current regime academic
freedom and civil liberties for all—Palestinians, Bedouins, and African
immigrants more than others—are in jeopardy, and will remain in
jeopardy so long as Israeli society is rooted in occupation,
dispossession, militarization, racism and segregation. Some might argue
that violations of Jewish Israeli academic freedom make the case
against an academic boycott because, as Roth argues, there are Israeli
scholars critical of the regime. Of course, the defense of a segment of
academia at the expense of everyone else contradicts the principles of
academic freedom. But equally damning is the evidence that Israeli
universities have refused or are unable to protect their own faculty
and students. The facts are unequivocal: in every case, it is the
university administration that backs up state repression, that
participates in denying the very intellectual freedoms Roth and his
friends hold so sacrosanct. As the ASA resolution makes clear, Israeli
institutions are complicit, and in defense of all of our colleagues
they must be challenged.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Let me end with a very recent example of an assault on
intellectual freedom from right here in the U.S. Just this fall, the
artistic director of Washington D. C.’s Theater J and brilliant
playwright<a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/theater-j-scales-back-plans-to-stage-controversial-play-the-admission/2013/10/09/b7e43b78-3126-11e3-ad00-ec4c6b31cbed_story.html">
Ari Roth, decided to produce Motti Lerner’s controversial play, “The
Admission.”</a> It tells the story of Teddy Katz, a graduate student
whose master’s thesis uncovered an attack by an Israeli brigade on the
village of Tantura during the 1948 war. Although Katz never called it a
massacre, 240 unarmed Palestinians were killed and were never given the
opportunity to surrender. The play explores not only the massacre at
Tantura but the state’s attack on Katz and his defender and teacher,
historian Ilan Pappe. Despite presenting solid scholarly evidence
within the standards of academic history, Katz was forced to stand
trial, his thesis withdrawn from the University of Haifa, and Pappe was
eventually driven out of Israel. What is interesting is that a play
about a gross violation of academic freedom suddenly became the object
of a boycott by a group called Citizens Opposed to Propaganda
Masquerading as Art (COPMA). COPMA waged a vicious campaign against Ari
Roth and Lerner; Jewish Federations of Washington even threatened to
pull $250,000 in donations if the play were staged. Roth refused to
back down, just as he had a few years earlier when he produced the
controversial play “Return to Haifa.” But he was compelled to move the
play from the main stage to a workshop.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Where were Michael S. Roth or Richard Slotkin or Larry
Summers or any other gallant defenders of academic freedom when Ari
Roth was battling boycotts and pickets? The truth of the matter is that
Michael S. Roth and many of the most high profile, vocal critics of the
ASA resolution are less interested in defending academic freedom than
defending the occupation, the expansion of settlements, the continued
dispossession of land, the blockade of Gaza, the system of separate
roads, the building and maintenance of an apartheid wall – no matter
what the cost. Nothing in Roth’s editorial or similar statements
directly criticizes these policies or suggests a different strategy to
compel Israel to abide by international law and to end human rights
violations. I don’t expect to persuade Roth or other university
presidents to support the boycott, but I do wish they would come clean
and admit that unconditional support for Israeli apartheid and
occupation is not about academic freedom or justice. I’m not holding my
breath.</p>
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<p><a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/01/defending-zionism-academic.html#sdfootnote1anc"
name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a><sup></sup> Quotes take from Jonathan
Cook, “Academic Freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel,” <i>The Electronic
Intifada</i> (March 4, 2008), <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/academic-freedom-not-arabs-israel/7398">http://electronicintifada.net/content/academic-freedom-not-arabs-israel/7398</a>
For an excellent account and critical analysis of Hassan’s case, see
Leora Bilsky, “Muslim Headscarves in France and Army Uniforms in
Israel: A Comparative Study of Citizenship as Mask,” in Maleiah Malik,
ed., <i>Anti-Muslim Prejudice: Past and Present </i>(Abingdon, UK and
New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 79-103.</p>
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