Anti-Boycott Bill Discussion Post

Ummm not to make this about Obamacare but it actually is working as planned. The computer glitch at the beginning was obviously unacceptable but it looks like the system itself will work. See Krugman and Ezra Klein on this.

“i think @1 is engaged in a performative argument: going so off-topic, and saying obviously ridiculous things, to try and elicit some over-reaction/condemnation that will then allow them to claim hypocrisy, given that this is a free speech thread and all. just pointing this out as a caution to anyone whose initial impulse is, like mine, to telling them to shut up and stop derailing the thread. ”

You are almost certainly right and I now regret even responding.

“Saying that academics can’t even attend conferences or organize on the issue of Israeli boycotts?”

C’mon – it doesn’t say that. I’d sign the petition if it did.

The Constitution leaves it up to voters to elect representatives who raise taxes and spend money. These 2 bills just say state money can’t be used to pay for “bad things”. We may disagree what the bad things are or aren’t, but I certainly don’t think it is unconstitutional (or even unwise) to have the state legislature provide input on how funds are spent. Professors are free to do whatever they want on their own dime. When it comes to the government’s money, there are checks and balances.

Well, but professors are also free to do “bad things” on their (public or private) employer’s dime, within the parameters of their contracted terms of employment. Using state funds to attend an ACA meeting as a researcher in a relevant discipline, or even using state funds to send a student to such a meeting in pursuit of a valid educational purpose, might be protected as a civil employment matter even if it fails as an exercise of free speech. Furthermore, this protection might apply unevenly, both horizontally across departments, schools and campuses, and vertically depending on academic rank.

Crickets Chirpping,

That seems to be a rather disingenuous attempt to explain away a direct attempt to prevent dissent against the policies of the Israeli government. This is all too transparent. It’s not even slightly subtle. One could easily think of this being done when campuses organized against racial apartheid in South Africa. It’s. The. Same. Thing.

And, again, it’s about Israeli government.

Corey,

If I understand the NY legislation, this would prevent academics from associating with anyone who advocates for boycotts, even if they don’t themselves, and the seminar, meeting, gathering, etc. etc. has nothing to do with boycotts.

Is this correct?

In other words, if a group that happens to be for boycotts is holding a seminar on Kafka and Milena Jesenska, say, and their life together, and never once, not once, even hints at talk of boycotts, you would be prevented from attending.

Guilt by mere association, if even the topic is completely different?

A clarification. Not prevented from attending, etc, if you did that on your own time and dime. But your university could not pay for the trip or sponsor you. They could not organize gatherings, conferences, seminars with any group advocating for boycotts.

And that is the very common function of universities. To sponsor, pay for, support, organize such meetings, etc. etc. It seems to be one of the best functions of a university — that kind of intellectual and cultural exchange . . .

Plume: “If I understand the NY legislation, this would prevent academics from associating with anyone who advocates for boycotts, even if they don’t themselves, and the seminar, meeting, gathering, etc. etc. has nothing to do with boycotts. Is this correct?”

That’s not correct. Nothing in the legislation prohibits or penalizes a CUNY professor who is anti-boycott, say, from hanging out with, conversing, or even attending the event of an another professor who is in favor of the boycott.

The bill is focused on “academic entities” that have endorsed the boycott. And it is focused on using public funds.

You also write, “In other words, if a group that happens to be for boycotts is holding a seminar on Kafka and Milena Jesenska, say, and their life together, and never once, not once, even hints at talk of boycotts, you would be prevented from attending.”

That’s closer to the truth. So let’s say next year the ASA has no panels on the boycott — or even the US and Palestine/Israel — and all the panels are on literature, culture, and history. This bill would prohibit a college or university from using public monies to pay for your trip to that conference, or for your hotel stay while you’re at the conference.

Note, as John K. Wilson helpfully does in the post that Mark links to above, that none of that public money the college or university uses to pay for your trip — or for you lodging — would ever go into the ASA’s coffers. The point of the legislation is simply to stop you, as an individual, from attending.

In addition, the bill holds the whole campus liable for an entire year if even one professor used campus funds to pay for their hotel room for one night at the conference.

Ronan(rf) @15:
Does anyone have a link to a good, coherent, non ideological argument in opposition to BDS ?

What would such a thing look like, even in principle? BDS, like any other political action, is pursuing a pragmatic course in aid of an ideology. How can opposition to an ideology be itself non-ideological, this side of mere existentialism?

J Street makes a coherent, polite, moderate, reasoned, and frankly ideological argument in opposition to both BDS’s ideology and BDS’s actions. Whether it’s a good argument depends almost entirely on the ideology of the reader. At the very least, it is quieter than other arguments you’ll hear on other streets.

Hal: Whether your position is based on ethics or the law is neither here nor there. Your original claim was that it was hypocritical for ASA defenders to endorse the boycott and to criticize this New York/Maryland legislation. I take it you’ve now backed off that claim and are saying instead that mere support for the boycott is hypocritical. Yet you provide no defense of that claim.

As for political grandstanding, I take it you don’t teach at CUNY. I can assure you that from our perspective should this law pass it would be no grandstanding. It would have a direct material effect on our lives as faculty. Our salaries at CUNY are quite low, and most of us have zero research budgets. The one little bit of support we *can* get — we have to apply for this — is a once-a-year funding for our attending a professional conference. Were this law to be enacted, that would impose a significant cost upon us.

As for whether ASA voters should have known that their vote would have material consequences: When I get into a car and drive on the highway, I know I’m running a risk of being hit by a car. Were I to be in fact hit by a car, it would seem a little churlish to say to me, You should have known that your driving a car on the highway might have material consequences. More important, were everyone to respond to each and every protest action in this way, there would no point to engaging in protest actions.

The NIF also stakes out a clear view of BDS. Note that their core mission as direct investors in both Israeli and Palestinian development puts them directly in the gunsights: they are the humanitarian face of what BDS seeks to annihilate. So, no non-ideological place for them to stand.

In short, it’s bad enough to try to stifle dissent about the political issue at hand. But it seems even worse to me to make it a dragnet bill that would radically reduce cultural exchange on non-political matters. And, yes, I know, some say everything is political, but not everything is about boycotts or Israel.

This would have far reaching effects on all kinds of exchange — on music, art, literature, etc. etc.

At best, it’s legislative overkill and should be defeated if for no other reason than that. And there seem to be many more good reasons to kill the bill.

Joshua, thanks for the links

all I meant really by non ideological would be someone with no particular emotional or political investment in the Israel/Palestine situation, who formed an opinion on the boycott from a relatively disinterested position. There are different seasons to this stuff of course. Im thinking more along the lines of the rights and wrongs of boycotting X, rather than the rights and wrongs of boycotting Israel specifically, if you get me.

Corey,

Could you provide a good link or two or three regarding the BDS movement, its goals, rationale, etc. etc. and how the ASA relates to this?

@17 Officially the US embargo against Cuba does not apply to academic endeavors. However the State Department requires you to get a permit, which they will be happy to give to you one month after the conference is over. This is particularly petty given that you can easily get a flight to Cuba via Mexico.

Something to watch out for when New York revises its bill!

It is our collective misfortune in the US to have inherited the two-party system’s totem animals so indelibly and permanently.
Thus making it difficult to use the “elephant in the room” thing w/o evoking partisanal ambience.
As in “There are so many elephants in this room it’s a wonder there’s any room for anything else.”

Hal – so you think my local church is hypocritical? Because they’re declaring that Jesus Christ is the lord & savior. Yet if the legislature wanted to do that—the popularly elected legistlature with 80% of all popularly elected representative in favor!— that would be unconstitutional.

More seriously: legislative action undergoes different scrutiny than private action. Both legally and morally and for good reasons.

@34 – Ok, thanks for clearing things up!

“adam.smith” @36:

Actually, let me improve the analogy: The local temple puts up a big Menorah, visible from the street, yet they’re all upset when the popularly elected representatives want to put up a cross in front of city hall. Hypocrites!

Seriously?

“can I take your silence in response to the substance of my response to you to mean that you concede the point that this legislation is indeed unconstitutional?”

No … my chirping on the legal status is as much background noise as yours. I will say professional development perks are different from employee benefits.

As for this law, like many attempts in the past (Ward Churchill and earlier), it won’t be enacted, and even if enacted, won’t have an impact (ie the ASA meeting in Vegas will just happen to coexist times and location with the disgruntled social scientists from TTT universities conference), so no, I don’t need to break a sweat about attacking this.

BDS on the hand …

JW Mason : Ha! Yes, I guess everyone’s been wasting a lot of their time.

I think I meant confrontational. But still, this needs qualification.

There’s a world of difference between an entirely voluntary boycott by an association of citizens and a state mandate.

Let’s just say that there’s a tension between this view and the one expressed in this post.

well, yes. That would be a tactless if it weren’t for the fact that I quite clearly think the charges of hypocrisy are ridiculous—be it against the ASA (as wielded by Hal @9, which is why I use the term) or against any religious or other group that fights public displays of religion.

@Joshua – the allusion was indeed accidental (when I did read the bible it wasn’t in English), but “hypocritical” wasn’t introduced in this thread by me.

Chaz’s Law: For any grammatically coherent string of words, at least one person will declare that it was inspired by the Bible, and another that it was predicted by Nostradamus.

The original post says that the bills are intended to “punish the ASA for taking the stance it has, [and] threaten the ability of scholars and scholarly associations to say controversial things in public debate.” This is a false statement.

The ASA resolution is not about “saying” or “debating” something controversial. It is about coercing people. Suppose there is a conference about – oh, feminist film-makers, or religion in the theater. If the conference were in Milan, the ASA would participate. But because it’s in Tel Aviv, it won’t do so.

Why? Because it wants to pressure Israeli feminists and film scholars and theater critics to take a political stand in Israel. It doesn’t want to debate them. It wants to coerce them. Which it has the right to do. But please don’t pretend this is about freedom of speech.

Nobody is trying to prevent the ASA from saying whatever it wants to say. But the ASA thinks it can the privileged position its members gain from academic freedom to do more than speak. It’s twisting academic freedom to the point that it will break.

A boycott is not speech, it’s action. It does involve the First Amendment, but not the right of free speech – only the right of free association. And although every citizen has the right by virtue of the freedom of association to support a boycott, no academic has a right by virtue of academic freedom to be free from repercussions for doing so.

Prof. Robin says:

“Note, as John K. Wilson helpfully does in the post that Mark links to above, that none of that public money the college or university uses to pay for your trip — or for you lodging — would ever go into the ASA’s coffers. The point of the legislation is simply to stop you, as an individual, from attending.”

The legislation does not stop you, as an individual, from attending. It stops you, as an employee of a public institution, from attending. As an individual you can go on your own dime.

When it’s to your advantage to be a state employee (e.g. for 1st A purposes) you’re happy to be one. When it’s not, all of a sudden you’re an “individual” private citizen.

The link to “bills” in the OP showed me only New York’s, so I’m assuming it’s representative of Maryland’s as well. Reviewing it, unconstitutionality does not seem patent. Supporters will cite Rust v. Sullivan, 500 US 173, an abortion-related case and therefore, almost by definition, not one of SCOTUS’ finest hours in terms of clarity of rationale.

There are decisions of the Court that can be cited “on the other hand,” of course, and the issue gets slippery fairly quickly.

“The link to “bills” in the OP showed me only New York’s.”

The third link is to Maryland’s bill. Hyperlinked at the words “Maryland’s state legislatures.”

“There’s a world of difference between an entirely voluntary boycott by an association of citizens and a state mandate. As I argued here.”

Come on. The movement’s been trolled. The S in BDS does stand for sanctions doesn’t it? You might sign up to “BD, but only in a voluntary and half-assed fashion, and certainly no S” but the movement doesn’t hold that position.

@62
“The movement’s been trolled”
Ah – give up the struggle! silly professors, who thought that logic and principled debate could carry the day, but alas – the trolls have arrived, and beaten you down with their superior, uh…. churlishness!

Roy Belmont – You support the boycott on the merits. People who are not fully in favor of it are wrong, perhaps evil. The views, interests, and rights of such people are of no moment to you. I’m not discussing the boycott on the merits, and therefore it’s not surprising that you and I are talking past each other.

I have read the ASA website, including its assertion that it is acting “to enlarge that [i.e. academic] freedom for all,” and I find this the most troubling aspect of the debate.
The ASA is acting out an utterly misguided understanding of academic freedom and is jeopardizing it for all academics in the US. In this country, academic freedom is not a law, or a right. It is only a norm. When academics abuse it – and this boycott is just such an abuse – they damage it. When a group of American Studies professors, with no greater claim to expertise about Israel/Palestine than the local realtors’ association, asserts that it has academic freedom to discriminate against Israelis, it has completely misunderstood the role of the academy in society and it is harming the cause of academic freedom.

If your main field is American Studies, the AHA may not be a good substitute for the ASA. Conferences often matter for people’s careers.

Again, as the Wilson post notes, the whole thing is pretty vague. I’m sure I’ve attended conferences of organizations that have at certain moments boycotted Chile, South Africa, etc.

@69
how is sending a professor working in the field of american studies to a conference in their specific field not a core function of an american studies department? what could be more central to their role?

#68 – of course, Prof X would suffer an injury. That’s why he’s bringing suit. I created a hypothetical in which the injured party is not the ASA, because it’s pretty obvious that it (unlike the Brooklyn Museum) wouldn’t suffer an injury that could reach the level of a constitutional violation. The question is, does the Constitution grant Prof X a remedy for his injury or not? I seriously doubt it, although I don’t doubt that the argument can be made.

I like Henry’s posts, but this doesn’t pass the giggle test: “The other [of us two academics, i.e. Henry] is highly skeptical that the ASA boycott is meaningful or effective, and views it as a tactically foolish and entirely symbolic gesture of questionable strategic and moral value.”

It makes me giggle because, strictly speaking, if something is not meaningful or effective it also can’t really be tactically foolish and questionable strategically, can it? It sounds like protesting too much somehow: It’s both tactically and strategically wrong, empty symbolism, meaningless, and immoral! wow.

#72 – and we can add:
the bills could be constitutional but an infringement on academic freedom;
the bills could be constitutional and not an infringement on academic freedom, but bad policy (this is where I am, I think);
whether BDS is right or wrong in general, academic freedom does not permit scholarly associations to adopt it (and this is definitely where I am).

*sigh* I have to leave off now because real life is calling.

#75- this what the ASA resolution says: “It is resolved that the American Studies Association (ASA) endorses and will honor the call of Palestinian civil society for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.”

This is “The Call of Palestinian Civil Society:”

We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel.

http://www.bdsmovement.net/call

This is the Call in the academic context:

We, Palestinian academics and intellectuals, call upon our colleagues in the international community to comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel’s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid, by applying the following:

1.Refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions;

2.Advocate a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding and subsidies to these institutions;

3.Promote divestment and disinvestment from Israel by international academic institutions;

4.Work toward the condemnation of Israeli policies by pressing for resolutions to be adopted by academic, professional and cultural associations and organizations;

5.Support Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an explicit or implicit condition for such support.

http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=869

I am aware that the ASA council says that it does not seek to discriminate against individual Israelis. I do not believe that this statement can be squared with the actual resolution adopted by the ASA.

@74: (I can’t stop, can I): you think “if something is not meaningful or effective it also can’t really be tactically foolish and questionable strategically, can it?”

Yes, it can. The likely effect of the ASA endorsement of the boycott is that it will damage the cause of academic freedom. It is a foolish act by people who want to believe that they are important actors on the world stage and have no clue of the harm they doing to their own beleaguered profession.

Bloix,

Do you the boycott against apartheid South Africa is well characterized as a blacklisting of South Africans (or of white South Africans)?

Sebastian H @71:
I disagree with your equating of the ASA boycott and the McCarthy-era blacklist (though I tend to Henry Farrell’s view of the merits of the ASA boycott). Corey Robin also addressed the false McCarthy/ASA equation in a previous thread, here.

The McCarthy-era blacklist was aimed at individuals, and organs of the state abetted it. The ASA boycott (as already has been mentioned above) is aimed at institutions, not individuals, and it’s the action of an academic association whose ties with the state are very tenuous at best.

FWIW 9 years ago a buncha us signed this thing: http://www.petitiononline.com/j141789/petition.html
discussed here: https://crookedtimber.org/2005/05/09/oppose-the-blacklist-of-israeli-academics/

So there’s a lot of agreement that boycotts shouldn’t target individuals.

Bloix-
Roy Belmont – You support the boycott on the merits. People who are not fully in favor of it are wrong, perhaps evil.
Neither of those is a truth-bearing sentence. I’m neither a lawyer nor an academic, and my formal education is such I don’t feel any qualification whatsoever to judge the specific merits of the boycott proposal from those positions. Wherein in this discussion it rests primarily.
I support the boycott proposal, as I understand it, on the merit of its context in the larger world, where I am a member in full standing. And a romantic about the cause of freedom generally.
I also support in their various iterations many – not all! – of the self-immolations as political statement that have occurred in public places for intended public consequence, starting with that Buddhist monk in Saigon in the 60’s.
At the same time I do not support people setting themselves on fire. Full stop.

People who are not fully in favor of it are wrong, perhaps evil.
People are perhaps evil who disagree with me, yes. Also people who agree with me are perhaps evil.
And I myself, my sainted mother God ha’e mercy on her, Mrs Rankin from 3rd grade… perhaps we are all evil Bloix.
In a response to my saying you were imputing motive to others without reasonable basis for doing so, you proceeded to impute on me.
While I don’t think the real dispute is as granular as the lawyers and academics are being forced to treat it, and as the defenders of the real target of the boycott would like to keep it, neither do I think most of the defensive response to this boycott proposal or to the other manifestations of what is, simply put, an increasing rejection of Israeli state behavior and its blindly chauvinist support elsewhere, is evil. Contrary to your assertion.
I reserve the term “evil” for darker things.
I do think some of the “[p]eople who are not fully in favor of it” are panicked, to the point of irrational hysteria.
That because of that desperate fear they require understanding and compassionate regard, but that because of that blinding fear they should not be determining the course of human destiny generally, or Palestinian destiny specifically.
Not from a position of hysterical fear and consequent irrationality, or panic.

For an academic society, Sebastian, the most obvious things an institutional boycott would foreclose would be holding your annual conference at a particular academic institution, or housing your journal at one. Others here will know more. You’re right that in a sense it’s a boycott of administrators: of the kind of cooperation that requires the official imprimatur or resources that only administrators can provide. I see there’s some discussion here: http://www.theasa.net/images/uploads/ASA_Boycott_FAQs.pdf (You can see that it gets a bit tiresomely legalistic, and the kind of hair-splitting that’s inevitable with an institutional boycott is a legitimate argument against one.)

The key problem with the AUT boycott of ’05 (links @86) was that it tried to foreclose “any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration, or joint projects” with individual scholars at particular universities, which seemed very wrong to a lot of us.

Are we arguing over a literal nothing?

in terms of the direct impact of the ASA sanctions, my understanding is that the answer is “yes”. The ASA resolution is almost entirely symbolic (I recall reading that people on either side of the resolution at ASA could not name a single program that would be affected and I’ve not read of any such programs in the coverage). And this shouldn’t be that surprising. How many professors of American Studies are there in Israel. 10? At most?

That said, that it is merely symbolic in its direct effect doesn’t mean it’s ineffectual. It’s certainly conceivable that other scholarly societies, with more direct links to Israel would follow suit.
(FTR, as I’ve said before, I oppose both the ASA boycott and BDS in general on both moral and tactical grounds, but view both as very much protected by academic freedom).

My sense is it’s an issue not because of its likely practical impact but because of its symbolic or cultural salience. Same could be said of a lot of boycotts.

“It makes me giggle because, strictly speaking, if something is not meaningful or effective it also can’t really be tactically foolish and questionable strategically, can it? It sounds like protesting too much somehow: It’s both tactically and strategically wrong, empty symbolism, meaningless, and immoral! wow.”

?

Isn’t thinking something is going to ineffective, perhaps counterproductive, pretty much the definition of ‘tactically wrong’ ?

Hmmm. A bunch of people decide to censor and condemn a group of people, in a debate which frequently advocates the censored people’s mass deportation and death. Then this group of censoring people is told they cannot do that with other people’s money. The second act is outrageous censorship. The first is total righteous debate. So the second was totally not expected by the Big Deep Thinkers advocating silencing others in the first place.

OOOOOOK. I will just back away slowly then.

@ 93: Thanks for clearing that up; I thought I was going insane. First Pete Seeger invokes the right of free association, now Bloix is denying that implementing a boycott is free association.

Anyway, this has been quite a good discussion for highlighting the reasons for opposing the legislation, even if some of the issues have been brought out in stark contrast to what some people seem to believe the issues are. Also interesting how this is a Reagan’s Aliens moment in that people who disagree about the boycott are coming closer together – perhaps not just on supporting academic freedom, but in realizing what the ASA stance really means, and that it is indeed seeking a valid target.

Very interesting.

The NY bill essentially states that it is the policy of the State to allow students the opportunity to obtain a “global education” and that it is important that students have access to “international higher education institutions.”

To further that policy, the State therefore will prohibit any college from directly funding any academic entity, from providing funds to be used as membership dues for any academic entity, and from providing funds to facilitate travel/lodging in connection with any academic entity’s events, if such entity officially endorses or implements a boycott of a country which hosts higher education institutions chartered by NY.

I think the BDS movement is rather stupid, and I have no idea why support or opposition of it would fall into matters that the ASA as an organization should concern itself about, but this bill, as law, would be likely to be viewed with suspicion by the courts.

The argument that this is a measure clearly intended to withhold a benefit for the purpose of punishing the exercise of free speech is quite strong, given the context in which the bill arose.

However, there is some tension in the law at least, and perhaps the fact that this occurs in an educational context, and is limited to the boycott of countries that host NY State chartered higher education institutions, could provide some weight to such a law’s defenders in court. I wouldn’t give good odds though.

I do wonder whether a bill written differently, that approaches the issue from the vantage of directing funds towards the furtherance of a “global education,” rather than from the vantage of denying funds to organizations the views/actions of which may be contrary to a “global education”, might stand a better chance.

With that in mind, it may be that the bill as crafted was never really intended to stand up to judicial scrutiny, but rather was created in the spirit of political advertising. In that case, having served its purpose, it will likely die a quiet death.

The courts, including the Supreme Court, have held that boycotts are protected First Amendment activities. You have a First Amendment right not only to advocate a boycott, but to engage in a boycott.

I’m pretty certain this is not true as to boycotts of persons and classes of persons. Blacklisting (in the labor union context), “no blacks allowed” policies, and so on are explicitly illegal. (I think they should be legal, as they were before the giant monkey wrench of Heart of Atlanta was thrown into freedom of speech and association–but they definitely are not currently considered to be covered by the First Amendment.

It doesn’t seem reasonable that institutions would get greater 1st Amendment protection than persons.

No LFC, this is instead what happens when Israel is discussed in un-moderated arenas of political discourse, full stop. Try going out more.

I was less clear than I had hoped.

It is agreed that the government can ban boycotts of persons.

If institutions get less protection–they have less rights–than persons (generally the case), then it would follow that government can ban boycotts of institutions.

So–what am I missing?

Or–to put it with examples.

It is legal for the government to forbid hotels to boycott black customers. (Heart of Atlanta)
It is thus clearly legal (less restrictive) for the government to forbid using government funds to pay for stays at hotels that boycott black customers.
It would seem to thus be even more clearly legal for the government to forbid using government funds to attend the “Conference of pro-segregation Hotel-Owners”. (Institutions are less protected than persons.)

What step am I missing?

It is agreed that the government can ban boycotts of persons.

What you mean to say is, “there exist boycotts of persons that the government can ban”. Confusing the universal and existential quantifiers will lead to some nasty logic errors.

@SamChevre

I’m not really up on the precedents here, but ISTM there are different balances being struck. The government can forbid a hotel to boycott black customers because the interest of the hotel’s owners (i.e., their right to express their dislike of African-Americans by refusing them service or their right to “associate” only with whites) is overridden by the right of black travelers/customers to be free from racial discrimination, which is also a constitutionally-rooted right. In the ASA case, by contrast, the ASA’s expressive or speech rights are not overridden by a comparably strong individual right because the ASA is not targeting individuals. Thus the gov’t can’t prohibit the ASA boycott. That, I suppose, would be a plausible argument, at any rate.

LFC

Truth will out – even if it takes democracy some time to assert its will over chauvinistic puppet states.

See, e.g. Rumsfeld v FAIR

It has no practical positive effect. But its signalling is counter-productive to the overall cause, not least because it is immoral. (That’s what I take to be Henry’s argument.) Makes sense to me, as an argument.

We live in a winner-take-all economic system, and this seems to bleed over into a sense of all-or-nothing activism.

An action isn’t worth it, apparently, if it doesn’t absolutely solve the problem in total. We shouldn’t try to pass any gun safety regulations, because it won’t stop all gun murders, etc. etc. We shouldn’t try to increase taxes on the rich because it won’t solve the debt problem altogether. Blah blah blah.

Apparently, a boycott over unjust governmental policy in Israel is absurd because it won’t end apartheid and the occupation once and for all, or bring total peace to the Levant.

If everyone thought that way — all or nothing — human progress would be at a standstill. And it’s damned difficult as it is even with the belief in “doing one’s part.” Why make it that much more difficult by trying to mock or dismiss or even ban change via legislation?

The boycotts are but one piece in a larger attempt to achieve justice in the middle east, which is but one piece in an even larger attempt to achieve it worldwide.

Plume @121: Apparently, a boycott over unjust governmental policy in Israel is absurd because it won’t end apartheid and the occupation once and for all, or bring total peace to the Levant.

The BDS movement is absurd in that it seeks to achieve a condition that would result in the practical dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state, when there are enormous difficulties simply in achieving a much more limited compromise between Israeli and Palestinian factions. The pretense that it can be neutral on the question of whether Israel should exist, while urging boycotts, divestment, and sanctions, is absurd. And the support of the ASA for this movement, without a word of recognition for the enormous complexities of the situation, without any apparent consciousness that the mechanical application of UN General Assembly resolutions from 60 years ago to contemporary circumstances could be disastrous, is a fact that might startle someone unaccustomed to the exaggerated idiocies that often accompany the forays of academic associations into politics.

Anything that distracts from the focus on a two-state solution, that lends even an iota of credence to unattainable goals, the striving after of which is guaranteed to bring only additional conflict and a postponing of a desired peace, is very questionably moral indeed.

And that an academic association formed to facilitate the interdisciplinary study of American culture should issue any official opinion at all on such a divisive issue far outside the boundaries of its own competence or focus is completely inappropriate, and does a disservice to its actual purpose.

While I can’t support the bill as it is currently written, it seems to me that there are other ways to restructure state funding of memberships and conference expenses that would achieve a similar goal but in a broader and constitutional fashion.

SoU is right. There’s now a bill making its through the House that would cut off funding to any academic institution that boycotts Israel. I wrote about it briefly in an update to the other post.

Corey – just want to say that your work on these issues has been admirable, especially in the face of all of the absurd push back that you are getting. seriously, people are criticizing in really nasty, ad-hom ways, sniping you behind your back as a ‘fanatic’ and such, and you just follow the logic of your arguments and moral convictions. BDS may not be popular among the stodgy commentariat or the professariat, pampered by the distance provided by their own tenurships, but i can tell you that it is a political movement that excites and involves the youth of today. having a few vocal supporters out there with some degree of platform is indispensable for keeping the energy and resolve in the movement. keep on goin’ ; much respect man.

Andrew F. #123,

The BDS movement doesn’t seek to dissolve the state of Israel. It seeks the end of Israeli government oppression of Palestinians, an end to the settlements, an end to the Occupation, and a return to prewar 1967 borders.

LFC,

Strictly speaking, I don’t think the USA does have a right to exist. It expanded its empire through genocide, slavery and violent theft of land. If that doesn’t make a nation illegitimate, nothing does.

Also, there is a major difference between believing a nation really has no right to exist, on moral, ethical and philosophical grounds, and the desire to see it actually cease existing.

I feel that way about the USA. I don’t think we have a right to exist, given what we did to become a nation. At the same time, “dissolving” the USA after so much time would most likely create extraordinary misery and hardship for 315 million people, and do so to people who are innocent of the original sin.

Israel is in a similar position now, after 66 years. IMO, in moral, ethical and philosophical terms, that state doesn’t have a right to exist where it exists. Though I felt quite differently about that growing up. I grew up believing that the Jewish state was above questioning, primarily because of what the Jewish people had suffered with the Holocaust and for the roughly two thousand years of persecution prior to that. No other people has been so persecuted through time.

As a young person, I couldn’t understand any opposition to the state of Israel. I thought it was really crazy to question it. But the years changed me. Living with, working with, going to school with . . . Palestinians, other Arabs, Iranians, and dissident Jews helped force reevaluations for me. Readings and research as well. I saw many sides to the debate. Not just one.

And another key: the realization of the massive difference between a government and a people, between a “state” and an ethnic group of people, between a formally arranged nation, and individual human beings.

T @128
i can’t think of a single reason why the opinion of the AAUP means anything but shit in a debate over academic freedom, academic ethics, or anything else. the AAUP has been complicit in the slow but nonetheless still pernicious transformation of the university in american society away from a space for free dialogue and personal/political expression and into just another feeder for our neoliberal culture. i have already shared one story from my own university, taking funds from a man whose company was engaged in many forms of fraud. my same university in the wake of the politicization of the student body in the 60’s and 70’s – from Civil Rights and Vietnam – purposefully designed student dorms in such a way as to make extremely difficult public gatherings of students. literally building their dreams for social control into the very bricks of the buildings themselves.
this is the university environment created by the administrative culture – this is the environment that holds associations like the AAUP in high regard. the administrative faction that these university presidents lead and represent have been like parasites inside the university itself, draining it not only of financial resources but have also structured the professorial life such that those who should be freest to think to are instead overburdened with procedural crap and made circumspect with regard to the larger implications of their work and duties.
i don’t know upon what basis you are contending that we should listen to the AAUP in this regard, but i assure you that that group is concerned primarily with their university’s endowment – everything else is a distant second (yes, US news and world report ranking is up there, but seeing as that is basically just a function of the endowment minus any bad press the university has recently experienced, im lumping it in with the former). the endowment, and maybe those lucrative children campuses in various foreign countries – many of which themselves don’t give a damn about free speech or political expression or any of that but does the AAUP care about academic freedom then – NOPE because all they see is the $$ sweet $$.

basically – this is selective outrage by the AAUP at its finest and i scoff at the very suggestion that their voice is worth listening to. you can invoke their opinion all day but people who have recently been to university and experienced the massive disconnect between their administrators – especially presidents – and the heart and soul of the university proper will rightly tell you to take a hike.

Plume @129: The BDS movement doesn’t seek to dissolve the state of Israel. It seeks the end of Israeli government oppression of Palestinians, an end to the settlements, an end to the Occupation, and a return to prewar 1967 borders.

You left out an important one: BDS seeks a right of return for all refugees, and their descendents, displaced in 1948 and 1967.

That return would of course spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state. The BDS movement is supposedly “neutral” on the question of whether Israel should exist at all – a position which, frankly, is already worthy of condemnation. That BDS then insists on conditions that would achieve the result they claim to be neutral about warrants skepticism about the true nature of their neutrality.

By insisting on concessions that Israel cannot possibly agree to, the BDS movement helps forestall a realistic compromise to bring lasting peace, stability, and progress to the region.

Here, for instance, is Hamas recently reiterating its opposition to peace talks:

The Palestinians will not accept any agreement that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas signs with Israel, Hamas official Salah Bardaweel said. Bardaweel claimed that the current peace talks were aimed at “liquidating” the Palestinian cause.

He criticized Abbas for telling The New York Times earlier this week that he would agree to the establishment of a demilitarized state.

“Such statements are a preface for liquidating the Palestinian cause and preventing the right of return for Palestinian refugees,” Bardaweel said. “The biggest disaster would be to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. This would pave the way for the expulsion of more Palestinians from their historic land.”

The BDS movement is a knowing accomplice of that type of behavior, which when present on either side is often fatal to a settled resolution of the conflict.

And this is the cause to which the ASA, with its long history of expertise and involvement in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute as an academic association devoted to the interdisciplinary study of American culture, has given its endorsement. It is like watching an elderly, well-meaning neighbor be sweet-talked into signing a petition that purports to be about the integrity of elections, when the practical effect and practical purpose is actually something quite different.

Andrew F- there have long been opportunities to negotiate with Hamas, but it takes time and effort and trust.(on both sides) I wouldn’t read too much into hyperbolic, politically motivated rhetoric.

That return would of course spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state. The BDS movement is supposedly “neutral” on the question of whether Israel should exist at all – a position which, frankly, is already worthy of condemnation.

Jeez, Andrew, it’s only in your Orwellian bizzaro world a militant ethnocentric regime that now DNA-tests some of its potential immigrants (born out-of-wedlock!) for racial purity is sacred, while demands for the ethnically cleansed native population’s right of return are contemptible. And it’s only in your Orwellian bizzaro world your attitude brings “lasting peace, stability, and progress”. Take a minute and listen to yourself.

AndrewF @135

There are some problems with saying states have rights to exist as a X state (what about minorities?) But even if we accept the premise of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, your comment reflects dire ignorance of the facts.

That return would of course spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

Actual return would spell an end to a Jewish majority in Israel, but a theoretical right of return would do no such thing, unless most Palestinians chose to return, which is highly unlikely. Unless you believe a kind of Palestinian equivalent of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, where Palestinians aren’t motivated by normal goals of wanting to live in peace and safety, but are all diabolically fixated on a plot to take land from Israeli Jews, in the way that extremist settler types in the US and Israel are–people like that are a pretty small fraction of Jews, it is safe to assume they are also a small fraction of Palestinians.

Think about it this way. There are people who were thrown off their land, or else their parents or grandparents were, and they’ve been living in exile, making new lives for themselves somewhere. Do they really think actually returning to an old house is going to improve their lives? Probably not. But they want some acknowledgement that they have a right to go back to their old places, that they were wrongfully expelled (and yes, of course this also applies to Jews who left Arab countries). Most of these people would probably take some kind of monetary compensation oven actual return, given the hardships return would cause even to them.

Besides which, even if the Palestinian BDS call lists unconditional right of return as a demand, that does not mean that the ASA and others would continue applying boycott pressure to achieve that once central demands like an end to the occupation were met, or that Palestinian leadership–yes, even HAMAS–wouldn’t be willing to make de facto compromises on this point (even if right of return for all refugees has symbolic importance, and they won’t deny that, in theory, all refugees have this right). Or, that boycott pressure would still be applied by most of its current supporters if it seemed clear that Palestinians were holding out for complete acquiescence to all demands when a meaningful compromise was possible–which is clearly not the case now, and probably never was.

“Bardaweel claimed that the current peace talks were aimed at “liquidating” the Palestinian cause.”

This is actually true. Israel’s strategy vis-a-vis the peace talks has been to drag them out and keep them from ever concluding, while continuing to build settlements in the West Bank and take control over access to water and other strategic areas–this has being going on since the 80s. The US and even FATAH are completely aware of this, but keep letting it go on. Of course, an eventual solution would not involve peace talks and compromise, but the statement you quoted, which I guess you expected to sound shocking, is literally true, as anyone who follows the news on this knows.

It is like watching an elderly, well-meaning neighbor be sweet-talked into signing a petition…

You don’t say!

I do think Andrew F’s comment is a lot of whataboutery. The right of return is largely a symbolic issue within the negotiations and *is in no way ever going to happen in any meaningful way* from the Israelis. (It could be settled with limited return, compensation and an international effort to resolve the refugee issue) If groups within Palestine want to stress it, then thats fine afaics, theyre probably dealing with all sorts of domestic and organisational pressures to do so. – but people can support those groups if they like, or not.
This kind of hyperbolic nonsense that it ‘theoretically’ spells the end of the Israeli state is ludicrous, why concern oneself with things that arent going to happen?

Ronan @ 143: “The right of return is largely a symbolic issue within the negotiations and *is in no way ever going to happen in any meaningful way* from the Israelis.”

So, if it is as unrealistic a demand as that by Israeli hardliners that all of “Greater Israel” should be part of Israel, doesn’t that put ASA on the side of (nearly) the most extreme position that Hamas and Fatah take? It doesn’t seem very “neutral” from that viewpoint.

Kaveh @ 141: It seems like wishful thinking to believe that few Palestinians would exercise a right of return if it was part of a peace settlement. Is there any backup to this assertion from surveys or polls or anything other than anecdotal evidence?

Israel is in a demographic trap as a Jewish state. Except for the religious conservatives they have a “western” birthrate. Palestinians have a much higher birthrate. Between natural increase and the “right of return” Jews could quickly cease to be a majority in Israel. Various commenters on this thread would probably reply “Good!”, I suppose.

“This thread was intended to be about academic freedom issues, not the Israel/Palestinian conflict. ”

Wow. Never saw that coming. It’s true though–the thread is supposed to be about academic freedom. Here’s a link on that subject–

aaup piece on universities on the WB and in Gaza

In fairness, the above link does say that when Palestinian students can make it to Israeli universities, they are treated decently. But anyway, if this thread is supposed to be restricted to the academic freedom issues raised by the ASA boycott, then I’ll bow out.

SoU @ 146

My impression is there was something written into EU policy about dealing with companies with links to the occupied territories in August. Also afaik some European governments (Dutch, German, Scandanavian and Romanian afaik) have begun to stop dealing with Israeli companies with links to the occupied territories (not sure how official it is) Also I think Israel were offered an expanded trade deal with the EU to resolve the situation. This is all vague on my part, as Im not too sure what the story is.

Does the israeli government run any arabic-language universities? If not, are there any private arabic-language ones in israel-proper?

“no effects on academic freedom”
as a norm and principle, no – the ASA resolution goes very far out of its way to preserve the principle of academic freedom while still taking a stand.

if effect/consequence? i think that academic freedom is very nebulous and thus difficult for us to ever define concretely, if i were to start making the proof you desire. But then again – i don’t have to: because you are leveling the charge, the burden of proof is yours to demonstrate how and where academic freedom is being infringed by the ASA. it is nearly impossible to prove a negative, that some thing is not out there. that is why in legitimate discussions it is the responsibility of the accuser to demonstrate a positive case that X has occurred. So when you show me the infringement of academic freedom – ideally with names and dates and such – then we can continue this discussion in a more productive manner.

and if we are going to talk about consequences, then we have to work in the entire scope of the issue. reality is fuzzy like that – nothing exists in a vacuum. so how about academic freedom for Palestinians. or the academic freedom to criticize a state that is engaging in its own massive boycott of basically an entire population, and systematic deprivations of liberty across the board.

an old professor of mine just spent a few weeks in Palestine, teaching a few lectures for a course at Bethlehem university. he complained that he had a lot of trouble, because the students could not be expected to arrive in a prompt manner. you see – they were frequently stuck at checkpoints along the road, detained on their way to class, because of who they were and their lack of the proper paperwork attesting to their privileged birth.

THAT is an infringement of academic freedom. the boycott of Gaza resulting in a shortage of notebooks and school supplies is an infringement of academic freedom. wealthy professors from the 1st world can deal with something like the ASA resolution – they have means, they have voice. poor Palestinian youth are literally held back from going to school on a daily basis, and when they get their they have to share writing materials because of Israeli state policy.

but that isn’t what you want to focus on here. you want to talk about ‘academic freedom’. what you mean by the words i have no idea. because when you want to talk about academic freedom, you seem to be eliding these issues.

Let’s try to stay on topic, folks. We’re not re-litigating the entire history of Israel and Palestine here.

On the academic freedom question as it pertains to the ASA boycott, which is not in truth the content of this post either, we have in fact deliberated about this at length on this site. See this link:

https://crookedtimber.org/2013/12/26/does-the-asa-boycott-violate-academic-freedom-how/

I don’t see anything in this comments thread here that’s all that new, so folks might simply want to consult that post and the comments thread for the various arguments and counter-arguments.

I would emphasize that the AAUP’s position on this issue is fairly incoherent. As I pointed out the AAUP is against boycotts on academic freedom grounds yet they favor censures. Their own effort to distinguish the two are fairly desultory, and in any event, the ASA boycott looks more like what the AAUP calls a censure, which the AAUP thinks is okay. Like most people, the AAUP hasn’t studied the ASA resolution all the carefully. That a bunch of worthies think the ASA boycott violates academic freedom — but can’t exactly tell you why — is really neither here nor there to me.

Also everyone should read this incredible expose by Phan Nguyen on the, um, how shall I put this, complexities, of the AAUP position (and more important the position of its past president) on academic freedom. Turns out the AAUP and its leadership are okay with some boycotts, just not this one.

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/01/privilege-bestowing-academic.html

I’ve found in this and similar discussions that academic freedom is a word that gets tossed around but no one really can explain how it is that it is being violated by the ASA boycott.

” I’d still like your opinion on … former ASA presidents ”
can you link to the statement?

T: The only burden here is on you: to spell my name correctly. It’s Corey, not Cory. While we’re on the topic of close reading, I never argued that the ASA boycott was not a boycott. I argued that according to the AAUP’s own screwy definition of things, it is a censure. That’s a very different claim. And I will note here that for all your desire to talk about the ASA resolution as a violation of academic freedom you have yet to establish exactly how it is. It seems like you like the pretty words but the “back fill” is a little trickier for you.

To shorten all of that up:

It was never in the best interests of the Jewish people to try to establish a homeland where it was established, or with the violence required for displacement of the then current inhabitants. It was never going to work out well over time and was only going to add to their existential dangers and threat.

SoU —

Here’s the link for the “worthies” letter.
http://www.telospress.com/opposing-the-israel-boycott-by-the-american-studies-association/
You might also be interested in the Judea Pearl letter to NYU and the ASA.
http://www.jewishjournal.com/judea_pearl/article/dear_john_sexton_condemn_and_block_the_asa1

I’m not going to get into a discussion about the merits. My point is that people of good will can conclude the ASA boycott infringes academic freedom. And the use of an academic boycott rather than another action on the same issue wasn’t necessary.

Cory —
Rather, you chose the academic boycott instead of another action because you thought it would bring the biggest backlash by combing the issue of Israel with the issue of academic freedom. And having been called on your bs, you’ve backtracked furiously on the academic freedom issue by parsing and reparsing the resolution. It’s plain you’re having a blast. Truth to power.

Corey, I was playing devil’s advocate for a moment, as should be clear from my other comments. I support your actions. And I definitely believe in moving the Overton Window. It’s a frequent part of my posts regarding the above and things like Single Payer — here and elsewhere.

T @166
“Cory –”
so you do it again? after post #160, this is just childish. i was going to respond to you & the links you provided above, but now i just don’t think its worth my time.

SoU #171,

Exactly. And that was the running MO in discussions regarding alternatives to capitalism.

From my readings, it was also the running defense of slavery for decades as well. Defense through mockery or dismissal of alternatives. Kind of a passive-aggressive defense of the status quo ante.

“Nothing you propose will have the slightest impact on anything!”

The subtext being, (“So, just deal with it, accept it, grow to love it, as we the sensible ones have.”)

Corey,

Thanks. You’ve done yeoman’s work on this, and in defending that work.

Oops, sorry I didn’t post that Economist piece. Here it is:

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21595948-israels-politicians-sound-rattled-campaign-isolate-their-country

But please, please: I’m jonesing for one more lecture from self-important blowhards on how to play the game of real politics, how we’re screwing everything up, how we’re just naifs in the political playground.

Ronan #175,

I would imagine there is a diversity of opinion on that even within the BDS movement. But, to me, having journeyed a long, long way from near unquestioning support for the Jewish state (with the two-state solution as goal) . . . to the belief that one state is the only just solution . . . . I am fine with those who propose an open society in Israel and an end to an ethnocentric order there. IMO, a two-state solution only postpones the inevitable, and probably makes future conflicts bigger and far more violent.

As in, picture a fairly prosperous Israel alongside an impoverished Palestinian state, albeit it one, finally, with “national autonomy.” The two-state solution also does nothing for those Palestinians who seek a “right of return.” It’s not really a long-term answer. It seems more like a temporary truce, and one in which the “compromise” greatly favors the state of Israel.

Ronan: BDS has three demands: end of the Occupation (to pre-1967 borders); full and equal rights for Palestinian citizens within Israel; right of return for Palestinian refugees.

The movement, as Plume says, is divided on the question of one-state or two states (and for some, I’m sure, no state at all). And from conversations I’ve had, it’s more than that it is merely divided: it has come to the conclusion that the debate over one v. two states is a bit of an academic dodge, the kind of thing that people like us love to debate — and rightfully so, don’t get me wrong — but that while we debate it the Israelis proceed to build more and more settlements, making anything like a two-state resolution impossible. So they are deliberately staying away from this.

This can create confusion and sow suspicions; I get that. But it has the advantage of doing what it is doing now: putting pressure on the Israelis — or the allies of the Israelis to put pressure on the Israelis — to make concessions. This is very early in the game, so nothing concrete yet. But the fact that Israelis are feeling real pressure — and acknowledging that they feel pressure — for the first time in a very long time is a good sign.

Hope that helps.

Meanwhile, back in New York, the Times is now saying that the effort many of us were a part of to defeat that NYS bill is, well, here’s what the Times is saying: “The turnabout has been described by some as a political earthquake in Albany since Mr. Silver’s bills are almost always adopted and this one had already passed the state senate on a vote of 56 to 4.”

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/boycotting-israel-and-the-first-amendment/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1

I know folks love to bash academics as political naifs; I myself do it too. But a lot of us were involved in this effort, and while it’s by no means over, I think the burden is on our critics to demonstrate that they understand the game of politics better than we do. Because unless you’re a down-the-line support of Netanyahu-style politics — and are thus very happy to see more and more settlements built — I’d say it is your side that needs to show that you have a real plan, not mine.

As Peter Beinart, a firm critic of BDS, acknowledged the other day in Haaretz: “But the tactical brilliance of BDS becomes clearer with every passing month….Were the mainstream Jewish organizations that reject BDS in the name of a negotiated two-state solution actually promoting a negotiated two-state solution, their strategy might have merit. But they’re not….Remember Abba Eban’s famous quip that ‘the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.’ These days, that’s what Palestinian activists say about us.”

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.572593

Corey – 160

Sorry about the misspelling. My bad. I just noticed 160 from SoU’s post 170.

You seem to want to argue exactly how the ASA resolution does or does not infringe academic freedom. I suggest you can continue the argument with the worthies, the AAUP (SoU: while you don’t give a damn about the AAUP, Corey seems to care a lot), and Judea Pearl. I just note a lot of very prominent members of your own association and your profession disagree with you. You think they’re wrong. They don’t seem to get your message.

Many people of good faith think the resolution is an infringement, you knew that in advance, and you chose this path despite (or rather because of) that disagreement. You could have endorsed non-academic measures and avoided a lot of this. But you didn’t. My fear is that the reaction will damage US academics well beyond the ASA membership. But hey, there are bigger fish to fry and you’re a busy man. (“petty words” — good one.)

SoU – 167

I didn’t see Corey’s post before my additional misspelling. It was unintentional.

You might want to take a look at the letters. You’ll likely be unconvinced. However, there is little doubt in my mind that the authors sincerely believe that the ASA resolution will cause the infringement of academic freedom. And this could have been avoided. There’s no reason this should have been an issue at all.

SoU 171 — I thought the anti-apartheid movement didn’t use academic boycotts.

People who think the ASA has destroyed itself with this resolution might be interested in these numbers just announced by the ASA’s outgoing president: “625 people have joined the ASA as 2014 individual members since December 1. These are not renewals (since people are dropped from the roles after lapsing for six months), but individuals joining for the first time or after a lapse of three years or longer, almost exclusively university based. We collected the most dues revenue for any two month period (December-January) in 25 years.”

Okay, any other arguments that need countering?

there is little doubt in my mind that the authors sincerely believe that the ASA resolution will cause the infringement of academic freedom

Sure, ok, they’re sincere–but this doesn’t say anything about whether they’re right about it infringing academic freedom. So CR’s demand still stands. And while I don’t know enough to say anything about the former ASA-ers, I would expect that the AAUP position is taken in good, if confused, faith. This shows that the ASA boycott infringes on academic freedom…, how exactly?

Also, 167 is a great comment. Thanks, CR.

(SoU: I agree with a lot of what you have to say, but AAUP are pretty much the good guys on a lot of issues, like e.g., faculty governance, treatment of contingent faculty, etc. That they have no enforcement power is a different kind of problem. Sorry a bit OT.)

I’ll take Philip Mendes’ word.

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/02/07/3940144.htm

js – 186 plume – 185

js — Take a look at the signatures on the former president’s letter. Maybe they all got it wrong. Or maybe there is no clear right. But the ASA purposely stuck their thumb in the eye of the US professoriate to increase the level of visibility for their preferred cause. They chose an action — an academic boycott — opposed by AAUP, when other actions were available. http://www.telospress.com/opposing-the-israel-boycott-by-the-american-studies-association/

plume — take a look at the AAUP doc. on boycotts. I did not give it a close reading but it states that “In protesting against apartheid in South Africa, the AAUP carefully distinguished between economic and academic boycotts largely on matters of principle.” I don’t think that’s in the Wiki. http://aaup.org/report/academic-boycotts

Finally, it is no surprise that AAUP opposes the boycott and also opposes the NY and MD bill. They should. Their job is to keep the legislature out of the professoriate’s business. Their job was made a hell of a lot harder by the ASA.

Andrew F.

Why on earth would you think Israel is justified in artificially maintaining its ethnic (Jewish) hegemony on that particular strip of land?

Wouldn’t you find it appalling, for instance, if ethnic Swedes, say, took over a Polynesian island, kicked out the Polynesians there, established a Swedish state, and then claimed it had a “right to exist” . . . . thus preventing a return by the previous inhabitants?

You could envision umpteen scenarios wherein the entire world would be against an ethnically derived, ethnically organized state, cleansed of other ethnicities, attempting to maintain its “purity” and control.

If there are more Palestinians with a claim to that strip of earth, so be it. It was a horrific mistake to steal it from them in the first place.

And, again, there is no evidence that it has been a “safe haven” for Jews. Quite the opposite. If the purpose was to provide a place of safety and security in the wake of the Holocaust, it was a massive error and failure of epic proportions.

Again, the desire for the safe haven was more than just understandable and self-evidently legitimate. It was profoundly that. But the choice of where and how contradicted all of that and is still in major conflict with that desire.

“In other words, to the extent BDS is persuasive among Palestinians, it can have a radicalizing effect by insisting upon conditions that Israel cannot reasonably be expected to meet.”

So, your idea is to demoralize the victims to such an extent that they would accept the conditions that the usurper deems reasonable. But aside from this being … well, how do I put it? … wrong, it doesn’t really work. The usurper feels: hey, why not demoralize them even more?

with respect to 300,000+ Israelis living in the West Bank.

Israel does not make and has never made any de-jure claim to the west bank outside “east jerusalem”. Israelis living on the west bank cannot be doing so under legal rights granted by israel, because israel does not claim to have any legal rights to grant.

Jewish settlers do not matter, and jewish settlers do not complicate anything, because jewish settlers have essentially no rights whatsoever. The jewish settlers have no rights because the government of the state of israel has repeatedly refused to take the steps that would enable the government to grant rights to settlers. The reasons for this are complex, but the facts are not.

This is how badly the government of the state of israel has fucked things.

As far as I can tell, just about everyone seriously engaged knows this, with the exception of groups who aren’t interested in peace and groups who favor the mindless application of UN resolutions to complex international disputes.

I think this is too kind by a large margin. “Everyone seriously engaged” includes an awful lot of people who oppose the Jews having a state; they are completely fine with the Poles and the Turks and the Czechs and the Chinese having states some portion of which used to be occupied by other ethnic groups, but definitely not the Jews.

What will happen in what circumstances ?

Andrew @191 – come on man, you’re really laying it in thick here. It can’t be completely ineffective and a harbinger of doom.

@#200,

What a strange suggestion. That anyone is supposedly fine with any kind of ethnic cleansing or oppression of other groups. How you came up with that conclusion is baffling.

Also, hundreds upon hundreds of ethnic groups “never gotta country.” There were all kinds of Red Buttons throughout history that never got one.

And then you bring up the Turks, the Chinese, the Poles and the Czechs? The Turks are the natural majority in Turkey, making up roughly 80% of that very large nation. The Chinese are another natural majority, having controlled roughly the same geographical space, give or take, for thousands of years. The Czechs are the natural majority on their spot of turf (a breakaway nation), as are the Poles, while both peoples were under constant attack for centuries, usually by Germans and Russians.

The Jewish state, OTOH, is a completely artificial construction from the outside, imposed on that strip of land by a few very powerful actors. The Jewish state was created by throwing Palestinians (primarily) off their lands, whose ancestors had been there for thousands of years prior to 1948. The Jews who settled in the Jewish state after 1948? Their ancestors had been absent from that land for nearly two thousand years, and they came primarily from Europe and Russia.

There is no equivalent to the Jewish State, anywhere. It’s unique in its hows and whys. It’s unique in history.

Sock puppet post deleted

js – 197
I completely agree with your statement that “I don’t think an argument from authority is going to be effective here.” Nonetheless, it’s worthwhile to least acknowledge certain voices.

Henry Farrell: “The other [Henry] is highly skeptical that the ASA boycott is meaningful or effective, and views it as a tactically foolish and entirely symbolic gesture of questionable strategic and moral value.” https://crookedtimber.org/2014/02/04/an-open-letter-on-the-anti-boycott-bills/ (This appeared in a joint statement by Henry Farrell and Corey Robin opposing the NY and MD legislation.) pretty words, indeed.

More opposition from a group of ASA distinguished scholars based in part on the infringement of academic freedom inherent in the boycott. The ASA was kind enough to provide a link on its website.
http://www.theasa.net/opportunities/item/asa_turpie_award_winners_in_opposition_to_israeli_boycott_resolution/

I’d expect such statements to have more impact in a legislative setting than a blog. And that’s where the action is at this point.

I am actually surprised by the push back here on the concern for LGBTQ rights by Adam and whoever Tito is. I feel like it is a legitimate question. I think you both need to ask yourselves why you don’t care about the well being of the Israeli LGBTQ community.

I don’t think ultra-orthodox Jews are as monolithically anti-gay as fundamentalists in other religions. It all comes down to a particular rebbe’s way of deciphering the Talmud.

Ronan @ 207:

Critics have been calling for a ‘non violent’ Palestinian opposition (which there always was) for years, so here it is. Why not get on board with it ?

Because the bulldozer-and-bombing-runs enthusiasts were lying about the “non violent” bit, i.e. it’s just another stalling tactic while they continue their creeping ethnic-cleansing of Palestinians.

And similarly, and to drag it back on topic:
the biggest academic freedom issue facing people in israel-and-the-territories is that half of them aren’t from the state-endorsed cultural background and therefore find it hard to travel or to get their research funded.

[again: does the government of the state of israel run any arab-language universities for the twenty percent of the population of israel-proper that speaks arabic as their first language? Finland’s about the same size as israel-proper and manages it for a 5% minority language…]

Or as godoggo said more succintly.

Are you actually talking about within Israel, from the Israeli right ? That would make more sense I guess, so sorry of I misunderstood.

js — 114

To say something has more impact in one forum doesn’t mean it has no impact in the other. I think the word is less.

Also, the thread has been very useful in linking outside materials. Corey has been particularly good at linking to articles and analysis about the resolution and its aftermath and that has been a great service. I’ve tended to link to statements by dissenters to the resolution within in the ASA and other academic organizations. Obviously, if you don’t care what people that disagree with you think, the links aren’t very helpful.

Finally, while the debate in the thread can be lively and informative, I don’t see too many opinions changing or too many agnostic posters. (Corey response to the seven former ASA president’s and other distinguished ASA members – “That a bunch of worthies think the ASA boycott violates academic freedom — but can’t exactly tell you why — is really neither here nor there to me.” ouch.) In contrast, the legislative outcome is uncertain and legislators have been changing their opinions day to day. So, I’d expect statements by distinguished ASA members to have more impact in a legislative setting than a blog. Which is what I said in the first place.

Ronan @207
“there is no peace process at the minute”

Well, there are the beginnings of negotiations, for the first time in quite a while. Whether they will go anywhere remains to be seen.

Of BDS’s three demands, as set out by Corey @180, the third (rt of return) does seem different in that any final-status agreement one can envision as possible will not include it but rather at best, I would think, some form of acknowledgment plus compensation (as you have mentioned yourself here before, I think). I’m not sure its inclusion in ‘the demands’ is all that actively harmful, but if it were replaced by compensation I think BDS might gain more followers. (Of course the ‘call by Palestinian civil society’ wd presumably not agree to that.)

It’s also fairly clear btw that a return to the *exact* pre-67 boundaries is not in the cards, but rather a return, again at best, to something close to the pre-67 boundaries, with some land swaps on both sides. Again, though, I’m not sure the precise phrasing of the demands matters that much, since the BDS proponents must know that the demands as they stand (per Corey @180) are not realizable.

I have a suspicion that if any U.S. politician of some ‘mainstream’ standing were ever to have the courage to break publicly and forcefully w AIPAC et al, the response might be surprising. I’m waiting for a respected Dem. Senator to stand up and say that the US shd no longer guarantee Israel’s so-called QME (qualitative military edge) unless the Israeli govt makes real concessions toward a settlement. That might get some attention.

The reason is that Israel, despite having nuclear weapons, would presumably rather not be placed in a position where it might have to think about actually using them to ensure its survival, and one way to place it in that uncomfortable position would be for the U.S., France, and other major arms-supplier countries to make clear to Israel that its conventional QME is no longer a foregone conclusion (unless it makes certain changes in policy).

Dave L @225: (a) Not quite what I said. (b) I won’t get into Iran here.

DaveL,

It’s generally not a good idea to say “no one does this or that,” though I, too, fall prey to that from time to time. There are large movements geared toward protest and boycotts over Chinese treatment of Tibet and other minorities, and the same with Turkish treatment of their minorities.

Aside from the completely different way in which these states formed as opposed to the Jewish State, especially when it comes to natural majorities in a space dominated for centuries, if not thousands of years, we also have the matter of direct, financial and existential interest in Israel, which is not the case for the other nations mentioned:

We in America give Israel more than three billion dollars in aid each year. They are currently Number Two behind Afghanistan in total aid, and will likely go back to Number One once we leave. Turkey is not even in the top 25, the lowest in that group being Indonesia, which receives roughly 250 million dollars in a year. And our continued support for Israel costs us in many other ways as well. It turns us into targets and endangers Americans all over the world. In short, our direct aid to the state of Israel, our direct support for its government, puts Americans in harm’s way and costs taxpayers a very large sum each year.

That makes focusing on Israeli policies far more relevant, germane and logical than a focus on Chinese policies or Turkish policies, though they, too, deserve our attention. And we can not boycott everything or everyone. If the criteria for boycotting a country is their treatment of minorities, then very few countries would escape boycotts — including America. We would, in fact, given our history, be among the very worst offenders worldwide.

To me, it’s just not an effective argument to try to say the Jewish state is just like all these other states, so why aren’t we focusing on all these other states. In a sense, you’re saying, why focus on Israel at all, by way of the speeding ticket defense:

“Everyone speeds, your honor. Why pick on me?”

“That anyone is supposedly fine with any kind of ethnic cleansing or oppression of other groups. How you came up with that conclusion is baffling.”

It’s a standard argument on this subject. Israel defenders claim Israel is a Western democracy, and then turn around and attack its critics on the grounds that some other countries are as bad or worse. I happen to agree with them on that part–I don’t think Israeli oppression of Palestinians is anything extraordinary in the annals of human oppression. But then the Israel defenders shouldn’t play the game of saying that Israel is this wonderful democracy , and then on the other hand complain that Israel is being boycotted the way we might boycott another Western democracy that oppressed a minority group. If Israel is just another country with a crappy human rights record,then fine. Keep that in mind and let’s stop shipping them weapons. But no, we’re supposed to ship them weapons, listen to US politicians praise them to the skies, and then get upset when some professors join the BDS movement because Israel is no worse than China.

Gorgonzola replying to Andrew F–“So, your idea is to demoralize the victims to such an extent that they would accept the conditions that the usurper deems reasonable. But aside from this being … well, how do I put it? … wrong, it doesn’t really work. The usurper feels: hey, why not demoralize them even more?”

That’s pretty much it. Andrew’s attitude is that Palestinians shouldn’t get uppity and be willing to take whatever scraps the Israelis are willing to toss. And evidently there’s nothing immoral in pandering to Israeli desires, which is why so many alleged 2SS supporters say nothing while the US supplies billions in aid to Israel, but think BDS is immoral.

Quick question for those in the know. Has there ever been a circumstance in the past where the ASA boycott of Israeli academic institutions and their representatives would have been binding? Or, as in Henry’s view, is the boycott a “totally symbolic gesture?” Any ASA members?

From the ASA boycott FAQ

“However, the boycott does oppose participation in conferences or events officially sponsored by Israeli universities.” http://www.theasa.net/images/uploads/ASA_Boycott_FAQs.pdf
and
“This boycott targets institutions and their representatives, not individual scholars, students or cultural workers who will be able to participate in the ASA conference or give public lectures at campuses, provided they are not expressly serving as representatives or ambassadors of those institutions (such as deans, rectors, presidents, etc.), or of the Israeli government.”

Surely we can forget the ASA.

The issue is the moral basis for boycotts.

You cannot have academic freedom in unfree society.

Israel is just a case in point.

Has the ASA supported or opposed the boycotts of Cuba or the 1980 Olympic games???

Should one clique in society have access to education denied to others becasue of race, gender, creed?

DaveL,

Egypt receives about half the total going to Israel (per year). But that’s not really the point. Focusing on Israel makes sense for a host of reasons, not the least of them being our long-standing and direct connections. We actually have some influence over their policy decisions. Can the same be said about China? Or even Turkey?

And how often do American and Chinese academics interface, even in the best of times? We don’t have a particular good relationship with them. It would be like boycotting a store you never go to.

The relationship with Israel is a different matter, and they owe us, big time. They, in fact, would not exist without American military power and financial support. This is not something that is said all too often in pubic in America, but it’s true. There would be no Jewish state currently without American support, and the Muslim world knows this as well.

To put it lightly, that is a constant source of “tension.”

re Plume

They, in fact, would not exist without American military power and financial support.

Exactly right.

But I would go further. Israel is symbolic of all that is wrong with old-world global political economy.

Up until the UN de-colonisation process, the old world was constructed by invasions and expulsions of original inhabitants. Israel is the last remnant of this reality. It represents the same injustice we, in Australia, now struggle within our own birth processes. If Australia has a birthstain due to the eradication of original inhabitants, those who defend Israel are also smeared with the same stain.

It is gratifying that the ASA seems able to take some tentative steps to extricate American academics from their past complicity in fostering a rather rancid, chauvinistic, violent state in the Middle East.

(2) The BDS demands include terms that are manifestly not acceptable to Israel, and are unlikely to become acceptable to Israel in the foreseeable future;

that’s not much of an argument. Because one of the things that make the conflict so intractable is that this is just as true:

(2) The Israeli demands include terms that are manifestly not acceptable to any Palestinian group, and are unlikely to become acceptable to Palestinians in the foreseeable future;

so why should Palestinians give up their core demands but Israel shouldn’t?
It’s not like the right of return is an idea that some radical UK academics invented and then introduced into the Palestinian collective psyche via BDS…

Andrew, a piece of paper signed by politicians is not a “realistic peaceful settlement”. It’s nothing. How do 5 million 1948/67 refugees (what is unacceptable to them) fit into your scheme? Your relentless insistence that the Israeli society is so savage that it’s absolutely unable to right its wrongs and therefore must be appeased, is very troubling and unpleasant. After all, white South Africans did manage to end the apartheid, when enough pressure was applied. What’s so different about this situation?

Andrew, the claims the palestinians make are going to be entirely things the israelis don’t want to give up. And vice-versa. Think on the social dynamics here:
+ you don’t claim things you don’t want
+ if the other side doesn’t want it you can have it without them objecting
+ you don’t claim things you already have.

… so the only claims left to make are the things the other side wants and is thus claiming themselves. No? And getting any claim involves the other side giving up something it wants, and the other side doesn’t want to do that: the only way to keep the other side entirely happy is to not claim anything they want.

And that’s not going to work for delivering you what you want, is it?

[Really, the problem with middle-east peace is that because of the focus on israel’s military strength and with the backing of the US government the israeli population has forgotten that their actual negotiating position, stripped of violence and the threat of violence, is in reality extraordinarily weak. And — for reasons that should be obvious — military strength and potential-for-violence doesn’t actually hugely change the shape of the peaceful solutions. So there’s this huge expectations gap: everything that the IDF has been able to deliver on the battlefield becomes essentially meaningless for the peace negotiations, if you want the outcome to actually be peaceful. Which… yeah. It’s not like the israelis weren’t told all this in the seventies, and we can’t actually save people from the consequences of their own bad decision-making: effort that israel has put into shoring up its military position is essentially effort that won’t shift the final-status negotiated solution. Israel is pretty fucked, strategically, and the sooner they cut a deal the better the deal will be. Certainly the deals they were offered in the past are better than the deals they’re getting offered now: it’s seeming like they’re starting to realise. Denial-anger-bargaining-depression-acceptance.]

adam.smith @240: so why should Palestinians give up their core demands but Israel shouldn’t? It’s not like the right of return is an idea that some radical UK academics invented and then introduced into the Palestinian collective psyche via BDS…

Gorgonzola @242: How do 5 million 1948/67 refugees (what is unacceptable to them) fit into your scheme?

The right of return does not have as much impact on the Palestinians as it does upon Israel, for the reason that Kaveh raised earlier: most who qualify will probably not return as they have created, or for the most part have been born into, lives elsewhere.

While the Palestinians risk nothing by being granted an option to move to Israel as full citizens, Israel risks its very identity.

So looking simply at the balance of actual interests, this is a demand to which Israel will reasonably not accede to, and cannot be persuaded to accede to. By contrast, since most Palestinians claim little interest in exercising an option of return, this is a demand that they would be unwise to render essential to the formation of a settlement that gains them the opportunity for greater economic and political progress.

As to why I am sympathetic to the idea of Israel’s existence, presumably there is no need to recite the historical events that spurred the creation of the modern Israeli state. And while I do not regard that as license for Israel to exercise discrimination against non-Jews, I do think it reasonable for Israel to deny admittance to a huge influx of persons who have no connection to the Israeli nation-state, who indeed for the most part have a great and understandable antipathy, and who could literally control the democratic institutions of its government.

That said, I also think an acknowledgement of the pain and suffering caused by the forced exodus of many, and as part of that acknowledgement, compensation, is morally important and politically prudent.

Plume @243: Any protest movement that cedes ground upfront is beyond foolish. Any protest movement that tries to make it easier for the other side to accept its positions by accepting their framing of the issue?

Let me call bullshit.

I judge a political movement by its stated goals and actions. I see nothing to indicate that BDS has a super-secret agenda for a realistic peace settlement, towards the achievement of which its current demands are merely useful bargaining chips. Indeed the leaders of BDS have stated precisely the opposite. Your defense of BDS is essentially: sure, their demands are unreasonable, but they don’t really mean what they say.

You also seem to think that BDS is simply making demands towards Israel. But it’s not. It’s asking that others take certain actions to force Israel to accept certain demands. BDS isn’t empowered to represent anyone and has no control over anyone else’s actions. So whether they are effective depends crucially on whether they are persuasive; and whether they are persuasive depends largely on whether those specified demands are reasonable and helpful. They aren’t in a position to call off boycotts once Israel agrees to a package they secretly find acceptable, because they don’t control any of those boycotts. So they can’t negotiate. And since none of us is in possession of the secret communique in which BDS explains that these demands are really just bargaining ploys, and what we’re really aiming for with these boycotts is something else, and we’re all going to tacitly coordinate to achieve that something else, we’re just going to have to determine whether to endorse or reject BDS’s call based on what they actually say.

And by the way, a protest movement that depends on persuading others and starts out with unreasonable demands isn’t going to need to get rolled, because they’re likely going to be completely ineffective.

“Name me a state that ISN’T ‘rancid, chauvinistic, violent’.”
ftfy

Looks like we had the same idea SoU.

Collin Street @152, 218:
[again: does the government of the state of israel run any arab-language universities for the twenty percent of the population of israel-proper that speaks arabic as their first language? Finland’s about the same size as israel-proper and manages it for a 5% minority language…]

A better comparison might be the states of Arizona and New Mexico, or the southern third of California — comparable total population, minority language prevalence, and history of adversarial occupation, legal oppression and economic privation. (Visiting Española and the pueblos east of it from Los Alamos has been aptly described by more than one Israeli visiting scientist as “going into the territories.” Against that low benchmark, Israeli higher education is doing pretty well.

Al-Qasemi teaching college in Baqa is Arabic-first in all respects, and Western Galilee College (in Akko) and Safed Academic College (in Tzfat) both have majority-Arab student populations, with bilingual education. Israel has six full research universities, plus the Weizmann Institute which has only graduate students; of these, Haifa University has the most Arab students, probably about 20%. Haifa, TAU and Ben Gurion all have a full range of Arabic studies, literature and language departments, with Arabic-language departmental home pages. Hebrew University is a fifteen-minute bus ride and a checkpoint crossing from Al-Quds University, which admits students from both sides of the Green Line (about a third of the 14,000 enrolled are Israeli citizens). Al-Quds has a satellite campus on the Israeli side of the fence, with about 1000 students.

Just to note–I didn’t pick Poles and Czechs at random. I picked them because they live in countries that are western democracies in good standing, and expelled more people on ethnic grounds since WWII than the entire population of the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan in 1948. (Sudetendeutsche, Pomeranians).

Israel defenders claim Israel is a Western democracy, and then turn around and attack its critics on the grounds that some other countries are as bad or worse. I happen to agree with them on that part–I don’t think Israeli oppression of Palestinians is anything extraordinary in the annals of human oppression. But then the Israel defenders shouldn’t play the game of saying that Israel is this wonderful democracy , and then on the other hand complain that Israel is being boycotted the way we might boycott another Western democracy that oppressed a minority group.

This. A thousand times.

Against that low benchmark, Israeli higher education is doing pretty well.

Thanks for that. Better than I’d thought.

“I didn’t pick Poles and Czechs at random. I picked them because they live in countries that are western democracies in good standing, and expelled more people on ethnic grounds since WWII than the entire population of the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan in 1948.”

Are German refugees asking people to boycott Poland because of the crimes that Poland committed against German citizens after WWII? For that matter, are Polish citizens requesting boycotts against Germany for the crimes they committed against Poland, or do most Europeans consider all that settled? Are ethnic Germans currently living under Polish occupation? Is the US currently supporting Poland as it oppresses German civilians living under occupation?

Hey, why limit yourself to Poland and the Czechs? Go Godwin. Why did people made such a big deal about South African apartheid, when Germany was a Western democracy in good standing during the 80’s and did worse things in WWII?

“I judge a political movement by its stated goals and actions. ”

Same here. And when I see so many self-proclaimed supporters of a 2SS opposed to any pressure on Israel, while not expressing any comparable dismay regarding kneejerk US support for Israel, I judge their support for a 2SS to be fraudulent. At best, such supporters would welcome a 2SS if and when Israel decides to grant it, but failing that, the real motivation is to minimize the trouble the Palestinians or their supporters might cause. One way to do this is to have a “peace process” ongoing while the Israelis continue to steal more land and to set up rules by which any pro-Palestinian movement will automatically be suspect. One of those rules is that Palestinians asking for a right of return are opposed to peace, while Israelis who take for granted that they will get to keep most of their settlements are “reasonable”. It’s that sort of reasonableness that encourages them to build more settlements.

SamChevre: “(I’m a supporter of a two-state solution on the original Balfour declaration grounds, with the Jordan as the dividing line.)”

I’m not sure what in the original Balfour Declaration gives you grounds for supporting a two-state solution. As you know, there is nothing in the Balfour Declaration that even acknowledges the political aspirations of the Palestinian people. Here is the key part of the text:

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

While there’s some debate about whether “national home” was supposed to mean “state” — my point does not depend on that — there is little dispute that the Palestinians were given short shrift by it, particularly since all they got in the deal was that their “civil and religious rights” — i.e., nothing there about political rights — would not be prejudiced.

So no mention of a two-state solution. The most appropriate reading of the text is that the Brits were giving the Jews the land, with the proviso that the civil/religious rights of the overwhelming native majority should not be harmed.

As Hannah Arendt would write in 1943 (I’ve quoted this on another thread but it seems appropriate here), the argument of those pushing for a Jewish state in Palestine (as opposed to a binational state) was simply “that tomorrow’s majority [the Jews] will concede minority rights to today’s majority [the Palestinians], which indeed would be something brand new in the history of nation-states.”

Seems like a pretty good description of the spirit of the Balfour Declaration.

SamChevre:

This may have some connection to the fact that Germany treated them as citizens.

This may have even better connection to the fact that it was Polish government expelling them, from Poland, and in the aftermath of a genocidal German occupation of Poland. That is: it had a strong (albeit misguided) sense of a certain brand of justice. Which is completely absent from any unbiased version of what has been happening in Palestine since 1948.

Andrew:

As to why I am sympathetic to the idea of Israel’s existence, presumably there is no need to recite the historical events that spurred the creation of the modern Israeli state.

Wouldn’t it make more sense, in this context, to be sympathetic to the opposite idea, the idea of rejecting all manifestations of ethnic nationalism and chauvinism, especially where it becomes government’s dominant ideology?

Plume @259:
Any discussion of Polish and Czech expulsion of Germans after WWII should not leave out the fact that the Germans had so recently conquered and occupied their countries, slaughtering those ethnic groups, and had planned to exterminate them.

This only makes sense if (1) there exists a level of murderous aggression on the part of an undemocratically ruled enemy that justifies general peacetime reprisal against the former enemy’s civilians, and (2) Israel’s Arab neighbors in the 1948, 1967 and 1973 wars did not rise to that level. Neither proposition is defensible enough that it would be even briefly entertained if Jews weren’t involved.

Regardless, we’re talking about the Jewish state of today, in the year 2014.

There are millions of Poles living in German houses today, in the year 2014. Which brings us to:

Donald Johnson @260:
Are German refugees asking people to boycott Poland because of the crimes that Poland committed against German citizens after WWII?

The thirty million refugees of Eastern Europe and India/Pakistan after WW2, and the fifty-odd million who have come under the protection of the UN High Commission on Refugees in the sixty-odd years since Israel’s birth, and for that matter the 800,000 Jews forcibly expelled from Arab countries in 1948-54, have been fed, housed and resettled (with varying degrees of kindness and justice) by host countries, world agencies and NGOs that are trying to solve refugee problems. The unique status of UNRWA as an anti-UNHCR for Palestinians is cruel, contemptible, and has facilitated multigenerational suffering, where as you observe other outcomes are the norm even in the aftermath of far more brutal conflicts than Israeli independence.

Citation. I really don’t care for “let me Google that for you” snark, but was there any plausible search that wouldn’t have taken you straight to that page, if you’d looked?

I googled much last night, as a refresher on the subject. The claims about Poland are contested to this day, with wildly different estimates for refugees, deaths, rationales, causes, etc. etc. as the article you link to says repeatedly. There is so much disagreement on this issue, the article itself is contested. If we try to pull it all together and average the estimates, it is in the millions for a combination of Germans fleeing the allied forces, Polish reprisals and forced expulsions. It was a tragedy on top of a tragedy of world historical proportions. A horror after a horror.

Regardless, there is no likeness between the two tragedies. They are obviously and self-evidently (wildly) different. And even if you could — you can’t — make a case for their similarity, what would that prove? That the Israelis are justified in oppressing the Palestinians because the Poles oppressed the Germans after the Germans tried to exterminate the Poles?

Joshua Burton 269,

Oh, come on. That was after the Israelis did it to the Palestinians. What is the common denominator in all of this? If there had never been a Jewish state imposed on that strip of land from outside and by outside forces, the subsequent wars, retaliations, intifadas, reprisals, wars, retaliations and on and on and on would not have happened.

What set this all in motion? The violently forced creation of the Jewish state.

Quick note for me, before heading out for day:

I do thank the Joshua Burtons and Sam Chevres for reminding us of horrific reprisals against civilians after WWII, though I don’t think it’s relevant to the discussion of Israeli government policy. The complexity of human tragedy is something that often can stun, especially once we rid ourselves of the idea of cut and dried, evil versus good narratives.

Nazism is and was unmistakeably evil. But not all responses to it were unmistakeably good.

“I’m a supporter of a two-state solution on the original Balfour declaration grounds, with the Jordan as the dividing line.)”

The Jordan River? So Israel gets the West Bank? So you favor a 1SS with equal rights for Palestinians and Israeli Jews, or else the current 1SS with apartheid-like policies, or perhaps more Palestinians need to given a little encouragement to leave.

There is some debate about what was meant by the Balfour declaration, but it’s all irrelevant anyway, unless one thinks the British has some right to determine who got to live in Palestine, which seems a little farfetched to me.

“It seems to me that the differential treatment of Poland and Israel is on grounds of how the neighbors reacted to the displaced persons, rather than on grounds of how badly they acted.”

The difference is that in the aftermath of WWII we immediately went into the Cold War and more atrocities occurred, on a smaller scale but still terrible. To prevent this from happening would have required WWIII. When this sort of behavior began occurring again in the former Yugoslavia, people didn’t react by saying that we didn’t really care, because much larger acts of ethnic cleansing had occurred in the 40’s and there wouldn’t be a problem if the neighbors just accepted the refugees into their own societies. Why don’t we simply take ethnic cleansing off the list of crimes altogether, and instead put all the onus on the countries where the refugees flee, and on the refugees themselves?

I don’t think what Israel did in 1948 and what it has been doing ever since is particularly unusual in the scale of human rights violations, as I said already. What is unique in my experience is the bizarre way that people defend Israel–by invoking other acts of ethnic cleansing as a defense and putting the moral onus on anyone and everyone except Israel.
I first saw this in 2004 when Benny Morris invoked the American treatment of the Native Americans as a precedent, and actually argued that what the US did was justifiable. Previously people like Chomsky and Finkelstein had invoked the Native American comparison, but as a demonstration that Israel was part of the long tradition of Western settler colonialism. Nowadays one mainly sees the analogy used by people who use it as Morris did, as a justification. That’s the sort of “defense” that Israel gets.

Which is fine, if people are consistent. So can we just cut the nonsense about Israel as this moral beacon, stop supplying them with billions of dollars in aid every year, and just speak of it as another country which democratically chose to establish itself by expelling the bulk of the original inhabitants and maintains an apartheid-like system on the WB to this very day. This shouldn’t be any more or less my business as an American than the acts of any other godforsaken government in the Middle East, except for the fact that the US supports Israel no matter what it does. Stop that support and then the argument against Americans singling out poor little Israel will have more force.

Oh, come on. That was after the Israelis did it to the Palestinians.

No. As a factual matter, there was never a day between 1900 and today when the cumulative number of Arab civilians killed by Zionist forced expulsion equaled the cumulative number of Jewish civilians killed by pan-Arab forced expulsion.

What is unique in my experience is the bizarre way that people defend Israel–by invoking other acts of ethnic cleansing as a defense and putting the moral onus on anyone and everyone except Israel.

What is unique is that every other instance since 1950 has been under the authority of the UNHCR, while Palestinian refugees are held hostage under UNRWA, an organization with explicitly nonhumanitarian goals. This, too, is an injustice with Cold War roots, but it has now survived the end of the Cold War by a quarter century.

Corey and Henry — specific examples of infringement of academic freedom by an academic boycott:

The “boycott does oppose participation in conferences or events officially sponsored by Israeli universities.” http://www.theasa.net/images/uploads/ASA_Boycott_FAQs.pdf

All conferences run by the Weizman Institute (Aharon Katzir-Katchalsky Center) http://www.weizmann.ac.il/katzir/annual-conferences

Many conferences run by the Weizmann Institute Conference Unit http://www.weizmann.ac.il/ConferenceUnit/confrences

There are many other examples.

As an example of an Israeli scholar being subject to a boycott in the US consider the case of Stan Fisher, former MIT economist and current vice-Chaiman of the Fed. He was Governor of the Israeli Central Bank from 2005 to mid-2013 and would have been barred from participating in multiple US academic conferences because he was an Israeli gov’t official.

So, no, the boycott is not a mere symbolic gesture but, in fact, infringes on academic freedom.

With respect to the ASA, I leave it to members or others to provide any instances. But it’s my understanding that the ASA considers their boycott a model for other US academic associations.

Joshua: “Assad’s father, six months after launching and losing the 1973 war: ‘Palestine is not only part of the Arab homeland but also a basic part of South Syria. We consider it our right and duty to insist that Palestine should remain a free part of our Arab homeland and our Arab Syrian country.'”

If you want to take your intellectual, moral, and political cues from commander of the Butcher of Hama, be my guest. But understand that you forswear whatever moral position you claim to be occupying in this discussion.

I’m somewhat hesitant to get drawn into these Israel threads, but I am rather struck by “postmodern” aspect of the ASA boycott, in that they probably weren’t going to publish papers in Israeli conferences anyway. Bit like holding a strike by not working for someone who isn’t your employer, and you weren’t going to work for anyway. Just how many top-tier American studies conferences are in Israel?

For contrast, the threatened boycott of RSA Conference by computer security researchers (because RSA Data Security Inc allegedly put a backdoor in their BSAFE security product, as suggested by the Snowden revelations), has possibly a bit more teeth to it, in that computer security researchers do actually publish at that conference.

Corey – 283
Thanks for the response. It seems that a U.S. scholar who went to a conference sponsored by an Israeli institution would be violating the boycott. The ASA has been very careful to try to make sure that the boycott doesn’t affect a U.S. scholar who wants to work with an Israeli scholar — they’re not violating the boycott and their academic freedom is not infringed. Similarly with with Israeli conferences not sponsored by Israeli academic institutions. But the one’s I pointed to are Israeli institution sponsored and will effect the ability of U.S. scholars to attend very important conferences if they honor the boycott. Similarly, the Israeli and other foreign attendees will be affected by the absence of US scholars honoring the boycott. Of course no one is required to go to any conferences. (Honestly, I couldn’t figure that comment out.)

Many boycotts don’t have an enforcement mechanism – they’re voluntary. If you classify all boycotts without such mechanisms as “symbolic gestures” so be it. But it doesn’t look like that was the intent given the distinctions ASA made between individual and institutional measures and between Israeli university conferences vs. Israeli conferences unaffiliated with academic institutions. And it seemed that distinction was a big deal in the political context. For example, one of the reasons the NYT opposed the NY bill was that it didn’t affect scholar-to-scholar collaborations. (While somewhat unrelated, it might not be a good career move for a junior faculty member to attend an Israeli sponsored conference in a U.S. department with a lot of senior folks subscribing to the boycott. Some enforcement mechanisms are explicit and some not so much.)

I didn’t see a response about the Stan Fischer example. Is the exclusion of Israeli officials at ASA conferences voluntary or mandatory? For example, if some panel organizer at an ASA conference wanted Fischer, would the organizers prohibit his attendance (send a nice letter asking him not to come and taking his name off the program?)

LFC @287:
Short version (polemical but well-sourced). Long version (more balanced, insider’s view from former UNRWA general counsel).

Typically IDPs must have a state to begin with (that’s why they’re internally displaced — they’re displaced within their state) and the Palestinians don’t have a state.

Which gets exactly to the problem of definition. Refugees must also have a state to begin with, which (unlike IDPs) they are no longer in; as the Palestinians didn’t have a state in 1946-48, they are not refugees under the UNHCR’s definition, either. But status negotiations toward a 2SS are premised on the idea that one of the negotiating parties is a Palestinian state in utero; that party has certainly made persistent efforts to be recognized by the world as a state in being, and has that diplomatic status already with respect to various UN organizations, NGOs and, I believe, a majority of the nations in the UN. So: the UNRWA “refugees” resident on territory that is undisputed future-Palestine are either (1) Palestinian citizens living where they belong (except that UNRWA is keeping them in shacks and preventing as a matter of policy the construction of permanent housing that might prejudice some right under the other theory), or persons with some claim to repatriation inside the Green Line. On the latter theory, the Palestinian negotiators have no authority to conclude a peace, so why even sit down with them until they repudiate it?

Note that there were Israeli refugees from Gaza, the Old City and Gush Etzion in 1949, and from Sinai in 1979 and Gaza again in 2005. In each case, Israel regularized their status as citizens inside its borders, and their descendants are not registered as hereditary refugees — a concept foreign to UNHCR but foundational to UNRWA. Is there any definition of “hereditary refugee” that doesn’t point us inevitably backward to Pocahontas and Joshua son of Nun?

Joshua W. Burton @290
thanks, I will read the links (at least the short one), though not this evening.

Of course, Fischer’s freedom to associate with scholars at the conference is infringed as well.

And your wife’s monogamy impedes my freedom to “associate” with her, too.

I am right now at this minute working on a way to boycott institutions and organizations and corporations and governments I disapprove of without bothering them or their employees or members or really anyone at all.
While still being an actual boycott, with you know, effects and stuff.
So then this sunk-to-the-asinine devolved-into-recondite-meaninglessness conversation will have no longer have any foundational substance.

Roy — “I am right now at this minute working on a way to boycott institutions and organizations and corporations and governments I disapprove of without bothering them or their employees or members or really anyone at all.”

Henry “is highly skeptical that the ASA boycott is meaningful or effective, and views it as a tactically foolish and entirely symbolic gesture of questionable strategic and moral value.” The ASA is arguing that the boycott is totally voluntary with no effects on academic freedom. So yeah, maybe you could work with them on your plan.

I think the boycott has real effects on academic freedom. So ASA should own it and step up. I think your argument is with the ASA, not me.

Academic boycotts are a really crappy type of boycott.