Boycotting the boycotters?

I wish I was a psychiatrist, that’s enough material for a dissertation right there.

I’ve run into this myself, and it always baffles me. I’m capable of separating out my opinions on a state from my opinions on a person, just as I am capable of remaining civil to people I disagree with.

Can you imagine every academic deciding to “boycott” a conference where there’s someone who holds a differing opinion than they do? We’d never have conferences!

‘The third is that it is hard to imagine why the claim that Israel is an “apartheid state” (absurd or not) is particularly morally polluting for Israeli academics , as Statman states.’

Well, presumably part of the case (a case?) *for* the boycott ıs that academics have some special responsibility to oppose some of the policies that the boycott is targetting.

So this particular aspect of what Statman is saying doesn’t seem absurd.

To put it another way: part of the point of the boycott is to put *moral pressure* on Israeli academics – and Statman doesn’t want to associate with people who want to put moral pressure on him to oppose policies which (I imagine) he thinks shouldn’t be opposed on the merits.

I suspect I’d feel the same way, if I held Statman’s views. And, if I supported the boycott, I suspect I’d be saying – or at least thinking – that that’s how I’d hope that Israeli academics might react.

(Which raises the question of whose view – if anyone’s – he is expecting to change with his letter)

Correct me if I am wrong, I am still a grad student and might not understand the ways of the academy, but I thought that the entire purpose of conferences was to disagree!!! Isn’t that how knowledge is advanced — by reasonable people disagree and to find the best possible solution from different claims?

sg, assuming that your extracts are representative, it sounds like he’s squealing precisely because he’s the sort of person who this boycott protests.

Bloix, need I remind you of this comment you made?

If she feels she cannot in good conscience publish the best work in the field due to her political convictions, then her only honorable course is to resign. Otherwise she collects her salary under false pretences.

Where is your outrage? Now this academic is only ‘misunderstanding his own role’?

Yeah, never mind, “political animal”, Bloix, according to your previous analysis Statman is a “thief”, who is “stealing” from the Israeli government. Now that’s outrageous!

BTW, if the quotes above are representative, it seems like Statman might be a legitimate boycott target in his own right, but not because of his nationality.

well zarzur, perhaps you should answer your own point about people who don’t perpetrate the policies in question (e.g. academics) in light of Mr. Statman’s charming views on who we are allowed to slaughter. clearly some academics do, and if one subscribes to a certain view of academics’ role in society, one surely thinks they have a more than average responsibility for what society does. In this case maybe boycotting the mouthpiece of the ruling class is better than boycotting the lifeblood of its workers…?

anyway this thread is on a slightly different topic so we should leave our last one aside.

And if Chris Bertram, who is a reasonable fellow and is against the boycott, responds this way, think how will hotter heads react.

Don’t bother thinking–I’m packing up my deer rifle and booking a flight to Haifa as we speak!

But I’m calling it a “targeted assassination.” So that’s all right.

(Isn’t “political animal” an Aristotle reference?)

I don’t feel like sitting down to dinner with people some of whom may have voted to boycott me and my colleagues.

… so it is very unlikely that Professor Statman would indeed face the prospect of dinner with anyone who voted to boycott him and his colleagues.

“Yes—to smell pork, to eat of the habitation which your prophet the Nazarite conjured the devil into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you. What news on the Rialto?”

The immediate source of the metonymy is surely Daniel Bernard’s memorable outburst of table diplomacy. But I think there is more going on here. Both Geras and our host have strongly fixated on dining together as a proxy for mutual benevolence and trust — or, in a negative sense, on dinner tables as the particular place where bad blood congeals.

Israel’s own “place at the table” is, of course, proverbially insecure; indeed, the UN regional groups exist for no obvious purpose other than keeping Israel off the seating chart. I suspect both sides of an instinctive image of the whole Zionist morality play that is mired in prandial history, and ultimately in Acts 10.

n’est-ce pas

SG, I think the problem with that would lie in generalizing Statman’s views to all Israeli academics (of which they aren’t representative) and then using those views to characterize the whole of academia as the “mouthpiece of the ruling class.” I’d have no problem with boycotting Statman, because his personal behavior appears to merit it. He is directly advocating the implementation of policies I regard as immoral, and he works in a field that has the potential to impact those policies. I do object to putting all the Israeli academics who work in civil rights NGOs or offer an alternative model of cooperation with the Palestinians, or even those who simply keep their heads down and love their country despite recognizing its flaws, in the same class as him.

BTW, there are ways to sanction governments without draining the lifeblood of the workers. Most of these ways are symbolic, but so are things like academic boycotts. I’ll leave it at that and let the discussion move on: the last word is yours.

On the topic of this thread, I expect that there will be a fair number of symbolic rejections of what is, after all, a symbolic rejection. I wouldn’t take it personally if I were a boycotter. I might, were I caught in the crossfire.

…but I thought that the entire purpose of conferences was to disagree….

Ah, the innocence of youth.

Anyone who is interested in reading Professor Statman’s profound insights into moral philosophy should read his seminal essay Targeted Killing, incidentally. I have read it and all I can say is ‘wow’.
However, by reading it I have learnt many things I did not know before. For example the (sole?) purpose of the Palestinian Intifada was ‘to murder Jews across Israel, in buses, restaurants, nightclubs, universities, wherever possible.’

Likewise, Bush’s war on terror is likely to be a triumphant success because: ‘in the war against terror, just as in the war against the mafia,
what counts are the long-term results, not the immediate ones. In the short
run, acts of revenge might follow the killing of terrorists, but in the long
run, there is good reason to believe that such killings will weaken the
terror organizations, generate demoralization among their members, force
them to restrict their movements, and so on. The personal charisma and
professional skills of the leaders and key figures of certain organizations are
crucial to the success of their organizations, something that is especially true
with regard to terror organizations that operate underground with no clear
institutional structure. It is reasonable to assume that killing such individuals
will gradually make it more difficult for the terror machinery to function.’

Likewise, the war on Afghanistan was a failure, or something, becuase ‘to judge by the murderous actions of Al Qaeda that took place after that war, especially in Bali and Mombassa, Al Qaeda is still alive and kicking and still poses an enormous threat to the free world.’

From this, Professor Statman concludes tha the real threat is ‘the danger of over-delaying the use of force.’

Well that’s certainly not a danger Israel has been courting lately.

I hope everyone will mull over these deep and meaningful arguments and give them all the consideration and thought that they deserve.

Engels- Unlike the journal editor, Statman is not intentionally diverting his employer’s resources to further his own personal ends. Therefore he is not a thief. However, he is allowing considerations of his own personal comfort (more likely his amour propre, as long as we are being French about it) to interfere with his performance of his responsibilities. Therefore he is in breach of his employment contract.

“Teeth,” eh?

Of course, the model of the South African example does indicate that the academics were one of the least effective parts of that isolation campaign (it proved too easy to circumvent), and were mainly symbolic. If that view holds water I think that’s a good reason not to support an academic boycott. It’s a trade boycott and isolation campaign that would, presumably, have real teeth.

The pretense is that an academic boycott is somehow primary [academics take themselves too seriously]; but why see it in isolation?
And again, what was ignored in all the nitpicking in the last post is that Israel claims to be a representative of modern democratic values, and it’s claims are accepted by many, including many here, though logically they should not be. China makes no claim to be what we claim to be. Nor increasingly does Russia.

Good God. After reading the linked articles, I am genuinely surprised that he was invited in the first place. Presumably the British Society for Ethics wanted someone to make the case “against”?

Engels – what I said, in response to Hidari, was –
“When you apply for a grant, Hidari, you are representing to the grant-giver that you will do your level best to carry out the task that you are set. You do not say, “I will do my job except when I choose to spend the money to advance a political goal of my own.” If If you take the money and then spend it in ways that are influenced by your personal political agenda, you are stealing. You are violating a public trust.” I stand by that.

If you take money to do your job and you don’t do certain things that would assist you in doing your job better because it makes you uncomfortable to do them, you are breaching your employment contract, but you are not stealing.

I wouldn’t think that this sort of distinction would be beyond the capacity of people who read a blog written by academics.

You see, this is where it all goes wrong: ‘If you take the money and then spend it in ways that are influenced by your personal political agenda, you are stealing’.

Yes if you take the money that, according to the grant application is to be spent on (say) travelling expenses or a laptop, and you donate it to the Labour (or Conservative, or whatever) party then, yes that’s stealing. But that wasn’t what we were talking about was it?

I, for one, am very much curious about the psychological aspect of this thing. I mean, it’s not exactly a secret that murdering charismatic leaders sets back the movement and that collective punishment often works.

Obviously, if your are hellbent on winning and keeping the loot you want to employ methods that work. I can imagine myself in a situation where I would say “ah, fuck ya all, I’m gonna do what I need to do”; but I would certainly be aware that at that point I’m firmly in the nihilistic territory.

Why would you be so determined to feel righteous while acting as a nihilist, that’s what I don’t understand. Why analyze, why pretend; who needs the headache, the cognitive dissonance? That’ll ruin everything.

Hidari – well, yes, it is what we were talking about. If I am the editor of a journal of translation studies, it is my job to find and publish the best articles in translation studies that I can. It is not my job to publish the best articles except for those by authors who live in a country whose policies offend me. I was not hired and funded for the purpose of using the journal of translation studies as a tool to effectuate social change in a foreign country.

When the editor omits to publish the best available articles because of the nationality of the authors, she is making a conscious choice to publish a second-rate journal. An editor who consciously publishes second-rate work in order to advance a non-work-related goal is in my view stealing from her employer.

Perhaps we can agree to disagree as to whether the editor is stealing, while agreeing that she is behaving unethically. Whether she should be hauled away in hand-cuffs, or fired, or merely excoriated for her behavior is a point of discussion, but the fundamental dishonesty of her actions is surely not up for debate.

Slight typo,
I meant “referred to in (b)” in the post above

what utter balls, zdenek. And the fact that you had to resort to “an impression is created” rather than being able to quote anything Chris said, rather underlines who it is that’s being “intellectually mischievous” and engaging in “bad philosophical practice”.

Bloix’s position, if I’ve got it straight, is that what one ought to do is fulfil the demands of one’s role, and that anyone who allows extraneous considerations to affect her performance of her role is being unethical. This seems implausible, even if Bloix has correctly described the demands of the academic role (pursue scholarship, and nothing else). Surely jobs can’t be that strongly constitutive of what one ought to do?

“Spirit of this way of doing philosophy is precisely what Chris is going against here by looking at the worst that can be said for the view we are looking at.”

Surely the reason Chris is highlighting this view is because it was the one Norman Geras chose to highlight?

With that said, I agree that Prof. Statman is representative of nothing other than right-wing lunatics.

With that said, I agree that Prof. Statman is representative of nothing other than right-wing lunatics.

Well, unfortunately Israel’s ideology in combination with the law of return virtually guarantee a very high concentration of right-wing lunatics.

Zdenek – Do you think it’s philosophical best practice to close practically every argument you make with an more or less groundless allegation of professional malfeasance?

Perhaps I should have said, “should not be a loss to the conference”…

“And, Zdenek, the principle of charity says that you should interpret what people say in the most favourable way you can. It does not say that you should politely ignore them whenever they come out with some manifest BS. That would not be conducive to intellectual progress.”

I completely agree with that but you are missing my point a bit. I agree that we have been perfectly fair with Statman but not the issue of boycotting the boycott.

Consider my example of the creationist practice of choosing deliberately the weak and questionable work in evolution to cast doubt on the field as a whole. Instead of choosing the best and then seeing if it can stand up to scrutiny they a la Chris choose the dumbest and weakest to make rhetorical points of no real intellectual value.

In other words principle of charity guides ones inquiry here too or should ; do I need to really labour this point ?

“Actually Zdenek, the fact that Statman had decided not to attend a conference at my own institution that I’ll be attending myself was what made it stand out. Like I said, I try to refrain from commenting on the material at Normblog, tempted though I often am.”

Sorry I did not know that. Can I just add why dont you look at Lappin’s piece (Norm blog June 03 2007 ) and do a post on that ?

Come on.

It’s hardly unreasonable for an Israeli academic to feel uncomfortable about attending a conference in the UK in light of this resolution. Maybe Statman’s specific reasons can be debated by those familiar with the procedural intricacies, as Chris is, but the broader fact is that the vote is an anti-Israel measure, aimed specifically at academics. Whatever one thinks of Statman’s work, criticizing his decision to skip the conference is unfair.

Equally unfair is accusing him and others of “we-are-the-victims grandstanding.” If group X is boycotted, is it inaccurate for them to characterize themselves as the victims of a boycott?

no one has put forward an argument that an academic may ethically utilize funds and time to further a goal unrelated to and in hindrance of his or her scholarship and teaching functions

No, they have pointed out that that is a completely inaccurate description of what has been proposed.

Thanks, Vadim. However, it’s Statman’s misreading you’re correcting; the resolution was in fact to call for discussion, not specifically to ‘promote’. I think Chris was just being charitable.

Just a quick remark about Statman. He has written an excellent piece about hurting religious feelings (available only in Hebrew), and edited a fine volume about moral luck (SUNY press, 1995, I think).
Regardless of the boycott issue, people here seem to think that he is a bad philosopher, following the religious feelings piece and that volume, this is nonsense.

Bloix at 73: statman is ostensibly (and despite the evidence of his work, I suppose) a “philosopher”. He has published work supporting assassination, the killing of civilians and the forcible prevention of atheism. Do you not think it slightly, slightly, slightly possible that he has been using all the money he is given by the state to further his own philosophical and ethical (if I may use the term loosely) agenda?

He is now turning down the opportunity to go to a conference at which many people will give him the opportunity to improve his work by disagreeing with him. Unsurprisingly, these people who disagree with him have suggested boycotting a state which uses some of the tactics which he supports philosophically. Why should this surprise him? maybe the debate at the conference would help him to refine his policies and thereby support his state. In any case, by avoiding it he is explicitly refusing to do his job, which is (call me naive) to improve the tools of philosophical debate, presumably through … debate?

Which brings me to #74. This man publishes work which explicitly endorses the cruelty and violence of the Israeli state. He is a philosopher. Many people disagree with his ideas to the extent of (maybe) boycotting a state which adheres to his philosophy. He has consciously chosen not to debate them. How are we meant to appreciate this decision?

Which brings me to #74. This man publishes work which explicitly endorses the cruelty and violence of the Israeli state. He is a philosopher. Many people disagree with his ideas to the extent of (maybe) boycotting a state which adheres to his philosophy. He has consciously chosen not to debate them. How are we meant to appreciate this decision?

My point has absolutely nothing to do with Statman’s work or ideas. It is simply that it does not strike me as unreasonable that any Israeli academic, philosopher, physicist, what-have-you, would be uncomfortable attending a conference in the UK.

In fact, don’t the pro-boycott forces seek precisely this outcome? Where’s the complaint?

I doubt that those who disagree with Statman in Israel will feel quite so uncomfortable as he does,

Maybe, but it’s pretty much an either/or proposition, isn’t it? One either is too uncomfortable to come to the UK or one isn’t. Degrees of discomfort don’t matter much.

In any case, I doubt that many Israeli academics, or citizens for that matter, are unaware of various criticisms of Israeli policies. That it needs a bunch of British intellectuals to make them see the light is pretty silly.

Why not go further, Bernard? Everyone in the world is doubtless well aware of the various criticisms of whatever they are doing so trying to get anyone to do anything differently is both presumptious and futile.

what one … always amusing or general boycott and isolation?

But it was Seth and not I who suggested an academic boycott could profitably be seen as part of a general strategy. I’m kind of agnostic on the question, leaning against.

“Do you think scientific work on race from Australia in the era of genocide could be trusted?”

Do you think Darwin’s work ( racist , colonialist age ) can be trusted ? Or Heisenberg’s or Aristotle’s ( all work in suspect political environments.)

The answer is it is stupid to see the issue the way you do. I.e instead of looking at the work itself and its scientific merit or demerit you think it is sufficient to settle the question of truth by looking at the culture or environment in which it is done. This involves a crude form of genetic fallacy and actually is what underwrites Nazi Science and Soviet Science.

Is it not funny then that *your own* approach to inquiry is handicapped by the very shortcoming you see in Statman’s work ?

To dismiss this Statman guy as an eccentric nut would be a mistake, because he is much more representative than you probably think. A supremacist cult there controls heavily armed state with nuclear weapons, their perceived defeat in the recent Lebanon war (because they failed to occupy Southern Lebanon?) makes them that much more dangerous; it’s really gone too far. It’s just too late to be “agnostic on the question” at this point, gotta try something, anything.

zdenek at 95, need I point out that I didn`t say “filthy culture”, I described a culture without an adjective attached and, as usual, you have inferred things about what I really believe based on what I didn`t say. Just because I think filthy ideas can come from a culture doesn`t mean I think the culture is filthy. If you don`t get that, ask me for my opinion of my own culture and its ideas sometime. Or alternatively, why don`t you make up that opinion for yourself? You seem good at it.

As for zdenek at 94, well, I don`t think this

“it`s not a stretch to imagine that the same thing is going on in Israel now … statman is an example of the kind of filthy ideas which float to the top in such a culture”

is necessarily the same as

“you think it is sufficient to settle the issue of truth by looking at the culture or environment in which the research is done”

I don`t think what you said, I didn`t say what you said, and that`s two times (plus one in the other thread, which got it closed) when you have inferred or exaggerated what I meant based on what you want me to have said.

But this is the thing here zdenek, I am trying to view these things from some sort of hopefully sane position, where I try within my limited faculties to question the link between academics and their culture without seeing it as deterministic; try to question the link between countries` leadership, the culture they set and their situation without being racist; and try to view problems from the perspective of a simple basic compassion, a desire to help and a wish to get along. And every step of the way, you jump up and down accusing me of bloody-minded dogmatism. Unfortunately it`s you who ends up being dogmatic, refusing for example to accept that there might be caveats on research from 19th century Australia because you refuse to judge research in any cultural context. You refuse to accept a nation in a state of war might corrupt it`s academic institutions, refuse to accept that a nation built on stolen land might corrupt its academic institutions (feel free to attach the wrong meaning to this statement, I shall leave it deliberately ambiguous for your frothing pleasure), and refuse to accept that a statement by a complete stranger can be anything except a caricature if it disagrees with you.

Cool your heels, man.

What does this mean ?:

“might be caveats on research from 19th century Australianation”

Very briefly either you are saying that when we are in the context of justification personal views such as whether other cultures are inferior and so on, bias the mechanism of justification itself.

Or you are saying that such considerations are irrelevant. Clearly you are not saying the latter so you subscribing to the first view.

No problem but this is precisely to hold some form of cultural determinist view which actually rejects the distinction between context of justification and context of discovery.

So you see we are back at my criticism of you you are subscribing to the view that who you are and what your political outlook involves is relevant in persuit of truth and as I said this is a trade mark of an outlook underwriting Nazi Science can you see that now ?

If anyone gives a shit, before we all lose our minds, I think we should actually have a look at what the UCU have actually decided to do.

‘The motion passed at UCU congress on Wednesday 30 May calls for a process of providing information and engaging in dialogue. It does not call directly for an academic boycott of any Israeli institutions. The National Executive Committee will in the near future be considering what action it should take in relation to all the motions passed at congress.’

That’s it. There is no boycott. There is no call for a boycott.

End of story, and, hopefully, end of this debate.

zdenek v

before any of this can actually happen it has to go to the NEC. They meet today. So it’s not clear that ANY of the above will actually happen. I know some people get hysterical and lose the ability to concentrate when the word ‘Israel’ is used, but you should really calm down and just pay attention to what is actually happening (not much) and what is proposed (not much more than not much).

…and just to back up hidari’s point, here’s the UCU report of what’s going on:

http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2595

In particular:

Responding to the votes this afternoon, UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: ‘As I have made clear in the past, and as I reiterated on the floor of congress this morning, I do not believe a boycott is supported by the majority of UCU members, nor do I believe that members see it is a priority for the union.

‘Today’s motion on boycott means all branches now have a responsibility to consult all of their members on the issue and I believe that every member should have the opportunity to have their say. The earlier motion means that any future calls for a boycott must pass key tests before a boycott can implemented.’

Which makes this sound more like a defensive move against the UCU Left: put the issue directly to the members, with the aim of getting it off the agenda for a while.

‘Why is an academic union representing UK staff wading into this issue in the first place?’

Because unions believe in the concept of union solidarity. It’s the same reason that unions protest against infringements of union rights all over the world. And believe me if the UCU were protesting against the situation in Zimbabwe or Burma or China we wouldn’t be hearing this ‘why are the UCU interested in things in other countries?’ stuff.

Despite the hysteria that has (of course) been engendered by the mention of the word ‘Israel’, one rather important thing has been omitted. Like it or not, Palestinian activitists and trade unionists think a boycott might do their case some good, and have approached the UCU with a view to making this view known. No, you may agree with this, or disagree with it, or whatever. But it remains a fact.

Now, I, personally, would rather like to know why they think this, and why they think it might have an effect. And I would like a real debate about why they think this. That’s what this proposal is all about. In opposing the proposal AS IT STANDS the ‘antis’ are attempting to shut down debate and implicitly censor the views of academics (Palestinians) who do not agree with Israel’s foreign policy.

This is a completely separate issue from the one about whether or not we should boycott Israel, and a much more important one.

I know (and have read) the work of plenty of academics against the boycott, but nothing by those who oppose [sic] it. Does this tell us something?

Thom, as a person who reads philosophy, why would you insist on arguing by the silliest form of ‘appeal to authority’?

‘The Israelis have the distinct “advantage” of receiving constant barrages of criticism from their self-proclaimed moral superiors to a degree that others do not.’

Hmmm…some of us were of the impression that it was the Palestinians who had the advantage of receiving constant barrages of criticism from their self-proclaimed moral superiors, most of whom, coincidentally, happen to reside in Israel.

SG # 83, 98:

Quite a bit to think about in those two posts. I apologize in advance if I fail to respond to any of your salient points.

I’ll readily accept that culture can affect academic work. Cultures affect the way people think, and hence the way they study and write. Sometimes they can do so in very subtle ways that even become embedded in the language (to take one example with which I’ve become familiar, the word “colonial” in nearly every settler state is viewed as romantic rather than brutal) and hence difficult for insiders to recognize. So, without endorsing any particular conception of Israel’s cultural traits, I’ll acknowledge that such traits exist, that some of them are flawed, and that they may consciously or unconsciously affect Israeli scholars’ work product.

The question is what to do about it. If we discount research that comes from any culture with questionable traits, then what’s left? Every culture of which I’m aware has characteristics that can potentially give rise to, in your words, “filthy ideas.” I’d be skeptical of any present-day Danish or Swiss article about the social effects of immigration unless I knew the author’s politics. But as you acknowledge, culture isn’t deterministic. The work of any given academic may or may not reflect the dominant views of his culture, and for that matter, cultural factors may impact some areas of study much more than others. I don’t think it would be moral or wise to atomize ourselves and cut ourselves off from so much of human experience. Surely, instead, the best course would be to read every scholarly article critically, learn about the author’s background, identify the potential biases that might affect his work, and then separate the wheat from the chaff in the same way that we judge any other issue of individual credibility.

This is especially so where the traits that might affect scholarly work are beyond change. You mention, for example, theft of land. I’ll agree that this can affect cultural attitudes – as I mentioned above, the North American settler colony of which I am a citizen is culturally conditioned to view settlement as a romantic and heroic enterprise even while paying lip service to the fact that it was accomplished through theft. But that’s an original sin rather than an ongoing sin, and I’m very reluctant to conclude that it will forever corrupt the methods or results of non-participant scholars. Rare is the country that wasn’t born in sin, and a scholar’s response should not be to damn such countries to the tenth generation but to examine how scholars have come to terms with that origin in fields where it has impact. In the Israeli case, I might suggest a reading of the “new historians” who began working in the 1990s.

You do mention one possible exception, i.e., a situation where “culture is pervasive” and can therefore be presumed to exist throughout a country’s academic life. I haven’t seen any persuasive proof, however, that this is so with respect to Israeli academia. If Israeli higher education were full of Statmans, or if any Israeli universities endorsed Statman-like views at the institutional level, I have no doubt that this would be a key part of the boycotters’ evidence. The fact that they haven’t produced such evidence, and have instead based their allegations of “complicity” on routine behaviors such as doing national service or accepting a university paycheck, seems to me like a concession of the point. Certainly, my own limited experience with it has been that the Statmans are the exception and that academia as an institution is one of the key liberalizing and equalizing forces in Israeli society. Others’ mileage may vary, but I’d argue that those who believe that Israeli academic culture is so inherently corrupt and pervasive as to render its work product valueless have the burden of proof.

Also – and this is a tangent, but I think an important one – if cultural influence is a valid factor in evaluating foreign research, then shouldn’t it also be a factor to account for in people’s reaction to foreign research? For instance, if you or I were to read an Israeli study and conclude that its methods were morally flawed, would that necessarily be an indictment of Israeli academic culture, or might it be our own cultural attitudes rising up to bite? Or if a group of British or Palestinian professors wanted to, say, boycott Israeli universities because of a perceived moral deficiency in Israeli academia, then isn’t the floor open to whether their attitudes might be influenced by some unconscious cultural bias?

One of the things that sometimes burns me about the boycott debate is that many of the people who make culturally determinist or even culturally essentialist arguments against Israeli academics (I don’t accuse you of being part of this group) are the ones who complain most loudly when their own cultural heritage is brought into the discussion. For instance, I doubt many of them would sit still quietly if I argued that Europe has a long-standing tradition of “racist dehumanizing of a minority group,” to wit Jews, and that Jewish stereotypes may have become so culturally embedded as to unconsciously inform their choice to view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a morality play rather than a war between two flawed parties. Nor would they react well if I were to wonder out loud whether the underlying Palestinian boycott call might be a result of built-in cultural nihilism.

(And before anyone gets hot under the collar, I DON’T ENDORSE THIS INTERPRETATION. Capital letters, ‘kay? Nobody’s getting called an anti-semite or a nihilist here. I’m not even arguing that all culturally influenced attitudes are bad ones – for instance, another consideration that might inform certain boycotters’ attitudes is their culturally-determined conception of human rights. All I’m saying is that, if it’s legitimate to cite the cultural flaws of the State of Israel as reasons for an academic boycott, then it’s also legitimate to point to cultural issues on the other side, which may in itself be a reason not to go there.)

Anyway, I was going to say something about whether academics are mouthpieces of the state, but now I’ve forgotten what it was. Instead, I’ll just conclude the above ramblings by restating my belief that we should be very wary of rejecting academic work on cultural grounds, both because this violates the principal of individuality and because it can be very easily turned around on us. We have other methods of dealing with cultural bias that are based on listening and learning rather than shutting our ears.

(I should have probably have said “Britain or the United States”, to be clear.)

Engels # 115:

There are two threads of argument commonly made by proponents of the boycott. One is that Israel is doing bad things, and that an academic boycott is a way of putting leverage on the state. The other is that Israeli academia is itself guilty and deserving of a boycott on its own merits, hence the boycott party’s frequent accusations of institutional complicity. As a subsidiary to this second argument, it’s sometimes contended that Israeli scholarship is so morally tainted as to be of little loss to humanity, thus affecting the cost-benefit analysis of the proposed boycott’s impact to science and academic freedom.

What SG and I, in my inadvertently blown cover as Zarzur, have primarily been discussing is the second argument. It’s a conversation that actually began on the previous thread, in the context of boycotts’ impact on medical knowledge. The first argument,which justifies a boycott based on the policies of the state without any reference to the institutional guilt of academia, of course implicates a different set of ethical issues and counter-arguments. But I don’t think we can ignore the second thread as long as it’s invoked in boycott calls.

Ah, rebutted, of course. Silly me, I should’ve known.

I was naive and The Enemies of The People are slick and crafty. Thanks, Jonathan.

And in case the use of the word “proponents” above is misleading I should make it clear that I don’t support this boycott.

Engels, I agree that the policies of the Israeli state are the primary concern for most of the boycott proponents, in that those policies are what the boycott seeks to change. I don’t believe, though, that this makes the arguments as to Israeli academia’s institutional culture “secondary.” The issue of whether pressure needs to be put on the state is only the first threshold, and leads immediately to the questions of whether the target and method are appropriate. At that point, issues like academic freedom and the unimpeded pursuit of knowledge become primary considerations.

There are, no doubt, some proponents for whom these factors weigh little in comparison to the overall goal. There are many others, however, who find these issues compelling. The arguments about Israeli academia’s institutional guilt are designed to persuade this group and to overcome, rather than simply weaken, objections that might otherwise prevent them from supporting a boycott at all. As such, these arguments may be essential to expanding support outside the core constituency and obtaining a majority.

We’re talking about epiphenomena now, though, so I’ll leave it at that.

jonathan edelstein writes ( #114) : “I’ll readily accept that culture can affect academic work. Cultures affect the way people think, and hence the way they study and write. Sometimes they can do so in very subtle ways …”

I think that, as a reply to sg’s point about culture’s impact on whether academic work can be trusted, this is slightly off the topic and endorses eg’s muddle on this topic.

The point about trust is a point about justification of a view or a theory : when we say that the theory cannot be trusted we are making a point about its epistemic credentials. So sg’s point was about epistemic credentials of a theory or a view.

Now what is wrong with jonathan edelstein’s concesion ? Well roughly to concede that culture has pervasive influence on scientific work is only a concession to the effect that it influences the process of discovery but not the process of justification.

Kepler to take just one example may have become interested in planetary motion as a result of his religious and occult preoccupations and for all we know he may have even been interested to obtain certain specific outcomes . But so long as his eventual claim that the planets move in elliptical orbits could be *justified by the evidence he presented for it*, it does not matter how he came to be interested in the question , nor what prior investment he may have had.

Culture in other words is irrelevent here because what is doing the justifying is the evidence presented. That is an item of information justifies a given belief by raising the likelyhood that it is true and this is something independent of what specific political beliefs and so on one has.

Ok so it is simply to confuse the context of discovery ( where culture may be key ) with context of justification to argue that because a theory is formulated in a questionable political environment id becomes itself suspect.

Sg is guilty here and jonathan edelstein merely perpetuates the confusion.

Try “academic freedom” for teachers of automoble maintenance.
As a teacher at Automotive High School in Brooklyn, don’t I have a right as a mechanic to commumiocate with Israeli mechanics?

Incidentally may I just ask why people are talking about this ‘boycott’? The simple fact is, there is no boycott, none has been proposed and even if one was proposed it is highly unlikely it would get passed by the UCU membership as a whole (let alone the NEC). It’s a non-debate about nothing, and to carry on the debate is to imply that there is something to it (an attitude that greatly strengthens the hand of extremist Israeli nationalists, who are desperate to persuade their fellow Israelis that everyone that the whole world is out to get Israel and ‘drive the Jews into the sea’, as this greatly strengthens their political agenda).

“So… what is your real reason [sic!] for making these pronouncements? (as opposed to your stated/official reasons I mean).”

Z, he’s afraid the Jews are after his women; and you and I know he’s right don’t we? Shiksa’s want it.

My take on this post itself is that Bertram wants it both ways:

1. wants to be seen as a sensible man opposed to a silly boycott;
2. still wants to make points against supporters of a nation he detests i.e Israel.

I find it extremely annoying that people are arguing as if somehow “intellectual freedom” of one sort or another should take moral precedence. I’m sure there have been plenty of examples of valuable apolitical intellectual work done under all sorts of oppressive regimes, or more to the point regimes that have been liberal regarding the people they represent and oppressive to others.

Yes, and it’d be daft to ignore that work. For example, England during the time of Newton only gave the vote to a small minority of the population (and only to men), yet Newton’s work on physics is fundamental to modern physics. Leibniz and Newton made fundamental contributions to maths by the invention of calculus (apparently independently), but I don’t think 17th century Germany was any more liberal than 17th century England. Yet modern engineering deeply depends on calculus.

Skipping over a few centuries, Charles Darwin’s England gave the vote to a few more people than Newton’s England, but it was still very far from liberal. For example no women had the vote. Yet Darwin’s theory of evolution is essential to modern biology.

If academics ignored Newton or Darwin or Leibniz’s work because it was done under oppressive regimes, they would put back the study of the relevant sciences ridiculously. Collective punishment is one thing, but choosing to punish a collective in a way that not only harms yourself but everyone else in your society is nuts. An academic’s work should be tested against the best arguments that can be made against it, even if they do come from people who live under oppressive regimes. That’s why “intellectual freedom” should take moral precedence. There’s no reason to believe that the truth only resides with people who are morally impeccable.

This of course only applies to academic fields whose work has implications for the rest of society. Academics whose work is completely irrelevant to society have a far stronger case for boycotting anyone they don’t like.

How is it ‘perverse’?

Do you want a link to a list of the outstanding UN resolutions against Israel so that we could discuss the statement in question, or you prefer to declare neutrality, call someone ‘perverse’ and disappear, hit-and-run style? Clearly you can dish it out; but let me know if you can take it too. Though I suspect you might be just a sockpuppet for someone we already heard from in this thread.

oh yeah, sorry

“Seth, I am white but I don’t live in the U.S., my politics are probably the opposite of O’Reilly’s”

Sorry kiddo, you, O’Reilly, followers of Le Pen, Haider et al. are all defenders of racial definitions of statehood in the 21st century; with the difference that the Jews are the immigrants in Israel and the Turks, Algerians and others are the newcomers to Europe.

As I said previously these discussions [when held among the knowledgeable] begin and end with someone claiming that “the jews are different.” Jewish exceptionalism is the basis for moral as opposed to nationalist/reactionary or realist claims for or about Zionism.
Wake me up when someone makes that sad claim outright; until then this is a discussion between Zionists and those who want to find a way to feel good about themselves.

An afterthought: this post began as a defense of academic exceptionalism. There seems to be some confusion between the practical policy misnamed “academic freedom” and the principle of exceptionalism: I defend one, not the other.

Le Pen, Haider? I was born in (Newport) Wales. Hmm. Don’t bother answering…

Abb1, I was a sometime supporter of the South African boycott (in fact, I desisted after meeting a couple of S.A. academics), but I prefer to try to influence Israeli politics by supporting cultural & scientific exchange, not limiting it. My strongest impression of this boycott is that its instigators are simply engaging in a longterm campaign to undermine the country itself. I am adamantly against that. If I am mistaken about your goals, I apologise and withdraw my insinuation. But I still find your characterization of Israel and Israelis to be perverse.

Also Tracey can I point out that while Newton got many things right, he insisted on indigo and violet as part of the spectrum because of his beliefs about perfection and religion. That`s a small error due to culture; but it`s only small because the rest of his work could be subjected to objective verification. History, social science, psychology and philosophy can`t.

Sg – I don’t think anything should be accepted as “fact” right away. As you pointed out, some of Newton’s work was wrong in itself. Some of Einstein’s work was wrong too. The “bad air” theory of malaria was wrong, etc. Nothing should be accepted as fact straightaway.

And I may point out that there’s a hell of a lot of dubuious or useless work done in the hard sciences too. Look at the theory of pholigston or ether, or N-rays, or for that matter the eager design of perpetual motion machines or the attempt to square the circle.

Before I say anything else, I had better say that I am of mixed-race, and thus have ample personal reasons to oppose any Nazi-style regime.

For your hypothetical case of the Nazi study of Jewry, my initial thoughts are, assuming that the work is well-documented, relevant to your field, etc:
– check the original sources, and other sources (England in 1933 definitely could find a German translater). Omitting deeply important facts is almost as dishonest as making them up, sometimes as dishonest.
– if it checks out to be good quality in the technical sense, publish it and let people attack it.

Due to weight considerations, my library is small and frequently culled, but I have read some of Mein Kempf and Das Kapital (giving up on both due to the quality of the writing more than the topic matter), and the Communist Manifesto, and while we’re at it, an American collection of essays defending slavery. I don’t see any reason to protect myself from such ideas – although I’ve never been able to read Walter Scott again after the anti-semitism of Ivanhoe which I suppose is a bit contradictory. My technical library has a shortage of such documents, but that’s because sciece has advanced somewhat in the last sixty years, so it would be foolish for me to refer to papers published in the 1930s. My grandpa probably had some though – that was when he went to university and of course much of chemistry was written in German then.

I am surprised to be told that psychology, social sciences, and history can’t be subject to objective verification. Do you really believe that, for example, the hypothesis that there is a stable trade-off between inflation and unemployment has not been decisively disproved? Or that there may not have been a WWII?

And do you believe that any country is free from cultural bias? The original topic was Israel, but you have now used examples of Australia, and 1930s Germany. I may as well state that NZ and Australian historians tend to have opposing views on the value of Rev Samuel Marsden – driven by cultural considerations. The European disinterest in the Asian theatre of WWII struck me when I visited Europe – American, NZ and Australian museums and writings pay far more attention to it. If you’re going to eliminate work because of cultural bias you’re going to stop research in the humanities and social sciences entirely.

Work in the social sciences may be culturally-biased, but that’s not the same as saying it is pointless. If you find something that’s culturally biased, say how it is and attack it on that basis. Point out the things that are being ommitted, or the lies that are being told. Be prepared to change your own mind if necessary. That’s a better way of getting at the truth than trying to ignore everything that may be culturally-biased.

…English government in the 17th and 19th centuries was a criminal, oppressive…

The problem with your argument now is that we don’t live in the 19th century. What was considered quite normal in the 19th century has become unacceptable in modern times, post WWII, with the UN charter etc.

If you go farther back in time, you’ll find slavery which was normal back then, but if the todays English voted for a government with the platform to reinstitute slavery, English academics would suffer. Most of them would’ve emigrated, I’m sure.

sg you are confusing context of justification and context of discovery and while it is perfectly reasonable ( and no one disputes that ) to say that culture influences the latter, it makes no sense to argue that social values play a role in context of justification.*

So your German example is a case where we must suspend judgement ( and in all similar cases )until the putative facts are checked to see if his evidence supports his claims. To argue as you seem to that such research should be dismissed out of hand involves the confusion I mention.

As I pointed out above as long as the eventual claim that so and so is the case is justified by the evidence presented for it , it does not matter how he came to be ineterested in the question. He might be the biggest anti-semite in Germany . The view /claim/hypothesis is now there , with a claim on our attention and only way to reject it, is to refute the evidence adduced in its favour.

Notice that the reason we defer to science is that it delivers the sort of knowledge that * everyone* has reaon to believe , regardless of their political /ideological commitments. But this is challenged by your approach.

* the view you are defending here is broadly influenced by so called social constructivism ( postmodernist trend )which claims that social values do enter into the context of justification : they hold that it is not the factual evidence that does the justifying but precisely the background social values. Most philosophers of science that I know of do not take this very seriously because the stuff very quickly becomes incoherent.

So zdenek, the argument Windshuttle is having with other academics over Australian colonial history is completely objective, is it, and free from cultural influence on the justification? Not only is it a pure accident that Windshuttle believes his sources are better than, say, Manning Clark`s, but the issue of which sources are better can be clarified by some form of pure logical endeavour? Even though the people who wrote the sources are dead and we will never know for sure what they omitted, why they wrote what they wrote or what information they did or didn`t have? And the arguments given by those who stole children all those years ago were prima facie what they believed, uninfluenced by either the racism of the individuals or the institutions in which their careers flourished or failed? The idea of a dying race had no effect on the ways in which they studied and argued, or on the light in which they presented the terror and horror of their program, or the consequences for the children? I`m sure no psychologist ever blamed the bed-wetting on the inferiority of the Aboriginal race and its impulse control, and always assumed it was due to abduction from the family.

And on a broader institutional level, the pressure to publish certain sorts of work in places like Nazi Germany had no effect whatsoever on the process of reasoning, the choice about which evidence to support and which to reject, or anything else? No-one was tempted to accept an unusual result because it supported the prevailing philosophy, even though they knew deep down it might be wrong? And in philosophy? Nowhere in the world is there a philosopher who actually would have concluded something quite different to Statman, but decided to change the logic just a bit in order to get access to more funds in the future, and so ended up defending something objectionable?

I don`t really believe that you believe any of this anyway. You have been engaging in the delicate dance and shuffle of always questioning the underlying motives and cultural background of those presenting the boycott, those defending it, and those who even suggest that presenting the boycott for discussion is okay. For example, you have consistently linked the boycott call by the UCU to an original request by a Palestinian body as if this influenced the interpretation of the UCU boycott. Surely by your own estimation, it doesn`t matter what the Palestinians think or want, only what the stated purpose and logic of the UCU is? Similarly, it doesn`t matter if my concern for dead Palestinians is motivated by the material Abb1 put up in the last thread, by my imagination or by my purported anti-semitism (which is somehow relevant to this debate in your eyes, though the Israeli state`s state of war is not). All that matters is the logic of my defense or otherwise of the boycott? But in the last thread you told me my view about singling out Israel was not motivated by humanitarianism, refused to even discuss any analogies I put forward, and went straight for the jugular with the accusation of anti-semitism.

I will assume here then that you do care about the rights of Palestinians; therefore it shouldn`t matter to you what my motivation is for talking about Israel, and what the motivation of the UCU is for putting forward a boycott. All that should matter to you is that it works to improve the situation of Palestinians. In fact if anyone were to accuse me of anti-semitism, surely you should say to that person “SG`s anger may seem insincere to you, but his motivations are not the issue, since they cannot cloud the logic of his inquiry. All that matters is whether or not he is right or wrong about the best way to protect the rights of Palestinians.” And in this situation any accusation of inconsistency would again be irrelevant, since this is simply their cultural background affecting the discovery of the problem; inquiry should be treated with the respect it deserves. You have consistently failed to do anything except attack the motives for discovery.

Furthermore, people who don`t like anti-semitism generally don`t defend Nazi Germany from claims that its genetic science, moral philosophy and social science could be dismissed out of hand due to the climate of their production. You have painted yourself into a strange corner with some odd co-defendants in order to defend Israel against a claim (academic corruption) which hasn`t even been satisfactorily established.

What`s that about?

This is a good way to make the point. Suppose new evidence in the form of letters emerges about Charles Darwin. He reveals that he thinks that evolution by natural selection is a stupid idea and that he wrote it up only to impress his future wife and went on the Beagle voyage just to have some fun.

Does this discredit the theory of evolution ? Not in the slightest and why do you think that is so ?

Zdenek, perhaps I am not making myself entirely clear here. There are three arguments going on at once, some of which are being supported with examples that cloud matters.

1) when judging an individual piece of work, can we judge its accuracy from political criteria?
2) is it valid to judge a body of work from a particular institution, culture or group (as opposed to individual examples within the group) based on political criteria
3) when we don’t have infinite resources to judge intellectual work, can we reject individuals’ work on the basis that it comes from a group which is supect, if this is easier than judging the work directly on its merits?

My example of the German history article in 1933, and studies on North Korean prisoners as a whole, fits into 3). You obviously agree that we can do 2), since you dismiss the process of doing 2) by using the method of 2). Neither of us would probably agree with 1), since it’s generally more effective to judge the individuals’ work directly. If there were reason to suspect fraud, and we couldn’t check – or if the group the individual came from has been found consistently to commit fraud, as in the case of dubious consent forms from North Korea – then we would probably shift from doing 1) to doing 3). Keith Windshuttle does a form of 1) when he argues that some primary sources are more reliable than others due to their political circumstances; but we don’t have to do 1) to him, since we can judge his work directly (and then conclude that he came up with biassed stuff due to his cultural and political background).

Obviously in a world where we have access to all the information the researcher has, and are willing to check every bit of evidence presented in detail, and know exactly what was going on in the original experiment and had clear and pure information about all the reagents/sources/computer programs, etc., we would never do 2) or 3). Obviously every piece of work is objectively correct or not correct, but we as judges of that work cannot necessarily know this in every case, due primarily to the problem of limited resources. Sometimes we aren’t cutting our losses much by doing 3), which is exactly the deal with papers on North Korean prisoners, since we can’t trust science done on non-consenting individuals.

Let me give you a simple, non-controversial real example of this. You can’t trust per capita GDP figures from Australia before 1967. Why? They didn’t count Aborigines in the population. So we can judge the entire body of demographic and economic empirical in pre-1967 Australia by this small fact, and we know we are correct. At the time, probably many people in the world didn’t realise this. But someone who had said “I don’t trust Australian population research because they hate Aborigines over there, and are in the last stages of a program of genocide” would have been right. Whereas all the “realists” would have been assessing the work on its “merits”…

… and exactly what you’re doing. Rejecting science from a whole nation because of the academic culture in that nation. Can’t you see that you’re doing what you decry?

That is not what you just said: “… as a result of this politicization of science …” Sorry but post 163 is a blatant attempt to redefine exactly what I am doing as not doing what I am doing, in order to evade the trap of being accused of doing what I am doing, which is what you are doing. A delicate dance indeed! (Or do you argue that in fact lots of genetic science in the Soviet Union at the time did not fall into the Lamarkian trap?)

Also you are still insisting on portraying my whole argument as being about analysing individuals work from the view of their politics, even though I have tried to clear that up with my 1, 2 and 3 post above.

sg I did not say anything about your 2 and 3 because I do not believe it is a useful distinction in this debate.
When you are looking at an output by an institution or a whole culture the fundamental question and the only one to ask when it comes to truth is whether the individual work i.e. individual theories stand up. The rest falls into place because since political criteria are epistemically irrelevant at the theory level they are just a distraction an irrelevance at an institutional level.

I am starting to think that you do not grasp the dif. between CJ and CD.

But returning to my example, as a journal editor you can`t send someone to this German town to check out the sources in their basement, just to decide if you can publish 1 article. It is a small article on a small part of history, to be published unchecked in a history journal in English. Whatever will you do? Certainly if you publish the article, might it not be wise for your readers to take the contents with more than a little salt?

Given the history of fraud in history, a journal should be checking at least some of the sources of every article it publishes if it wants to be making a good quality contribution to human knowledge. If you don’t have the resources to do this, then why are you publishing a journal at all? This is why scientific journals use peer review.

And of course readers should take it with a grain of salt. I have no objection to the “I’m gonna fact-check your ass” emotion, and it’s far easier to do something thoroughly when you really want to do it.

I am not certain what you are arguing now overall. Are you arguing in favour of boycotting academics or in the favour of analysing every article based on its cultural biases? In the case of Nazi Germany, there were far cheaper ways of stopping it than an academic boycott, for example if France had sent troops to oppose the reoccupation of the Rhine. Of course if an academic boycott was known to be the only way to stop WWII and it was known that it would work, and it was known that the boycott would not then expand to cover numerous other bad governments, then I would have supported it in that case. But in reality we can never know that a boycott is the only way, nor that it will have the desired effect, nor that the intended boycotters will stop there and not go on to boycott other countries they wish to change, leading to a collapse of academic science in favour of a futile pursuit of moral purity. Speculating about what should be done if you knew that something would work isn’t of help in political decisions since politicians can’t see into the future. Better to stick to a moral principle that academic research should aim to be best it can be and not subordinate it to other aims of dubious practicality.

Abb1 – …English government in the 17th and 19th centuries was a criminal, oppressive…

The problem with your argument now is that we don’t live in the 19th century. What was considered quite normal in the 19th century has become unacceptable in modern times, post WWII, with the UN charter etc.

Why do you think that people in the 19th and 17th centuries regarded the English government as acceptable? The 17th century in England was the time of a civil war in England and a rebellion in Ireland, so people actually killed in attempts to change the English government. I don’t know how one can regard a situation as more unacceptable than killing people to try to change it.

And in the 19th century the Irish managed a few more violent rebellions against the English government. Meanwhile many of the English people were agitating for expanding suffrage to more of the male population and to women. This didn’t break out into another civil war, but I think that has more to do with the 19th century governments being less pig-headed than Charles I than people regarding the then government system as acceptable.

People in 17th and 19th century England may have regarded their government as normal, but they didn’t find it acceptable.

Abb1 – do you have some moral objection to checking any of your statements?

Tracy,
yes, I think people in the 19th and 17th centuries typically regarded the English government as normal and acceptable.

For that matter, 10 thousand years ago people probably regarded frying and eating their parents as normal and acceptable. Times change, you know.

Abb1 – do you have some moral objection to checking any of your statements?

What do you mean? I’m not sure.
No I don’t have any objection, moral, immoral or amoral, to checking any of my statements. Please do. Let me know what you find.

I try to avoid commenting on the material posted on Norman Geras’s site.

Well what an interesting start.

Let’s just look up Norman geras on your little search engine thingy…

https://crookedtimber.org/index.php?s=Norman+Geras

Well… aren’t we just looking a little foolish now?

Chris – you must get over your consuming intellectual envy of Norm Geras. FOr your sake rather than anyone elses…

yes, I think people in the 19th and 17th centuries typically regarded the English government as normal and acceptable.

Abb1 – the Roundheads put the English and Scottish head of state on trial, found him guilty and then executed him. The Irish were willing to kill and to die to try to get rid of the English government. It doesn’t matter what you think about their attitudes, what matters is the evidence.

Tracy, if you think every journal checks all the sources of every paper it is sent, you are living on a different planet. Remember, these sources are in a basement in Germany, in 1933 when travel was expensive.

I don’t think that every journal does that. I think that every journal should do that, given the levels of academic fraud (carried out by far more varied people than Nazi Germans). Mine is a normative, not a descriptive, statement.

Plus I do understand that every reputable scientific journal does send every article it is considering accepting to reviewers for a peer review. An expert on German-Jewish history should have gone over the paper.

If it’s uneconomic for a journal to check the paper in any way then it shouldn’t publish it. After all, it may be a hoax like Sorkal’s paper.

I am simply arguing that the relative worth of different academic cultures can be assessed on the basis of what we know of their scholarly activities.

Sg, you have shifted the debate from the cultural biases of the academics to assessing work based on what we know of their scholarly activities. Of course if we know that an academic’s work is based on ignoring any evidence that doesn’t fit their hypothesis, or making figures up, or that they’re relying on data in good faith but the data itself was not reliable for its used purposes (like say pre-1967 Australian GDP data), then we should ignore their work (or point out how it was wrong). But you seemed to earlier be arguing that we could reject academic work not based on flaws in their processes but on the culture it came from without needing to find any evidence of bias in the actual work.

In the case of Soviet Union genetics during the time of Lysenko, the flaws are pretty darn obvious – anyone who produced evidence contradicting Lysenko would have most likely been shot or sent to the gulag so the research can’t have taken account of any contradictory evidence. But no one has produced any evidence that Israeli academic research is flawed in any equivalent way.

I don’t agree with you that an academic boycott would have been worth doing to overthrow Nazi Germany because I don’t know if it would have worked. And, even if it had have worked, I would have been opposed to a boycott if it would lead to boycotting other countries as it seems a process without end.

Tracy, I forgot what your point was with the (allegedly) unusually cruel 17th century British government. I know it had something to do with Newton, but I can’t make a point out of it. Was it: why the 17th century French scientists didn’t boycott Newton because of his government being brutal to the Irish? Is that it? Just checking.