There are those who would like Israeli academics to be excluded from academic journals, sacked from editorial boards, not invited to conferences and shunned by global academic community. The boycott campaign wants to punish Israeli academics for the human rights abuses of their government; it does not campaign to hold any other academics on the planet responsible in this way. The boycott campaign makes no distinction between legitimate criticism of particular Israeli policies and the demonization of Israel. It calls people that think Israel has the right to exist “Zionist", a term intended to hit out like an insult and to carry the same pejorative connotation as “racist". The vast majority of Jews think that Israel has the right to exist. In this way the boycott campaign sets itself up for a fight with Jews. The boycotters want to make the visceral loathing of Israel respectable.AAUP was quite right when it decided that the Bellagio conference should not go ahead. The conference, as it was, would have lent legitimacy to this fringe and dangerous campaign as a centrally important “side” in a debate. There are important discussions to have about academic (and other freedoms) in Palestine; about academic freedom in general, and boycotts in general; about the dangers of allowing an antisemitic commonsense to emerge out of the anti-Zionist movement; about what scholars can do to support or help those suffering from repression in other countries; about what academics can do to help towards peace, reconciliation and justice in the Middle East. This conference would not have advanced any of these discussions.

www.EngageOnline.org.uk

David Hirsh, Engage, at 7:15 am EST on February 9, 2006

Scott Jaschik’s article is so full of egregious errors that it reads like something written for the N.Y. Sun instead of for a serious news organization. Here are the errors: The conference was not called off because of the inadvertent inclusion of an anti-Semitic article in a packet of reading materials. That was the last straw in a carefully orchestrated campaign to abort the conference by a lobby of people (pro-Israel occupation)who believe that any representation of a point of view other than theirs is ananthema; indeed they claim that academic freedom is the freedom to listen only to those who agree with them (for an example of this reasoning see E. Hirsch comment above). From the beginning, when several of these people were invited to the AAUP conference they protested the inclusion of others who, for many different reasons, support academic boycotts. They did not protest quietly, but alerted entire list serves of lobbyists who began to campaign for closing down the conference. When Mr Jaschik writes “the conference was already under fire over an invitation list that critics said was tilted toward scholars who have backed academic boycotts of Israeli universities,” he is engaging in questionable journalism. He fails to identify the “critics” as lobbyists on behalf of the current Israeli regime (or fellow travellers of those lobbyists) and it is important to know that to understand their criticism. Moreoever,to say that the conference was “tilted” repeats the accusations of the lobbyists and wildly misrepresents the list of participants, some 7 of 21 of whom support academic boycotts as a political practice, but not necessarily against Israeli universities. The rest of the participants, including all of the AAUP members who were to participate, are strongly opposed to academic boycotts. The point of the conference was to hear out our critics, NEVER to change the document we have published as a final statement of our viewpoint. Jaschik says “the AAUP started drafting a statement” on academic boycotts last year when in fact we wrote a statement that was approved at every level of the association, posted on our website and stands as a statement of principle of the association. In response to that statement we got many interesting questions and comments and we hoped to discuss those at Bellagio—discuss them as academics discuss difficult issues—civilly, with respect for one another’s positions even if they are not ours. AAUP stands for open discussion and that was what we hoped to have until the lobbyists began their campaign of defamation and intimidation. That Cary Nelson, an AAUP vice president and candidate for presidency has jumped on their bandwagon is, to say the least, distressing. He speaks without knowledge of the situation, has failed to talk to those of us directly involved in the conference, and he repeats innuendoes circulated by the lobbyists and the NY Sun that have no basis in fact. His comments—based not on careful inquiry, but on polemic, violate AAUP procedure and harm the reputation of AAUP. It is quite astonishing to watch a conference designed to air different viewpoints be turned into a an anti-Israeli plot. Those of us dedicated to the protection of academic freedom can only mourn its loss on this occasion.

Joan W. Scott, Professor of Social Science at Institute for Advanced Study, at 3:15 pm EST on February 9, 2006

When Israel-Haters lose a debate, they blame Zionist Conspiracy

1) Joan Scott should say whether she is for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel or not; she should say whether she thinks that Israel has the right to exist within the 1967 borders or not. It shouldn’t be necessary to ask, but these days, it is.

2) Joan Scott says that the reason the conference was called off was this: “a carefully orchestrated campaign to abort the conference by a lobby of people (pro-Israel occupation)who believe that any epresentation of a point of view other than theirs is ananthema".

The fact that AAUP has not yet said clearly and openly why it was called off invites the kind of trash that Scott is writing here. AAUP must say why they decided to call off the conference.

If Scott has read the Engage website, she will know that we quite clearly oppose the occupation and argue for a peaceful and just settlement between Israel and Palestine. Either she didn’t look, or she is mis-representing our position by saying that we are pro-occupation.

Carefully orchestrated? Engage is a campaign, against academic and cultural boycotts of Israel and against anti-Zionist antisemitism. We try to orchestrate our campaigns carefully — but this is not the real substance of what Scott is alleging.

She is painting a picture of a Zionist conspiracy. “carefully orchestrated", “pro-Israel occupation” “lobby” “people who believe that any representation of a point of view other than theirs is ananthema".

This mixture of lies and language is designed to give the impression of secret, huge, well-funded and “illegitimate” “Zionist” power.

Engage said what we think openly and clearly on our website. Other people picked up on it, were shocked by it, and passed the message on. Some contacted the AAUP, some were members of the AAUP, some contacted the funding foundations. This is the normal stuff of a political campaign.

We have been very clear about what we think about free speech — indeed I am very clear in the comment above. But Scott is assuming that people cannot remember what I wrote (above) by the time they have scrolled down the page to her angry attack.

It is becoming routine that when pro-boycotters and those that loathe Israel lose a debate, they explain their loss not by reference to the arguments, but by reference to the Zionist conspiracy against which they cannot win.

David Hirsh, at 6:15 pm EST on February 9, 2006

Does Scott still endorse Nelson for AAUP?

She is listed as endorsing Nelson at www.carynelson.com. Does the endorsement still hold, Professor Scott?

Sim Etrias, at 10:15 pm EST on February 9, 2006

Scott’s Paranoid Fantasies

Once upon a time, Joan W Scott wrote a nice piece of social history, so it is depressing to see her descend into paranoia over this issue. Her desire to “out” anyone who dissents from her position as a “lobbyist for Israeli government (or a fellow traveler)” is slanderous nonsense. Having thus adopted such Stalinist techniques, her defense of academic freedom seems nothing short of creepy.

Seth Armus, Associate Professor at St. Joseph’s College, at 4:40 am EST on February 10, 2006

Fiasco at AAUP

Readers should be aware that Dr Pike is often exceedingly careless over his facts. An example of this is his claim that there was no one from the AUT. He seems to have overlooked that I was an invitee to the AUUP meeting and am also a member of the AUT. I think I originally joined in 1964.

Secondly readers should also be alerted to Dr Pike’s not infrequent adoption of double standards. It is high time he explored the beam in his own eye and stopped worrying about the mote in the eye of the AAUP.

Thus recently under the misleading title of “Professor", Dr Pike took part in a conference on academic boycotts at Bar Ilan University. There were no sppeakers supporting the academic boycott of Israel, even though it was this challenge which had precipated the meeting. Given the centrality of discussion and debate in academic life it is a liittle difficult to see how this event constituted a ‘conference’. Dr Pike noisy protestations at the AAUP’s only inviting a majority of anti-boycott speakers, ( a fact unguessable from his letter) has to be contrasted with his then shameful silence at the failure to include any opposing speakers.

Bar Ilan incidentally fostered the development of the illegal college, now university in the illegal settlement of Ariel and was the target of one of the AUT resolutions for this reason. Very recently a group of Israel academics have challenged the legitmacy of Ariel ‘University’ on the grounds that it is located in an illegal settlement. It will be interesting to see whether the addition of this a priori illegal university generates a legal challenge to Israel’s membership of the European Resarch Area. By contrast with the partiality of the Bar Ilan meeting the AAUP had provided a scholarly position paper, which surveyed the history of academic boycotts drew out the ethical issues and concluded by reaffirming its already known position.

The response papers that I saw were equally scholarly and thoughtful, if this was to be sustained across the board, the Bellagio meeting promised to be an occasion where a difficult and complex matter could be debated in a calm and reasonable way. It is a mattter of academic shame that the AAUP has been subject to such improper pressure. It is to be hoped that their careful spade work is not lost and that this potentially significant meeting is reconvened and funded by bodies less prone to succumbing to crude Zionist pressure.

Hilary Rose, Professor Emerita. at Bradford University, at 6:45 am EST on February 10, 2006

Response to Hilary Rose

Prof Rose is fond of this mote and beam couple. The last mote, as I recall, was Mona Baker’s sacking of two members of the editorial board of an academic journal, simply, openly, because they had an institutional affilliation to an Israeli university. Some mote.

Professor Rose is a member of the AUT (my mistake), and a full professor, much senior to me, much more eminent than me, so she can, of course, pull rank and put me in my place. She can also indulge in ad hominem attacks that do not touch at all, in fact, obviously evade the substantive points and factual errors that I raise.

Whether she can get away with them is readers of insidehighered to decide.

Jon Pike, Senior Lecturer at Philosophy, Open University, at 7:35 am EST on February 10, 2006

Response to Joan Scott

I have admired Joan Scott as a scholar and as an AAUP activist for many years. I am sorry to find the organization’s Executive Committee in a public disagreement with her. When the conference was, very briefly, brought before the AAUP’s elected leadership, it was characterized as a broad-ranging philosophical conversation about the nature of academic boycotts. Hope was expressed that the international group of participants would endorse the AAUP’s statement against such boycotts. I am told that the proposed list of invitees did not then include people who had taken strong stands on particular boycotts. To our surprise, we in the elected leadership learned months later from a newspaper story that the conference had been transformed into a debate likely to have the Arab-Israeli conflict at its center and a substantial number of boycott supporters among its invitees. Such a group would hardly be likely to endorse the AAUP’s anti-boycott statement. Staff tells me that a conference organizer proposed producing a new statement from the conference. That would defy AAUP traditions by placing contradictory statements in circulation. The elected leaders were by then deeply disturbed that we had neither been informed nor consulted about these developments. Then the news broke that an anti-Semitic essay had unknowingly—but inexcusably—been included among the conference background readings. Once again the elected leaders learned this from a news story. The conference sponsors rather reasonably asked that the conference be postponed, not cancelled, until its aims and nature could be reviewed and rethought. Again, we learned of this development from the press. The Executive Committee unanimously endorsed the view of the three foundation sponsors and directed that the conference be postponed. To have held the conference as planned would have been not to endorse academic freedom but rather to endorse incoherence.

Cary Nelson, Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts & Sciences at University of Illinois, at 10:50 am EST on February 10, 2006

Academic Freedom

If I am reading her remarks correctly, Ms Scott is complaining that certain academics have formed a lobby with the intent to violate the cause of academic freedom, by calling for the postponement of a conference which would discuss the idea of curtailing of academic freedom, to be attended by several individuals who are part of a lobby campaigning for the curtailing of academic freedom of Israeli academics and who hope that this conference would end with a statement committing the organisation to the curtailing of the said academic freedom of Israeli academics.

Linda Grant, at 2:05 pm EST on February 10, 2006

It’s a boycott of institutions not individuals

My, how the Engage lobby love to muddy the waters. The academic boycott which our Palestinian colleagues are calling for is a boycott of INSTITUTIONS not academics. Readthe full text of their call here:

http://www.pacbi.org/

Sure, some individuals applied a different kind of boycott: they must speak for themselves. That is not what the AUT motions last year were calling for and Jon Pike and David Hirsh know it.

As for inviting Palestinian OPPONENTS of the boycott: well it’s a little hard to find any. OK there is Sari Nusseibeh of course, who doesn’t seem to mind a wall being built through his campus. But in a survey of the STAFF at Al-Quds university, about 75% said they opposed joint projectswith the Israelis.

Sue Blackwell, Ms. at BRICUP, at 3:35 pm EST on February 10, 2006

Academic co-operation

Sue Blackwell need look no further for Palestinian academics opposed to the boycott than the joint project carried out by Israeli and Palestinian academics, with EU funding, which examines how their respective media cover the conflict. This has continued despite threats and calls for boycotts. The work is carried out under the joint auspices of the Palestinian Miftah http://www.miftah.org/ and the Israeli Keshev http://keshev.org.il/siteEn/default.asp

Linda Grant, at 4:30 pm EST on February 10, 2006

Is freedom academic?

Inevitably, under occupation, those who are oppressed will have to make ‘accommodations’ with the oppressor. When your livelihood – or even your very life – is under constant threat, you may just not be able to afford participating in any boycott or other forms of resistance. Furthermore, in any major conflict situation – like the Israel/Palestine one — there will also be those in the oppressed camp who, for the most honourable of reasons, will try to keep lines of communication open with the other side in the hope that such contacts may eventually help towards a resolution of the conflict. My feeling is that that is the perspective of those involved on the Palestinian side in the EU funded project Linda Grant mentions. After all, this project is billed as a EU ‘Partnership for Peace’ project. But the inequality between the occupier and the occupied, which is a given in any such situation, makes a mockery of the notion of equal partnership. How can one make an objective assessment of media coverage, as this project purports to be aiming for, if press freedom (and freedom of movement of the press) on one side of the divide is so severely restricted as to make any objective coverage impossible? And that is typically the case in Palestine, as is evident from the following passage, cited from the site of project partner Miftah mentioned in Linda Grant’s contribution:

“Israel has claimed on numerous occasions that Palestinian media promotes violence and even more so “Terrorist Attacks.” Under this pretext Israel gives itself the right to either shut down Palestinian media stations on an ad hoc basis, or has the audacity to demolish entire buildings housing media outlets. To mention a few incidents: On October 12th 2000 Israeli soldiers fired rockets at two transmission towers and other facilities used by the official radio broadcasting channel Voice of Palestine which stand as a landmark in the city of Ramallah, dating back to the mandate period. According to Israeli forces, Voice of Palestine was targeted because “it played a key role in incitement.” On February 8th 2001, the offices of the official Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida, located in the West Bank town of Al-Bireh, was hit during a barrage of gunfire that lasted from about 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. No one was injured, but the building was heavily damaged. The staff took cover in the basement during the shooting. On January 19th 2002, Israeli troops blew up the Voice of Palestine Radio and Television station offices and studios in Ramallah. Arriving with tanks and bulldozers, the soldiers evacuated all employees and proceeded to place explosive charges on the upper floors of the building. The charges were detonated and half of the five-storey complex was reportedly destroyed. In 2002 on April 8th, IFJ reported that “Israeli troops in the West Bank arrested a reporter and destroyed the independent broadcasting station at Al-Quds University. Eyewitnesses reported that Israeli forces raided and ransacked the offices of several news organizations in Ramallah, using gunfire and explosives to enter the buildings. Equipment was destroyed and journalists in the building were harassed and intimidated. No one was injured, and Israeli military officials claimed the searches were part of their broader effort to find terrorists. Media affected by the raid were CNN, Abu Dhabi TV, Nile TV, Middle East Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), and the Arab News Network (ANN).” […] Israel’s war on the media does not end here. On several occasions the Israeli army attacked and targeted famous foreign media workers. For example on the October 31st 2001, CNN’s Cairo chief correspondent Ben Wedemann was shot in the back by Israeli troops, while caught in the middle of clashes at the Karni crossing between Gaza and Israel. Or on April 1st 2002, BBC’s Orla Guerin and her television crew came under Israeli machine-gun fire while covering peaceful protesters walking through the streets of Bethlehem. The crew took cover behind a car that was clearly marked “Press”. Furthermore according to Reuters, Israeli troops threw stun grenades to turn back foreign journalists on their way to cover US envoy Anthony Zinni’s meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank on April 5th 2002. One stun grenade exploded under the foot of CNN correspondent Michael Holmes. Adding insult to injury, CNN’s blatant biased reporting with respect to the Arab World and more specifically with concerns to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is very clear, even to the most uninformed of people. However, in the Year 2002 the Israeli government threatened to expel CNN and BBC from Israel and threatened to take legal action against the network, because of their supposed ‘biased’ reporting and anti Israeli sentiment in their coverage. BBC was actually banned in 2003 for airing a documentary on Israels Dimona Nuclear Reactor.” (Does the Only Democracy in the Middle East Uphold Press Freedom? A Critical Analysis By Husam S. Madhoun for MIFTAH, August 2004)

Moral: ‘To boycott or not to boycott — that’s NOT the question’ – the question (if I may SAY so?) is whether one can suggest there may be something rotten in the state of Israel without immediately being called an anti-semite.

Willem Meijs

Willem Meijs, at 5:10 am EST on February 11, 2006

Who was responsible for the Conference Materials?

Can Joan Hilary Rose or Joan Scott tell us who prepared the conference materials?

Curious, at 3:00 pm EST on February 11, 2006

aaup fiasco

Joan Scott’s defense of the postponed conference is quite fascinting. She argues that the point was to hear the position of those in favor of boycotts, but that the AAUP position against same would not be changed. So what is the point of hearing their viewpoint if there is no likelihood of change? Of course, the AAUP would never invite David Horowitz to a conference to learn his views about why there should be more intellectual and political diversity on college campuses. Nor would the AAUP have a conference about Intelligent Design with proponents of same. So why is AAUP having a conference with proponents of boycotts having such a significant role? The “explanation” for the distribution of antisemitic matrials was that it was only meant for research for the conference and not for distribution. What is unclear is precisely why an anti-semitic article casting doubt on the holocaust was considered of any relevance to the subject of the conference. I think AAUP should explain why a journal of holocaust denial was being consulted for anything, and by whom. Finally, let me express my dismay that Professor Scott has brought the issue of Israel’s “occupation” up at all. (For the record, I am proud to be a Zionist, and would be happy to debate professor Scott any time she is willing.)This is a very controversial topic and the exchanges about it here have cast far more heat than light. Academic freedom should include the right to protest what is deemed an unbalanced and inappropriate group of particpants. Moreover, aforesaid protests should not require prior approval from any “expert” on academic freedom.

edward boylan, rutgers university, at 4:45 am EST on February 27, 2006