Occupied Ramallah, 8 November 2010
Once again, the specter of the suppression of academic freedom has
been invoked in what is now becoming an organized campaign to
counter the growing global movement for Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions (BDS) of Israel, and the academic and cultural boycott in
particular. This time, a number of American, European, and Israeli
Nobel laureates have been enlisted in the campaign, in the hope that
their plea to defend “academic freedom” will stem the tide of this
ever-expanding movement.
The Nobel laureates claim that academic and cultural boycotts,
divestments and sanctions in the academy are antithetical to
principles of academic and scientific freedom; to principles of
freedom of expression and inquiry; and may well constitute
discrimination by virtue of national origin. They “appeal to
students, faculty colleagues and university officials to defeat and
denounce calls and campaigns for boycotting, divestment and
sanctions against Israeli academics, academic institutions and
university-based centers and institutes for training and research,
affiliated with Israel,” and “encourage students, faculty
colleagues and university officials to promote and provide
opportunities for civil academic discourse where parties can engage
in the search for resolution to conflicts and problems rather than
serve as incubators for polemics, propaganda, incitement and further
misunderstanding and mistrust.” They also claim that as persons
dedicated to “improving the human condition by doing the often
difficult and elusive work to understand complex and seemingly
unsolvable phenomena,” they believe that “the university should
serve as an open, tolerant and respectful, cooperative and
collaborative community engaged in practices of resolving complex
problems.” [1]
This statement distills the main, long parroted and falsely
premised, lines of defense deployed by opponents of the academic
boycott of Israel, albeit this time propounded by scholars of global
repute who by implication are assumed to command more respect and
occupy higher scientific—perhaps even moral--ground. Yet, it is
ironic that these world renowned scholars would allow themselves to
be used by the unabashedly pro-Israel lobby group, Scholars for
Peace in the Middle East. The sponsorship by SPME of the Nobel
laureates’ statement in fact compromises the scholars’ credibility,
clearly aligning them with one of the most right-wing defenders of
Israel, at a time when even liberal Zionists are expressing grave
doubts about the plausibility of the official Israeli narrative.
PACBI has responded more than once to the now familiar charges
against the academic and cultural boycott of Israel. It is useful,
however, to comment on some of the more egregious claims made by the
Nobel laureates.
PACBI and its global supporters do not advocate a boycott of
individual Israeli academics. To misrepresent the morally consistent
and by now well-known institutional boycott call as targeting
individuals and thus possibly constituting “discrimination by virtue
of national origin” is disingenuous and becomes a slur, not a
serious engagement with the argument and rationale for the academic
boycott. PACBI has been advocating a boycott of Israeli academic and
cultural institutions precisely because of their entrenched
complicity in the maintenance of the system of colonial domination
that oppresses Palestinians. This complicity has been amply
documented, and we believe that the Nobel laureates, most of whom
work in the sciences, are aware of the deep involvement of the
Israeli academy in policy and research networks involving the
Israeli army, weapons developers, and the security establishment in
Israel and constituting violations of international law.[2]
The charge that boycott precludes or prevents the free exchange of
ideas is a worn-out rebuttal of the boycott call. As ex-Israeli
British academic Oren Ben-Dor has argued, “criticism of the
boycott is couched in terms of the need for academic freedom. How
ironic it is that academic freedom, the very factor which is absent
from the Israeli academy, the very factor whose creation provides a
powerful motivation for the boycott, is the one whose pretended
existence is used by critics of the boycott.” [3]
On a related theme, the laureates claim that because academics can
improve “the human condition by doing the often difficult and
elusive work to understand complex and seemingly unsolvable
phenomena,” “the university should serve as an open, tolerant and
respectful, cooperative and collaborative community engaged in
practices of resolving complex problems.” The laureates again go
against the spirit of scientific inquiry by invoking the supposed
complexity of the “problem.” It is well known that the
characterization of “the conflict” in Palestine as “complex,”
unsolvable, and intractable, is a deliberate obfuscation—and by
those who should know better, in this case--of the stark simplicity
of the issue: the struggle is one between the colonizer and the
colonized, not some “conflict” between equally culpable parties who
do not seem to be able to resolve their differences or settle their
squabbles over territory. The establishment of a settler-colonial
regime in Palestine after the expulsion of most of the indigenous
people is the basic and defining moment, and until Israel respects
the spirit and the letter of the numerous United Nations resolutions
on Palestine and abides by the many stipulations of international
law and international humanitarian law in dismantling its system of
occupation, apartheid, and colonialism, it should expect to be
isolated in the global community as apartheid South Africa was.
PACBI has also argued elsewhere [4] that the
protection of academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas cannot
be the only norm dictating the political engagement of scholars.
Often, when oppression characterizes all social and political
relations and structures, as in the case of South Africa during
apartheid or indeed in Palestine, there are equally important and
sometimes more basic freedoms that must be fought for, especially by
academics and intellectuals. The aim of the academic boycott of
Israel, in this context, is not to safeguard academic freedom as an
abstract principle, but to obtain justice and fundamental rights for
the Palestinian people.
A recent, precedent-setting petition endorsed by 250 leading South
African academics, including the heads of four South African
universities and prominent figures such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
Breyten Breytenbach, John Dugard, Antjie Krog, Barney Pityana, and
Kader Asmal, has condemned Israeli academic institutions for their
complicity in violating international law. It stated
[5]:
While Palestinians are not able to access universities and
schools, Israeli universities produce the research, technology,
arguments and leaders for maintaining the occupation.
We believe that the Nobel laureates would do well to reflect upon
their responsibilities as public figures—now that they have ventured
into the real world of politics—and to speak truth to power, not
reiterate the increasingly vacuous defenses of the centers of
colonial power.
PACBI
pacbi@pacbi.org
www.pacbi.org
Notes:
[1]
http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=7322
[2] See Alternative Information Center, “The
Economy of the Occupation: Academic Boycott of Israel,” October
2009.
http://www.alternativenews.org/images/stories/downloads/Economy_of_the_occupation_23-24.pdf
; and SOAS Palestine Society, “Urgent Briefing Paper: Tel Aviv
University-a Leading Israeli Military Research Centre.” February
2009.
http://www.electronicintifada.net/downloads/pdf/090708-soas-palestine-society.pdf
[3] Oren Ben-Dor, “Academic Freedom in Israel is
Central to Resolving the Conflict,” CounterPunch, May 21/22,
2005.
http://www.counterpunch.org/bendor05212005.html
[4]
http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1132&key=\%22academic%20freedom\%22
[5]
http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1377
Posted on 08-11-2010 |
