The
Ivory Tower Behind
The Apartheid Wall
By Margaret Aziza
Pappano
25 July 2007
The
Electronic Intifada
In
the last few weeks, university presidents across the US and Canada have
rushed to issue statements about the proposed boycott of Israeli academic
institutions by the British University and College Union. They view
this boycott as a serious violation of academic freedom. Yet, given
the general failure of these leaders to comment on any number of infringements
of academic freedom that have occurred in recent years, including those
close to home in the form of the politically-motivated denial of tenure
to Norman Finkelstein and the colleague, Mehrene Larudee, who very publicly
supported him, the harassment of Columbia University professors Joseph
Massad and Rashid Khalidi, and the intimidation of faculty by Campuswatch,
one might be excused for concluding that university presidents prefer
to remain above the political fray and reserve their office for grave
and important but non-controversial pronouncements on tsunamis. But
now, even in the midst of the hot and hazy summer recess, university
presidents have mobilized their most imposing academic rhetoric in expressing
solidarity with Israeli academics and upholding the rights of all to
engage in "an open exchange of ideas" and "freedom of
association."
What is perhaps most perplexing
about this trend is its entirely virtual nature, for in fact no one's
freedom has been violated by the boycott yet under discussion. Nevertheless,
university presidents are preparing in advance for what could be an
"attack ... [on] all universities at their core mission" (Gilles
Patry, University of Ottawa) and a "threat ... [to] the moral foundation
of each and every university" (Amy Guttman, University of Pennsylvania).
[1] University of Virginia President John Casteen compares the proposed
boycott to "the conduct of the most vicious political movements
and governments of the 20th century." Yet, surely they must realize
that Palestinians have for many decades suffered a multitude of assaults
on their universities and schools by the Israeli occupying forces. Surely
if university presidents are up in arms over a proposed boycott of Israeli
academics, they must have something to say about the shutting down of
universities, jailing and shooting of students and faculty, daily impeding
of students and faculty from getting to classes, denial of student permits
to attend universities, and revoking of visas to visiting scholars and
researchers that characterizes academic life in Palestine. If a boycott
of academic institutions is considered unfair, what does one call the
methodical destruction of an educational system? If Patry warns about
potential "acts of exclusion" against Israeli academics, isn't
he concerned that right now, as we speak, all but a handful of Palestinian
students are excluded from Israeli institutions and that even within
Palestine, the Israelis exclude Palestinian students from their own
universities by refusing to issue them the necessary travel permits?
Might he see the deportation and nineteen-year exile of his colleague,
Birzeit University president Hanna Nasir, as an "act of exclusion"?
My own university principal, Karen Hitchcock, is committed to "defend
the freedom of individuals to study, teach and carry out research without
fear of harassment, intimidation, or discrimination." Do these
"individuals" include Palestinians, one wonders? If so, is
she prepared to address the erection of checkpoints outside of universities,
such as the one outside of Birzeit that resulted in a 20-40 percent
reduction in class attendance in 2001 according to Human Rights Watch?
The philosopher and critic Judith Butler argues, "If the exercise
of academic freedom ceases or is actively thwarted, that freedom is
lost, which is why checkpoints are and should be an issue for anyone
who defends a notion of academic freedom." [2]
It is important to realize
that the British UCU is targeting Israeli academic institutions (and
not individuals) not only because they are linked to the same profession
but also because of the place of universities in Israeli society. Israeli
universities, far from being sites of dissidence and resistance to their
government's discriminatory and violent policies, are themselves guilty
of human rights abuses. Bar-Ilan University founded a branch in Ariel,
an illegal settlement in the West Bank, making it directly complicit
in a continued colonialist expansion project. Hebrew University has
a long and deleterious history of appropriating Palestinian land. In
1968, in opposition to a UN resolution, the university evicted hundreds
of Palestinian families to expand their campus in East Jerusalem. This
history of confiscation continues, as October 2004 saw more evictions
of Palestinian families and destruction of their homes for another campus
expansion. Israeli faculties collaborate with intelligence services,
using their academic expertise to devise sophisticated "interrogation"
methods for the Israeli military. And Israeli academics themselves serve
in the military as reservists, often in the occupied territories. The
British UCU's position is ultimately designed to encourage Israeli academics
to do something about the complicity of their universities in the illegal
occupation.
Rather than merely showcase
inflated rhetoric and verbally denounce the British UCU's boycott, a
few university presidents are prepared to go further. In her statement,
Karen Hitchcock threatens to add Queen's to the UCU's "boycott
list." Modeling her position after Columbia University President
Lee Bollinger, ironically a First Amendment scholar, Hitchcock is referring
to the petition initiated by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz that
enjoins academics to sign on to consider themselves as honorary Israelis
and ask also to be boycotted by the UCU. University of California-Berkeley
Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and McGill University Principal Heather
Munroe-Blum express similar sentiments in their statements, declaring
that should the British UCU choose to boycott Israeli institutions,
they should also boycott Berkeley and McGill as well.
When these university presidents
challenge the UCU to boycott them in their statements, they indicate
that Columbia, Berkeley, McGill and Queen's academics wish to be boycotted
along with their Israeli counterparts because they think that such boycotts
are wrong. One suspects that there may be faculty, staff, and students
at these schools who do not want to be considered honorary Israelis
and be boycotted by British universities. Is it within the proper purview
of a university's president to make unilateral pronouncements that have
such potentially significant consequences for the intellectual welfare
of its members? What sort of academic freedom is this if a president
has the power to make such decisions for his/her faculty, students,
and staff? While there may be many at these universities who welcome
such a position, in principle one cannot and should not support it.
I believe that it is itself an infringement of academic freedom.
Indeed, for all their professed
commitment to "the exchange of knowledge and ideas" (Munroe-Blum)
"scholarly understanding and free academic exchange and expression"
(Patry), "open inquiry and exchange of ideas" (John Casteen,
University of Virginia), "free and unfettered debate" (David
Skorton, Cornell University), none amongst this cadre of university
presidents seems the least bit concerned with providing the type of
open debate on this issue that is purportedly the very hallmark of their
institutions. Sadly, it seems that these presidents in fact are rushing
to issue statements precisely in order to pre-empt such debate on their
campuses. Were these university presidents really committed to their
stated positions on intellectual exchange, would they not organize or
at least foster a discussion of the issues amongst their constituencies
that would examine the motivations behind the proposed boycott? Or are
they rushing to stifle debate because they are afraid to be involved
in a potentially controversial set of issues? When there has been no
open discussion of these issues on campus, what sort of example is set
by these statements from on high? I do hope that they will have a "free
and unfettered debate" at Cornell. Let the fetters fly!
I suspect, however, that
this spate of statements does not bode well for what Casteen calls the
university's "unique capacity to serve the public good." It
seems that a dangerous precedent has been set in which university presidents
recently have taken on the customary role of politicians and accepted
politically organized and motivated tours to Israel. The Israeli newspaper
Haaretz reported that seven university presidents from the US visited
Israel in early July in a campaign designed "to explain Israel's
policies to the leaders of US academic institutions and to strengthen
scientific collaboration between the two countries."[ 3] In addition
to meeting with the educational minister and academic leaders, the university
presidents also met with "military experts." Presumably they
did not exchange views on Aristotle with the Israeli generals. While
we are now accustomed to our elected officials participating in such
tours, the university is, I agree with Casteen (a member of the delegation
to Israel), supposed to serve the public in a unique way. While I'm
not saying that some educational purpose and "free exchange of
ideas" did not occur during the presidents' visit, I remain stumped
by the meeting with the Israeli military. The Haaretz correspondent,
Tamara Traubmann, pinpoints a political agenda in the timing of the
trip, writing that "The visit takes place amid attempts to impose
an academic boycott of Israel and controversy over Israel on US campuses
between the right and the left." If this trip was designed to target
university presidents in an attempt to pre-empt debate on campus, then
we must ask whether the universities have succumbed, in Bollinger's
ominous phrase, to "politically biased attempts to hijack the central
mission of higher education."
The university presidents
might argue that they are prepared to defend the rights of any group,
not just Israelis, to academic freedom. As Tom Traves, President of
Dalhousie writes in his statement, "Universities do not have foreign
policies and they must assert their right always to be independent of
government dictates in the name of short-term political agendas."
Yet, when university presidents have allowed numerous violations of
academic freedom to Palestinians to pass without comment, they must
realize that their statements, rather than "defending the freedom
of individuals" as they claim, function precisely as politicized
pronouncements in support of the Israeli regime. You cannot let decades
of gross injustices to one side pass and then suddenly leap to the defense
of the other side without implicating yourself in a political position.
It strikes me as particularly
unfortunate, though given the recent mistreatment of Middle East Studies
professor Joseph Massad, not unexpected, that Columbia's president should
be leading the charge. In 1968, as Hebrew University busied itself in
confiscating Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, on the west side of
Manhattan, Columbia University was doing something similar. In April
of that year, Columbia broke ground in Morningside Park, a neighborhood
park adjacent to its main campus, in order to build a gym. The neighborhood
outcry was immense and students immediately organized to stop what they
saw as an arrogant appropriation of neighborhood space for largely private
use. A long protest followed, which though at first violently suppressed
by police, was ultimately effective in achieving its goal. The plan
for the gym was abandoned and the students' demand for Columbia to sever
ties with the Institute of Defense Analysis was also met, a step that
surely allowed its scientists to work with greater "openness"
and "free exchange of ideas." This was a galvanizing event
in Columbia's history and the effectiveness of the protest and ultimate
good it achieved in respecting the neighborhood's rights and highlighting
the complexity of the racial relations of its residents with the university
is now told as a proud moment in Columbia history and nicely archived
on its website. This is a history Bollinger and others might learn from,
for institutions do need motivation to move forward and transcend their
sometimes less-than-illustrious pasts. Supporting a boycott of a university
can help those dissidents within the university more effectively work
towards change, for the wish to make a favorable impression in the world
has frequently served as a catalyst for positive transformation. World
opinion was absolutely central to pressuring the US government during
the Civil Rights era and to dismantling Apartheid in South Africa. Since
the boycott is aimed at institutions not individuals, rather than isolating
Israeli academics, the boycott could provide a sort of support to those
academics who wish to reform their universities.
There are other tactics aside
from a boycott open to us as academics for addressing the suffering
of Palestinians in the occupied territories. A university community
might well decide upon a different strategy. Recently New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman suggested that universities would do better
to educate Palestinian students, establish exchanges, and send faculty
to teach in Palestinian universities. I think that these are great ideas
and hope that Israel will agree with Friedman and no longer refuse to
issue or arbitrarily revoke visas of visiting faculty and prevent Palestinian
students and academics from attending meetings abroad. I am certain
that "an open exchange of ideas" on university campuses will
lead to a lot of different and creative suggestions for considering
how we, as academics, can contribute towards improving the plight of
our Palestinian colleagues and supporting our Israeli colleagues in
doing the same. But let's not condemn the boycott out of hand before
that discussion has taken place.
To this end, I have created
a petition at my university to ask the principal to retract her statement
and support the organization of a forum to discuss the issues relating
to the proposed boycott. This is the very least that a university should
do. I urge my colleagues at other universities to do likewise.
Endnotes
[1] All quotations from university presidents, principals, chancellors,
etc. that I cite are taken from their statements posted on their university
websites.
[2] "Israel/Palestine and the paradoxes of academic freedom,"
Judith Butler, Radical Philosophy 135, January/February 2006, p. 11.
[3] "U.S. university presidents visit Israel to strengthen academic
ties," Tamara Traubmann, Haaretz, 3 July 2007.
Margaret Aziza Pappano
is an Associate Professor of English at Queen's University, Kingston,
Ontario; her specialty is medieval literature. In 2006 she visited the
West Bank as part of the institute, "Connecting Dearborn and Jerusalem,"
sponsored by the Center for Arab American Studies at the University
of Michigan-Dearborn.
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