A highly anticipated and heavily attended Harvard Law School debate last October between Duncan Kennedy and Noah Feldman on the possibilities for the 2/1-state solution concerning Israel/Palestine raises questions about the speakers, their audience, and the influence of style in conversations of substance….
For reasons that I hope will soon be apparent, it’s important I begin by owning up to who is writing this. I am a graduate student at Harvard Law School and it is in this capacity that I attended a faculty “debate” last October between Noah Feldman (hereinafter “Feldman”) and Duncan Kennedy (hereinafter “Kennedy”). Suavely moderated by David Kennedy (hereinafter, and for the limited purpose of this essay only, “the other Kennedy”) this event, organized by the student-run Justice for Palestine (“JFP”), considered the possibilities for a two-state/one-state (“2/1-state”) “solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As the most recent installment in a series of debates on the conflict in the Middle-East, the JFP is clearly dedicated to bringing the expertise of Harvard Law School to bear on the issues, not for the sake of the speakers, nor even for the issues themselves, but with the intention of engaging the Harvard student/other community and keeping their issues at the forefront. I point this out, for two reasons: first, because unlike a private conversation or a soliloquy, a public debate is nothing without its audience (it’s actually less than something printed, which may be worth the paper); the audience, even in its silence, is the most dynamic participant in such a discourse. Second, in a hybrid practice like a public debate where the charm and authority of faculty-speakers mingles with the dedication of the organizers and the open intellectual neediness of the audience, knowledge is constantly being produced as a collective practice, so no one is merely a consumer and the hope is that while reactions may vary (between inspired action/resistance, agreement/disagreement or even disillusionment), they not slump into apathy and boredom. Building on this understanding, the following account should not be read as a comprehensive telling of the conflict in the Middle East, but rather as an attempt to understand the evening’s proceedings and speak to the audience(s) of such conversations.
The setting on in Pound Hall was what you might expect: the room was uncomfortably warm due to its capacity crowd of students and assorted community members, a few organizers lingered in the well of the classroom, and the girl sitting a few chairs from me assiduously friended a dozen or so aspirants to her Facebook profile as the other Kennedy introduced the speakers. While both speakers referenced the one-state solution, it was largely obvious that the real discussion would circle around possibilities for some version of a two-state option. I too place my focus there.
Kennedy began by deflating the potential spectacle of a battle, toning down the imagined adversarial-ness of the debaters that had drawn at least some portion of the people in attendance. In a responsible and pedagogic maneuver he promised a more global perspective on the status of the ongoing conflict and the veracity of any potential “solutions” rather than simply defending a 2/1-state solution. If you believe his self-described “dystopian” stand, both the Obama administration and the Palestinian Authority (“PA”) are too weak to effectively see through any two-state solution. The gradual erosion of domestic support for President Obama has left him increasingly reliant on pro-Israel lobbies domestically, but also hungry for some sort of major accomplishment (that may, in my mind, retroactively contribute towards justifying his Nobel Prize).
The PA, on the other hand, is severely weakened by a failed coup, increased dependence on foreign investment (the sources of which would certainly like to see a solution), and already on the hook to the United States for Hamas-regulating efforts. Additionally, based on previous proposals, it is likely that Israel would retain control over the airspace, water resources, the Jordan valley, and the collection of customs.
Past that, given the overwhelming amount of Israeli investment in local/regional-surveillance, Kennedy feels that any two-state solution would also mean keeping Palestine on a short leash with some local policing authority (at best) while Israel holds on to the big, military stick. As such, forcing a two-state solution right now would bring home a moral and political “disaster” for both the White House and the PA (to say nothing about the people on the ground). A more fruitful venture, Kennedy emphasized, would be for private society to pressure Israel through boycott and divestment to “treat its victims better” and extend much-needed humanitarian aid while simultaneously persuading the Unite States to stop fetishizing the possibility of a “solution.”
Feldman, in turn, began by outlining his personal philosophical motivations in a more adversarial, debate-ish manner. He spoke from a “very different conception of justice,” one that abandons aspirations of purity in favor of justice considerations “tempered with political realism.” He emphasized that whatever choice Palestinians make, they must be prepared to live with the consequences: if they reject a two-state solution, Palestinians must steel themselves against the likely possibility that the rest of the world will grow even less interested in their cause. Whatever the choice, the outcome would be fair in Feldman’s understanding as long as it was voluntarily made and the resulting society was built along liberal political and economic ideals, broadly understood.
From here on, however, Feldman proceeded along lines that he repeatedly identified as “not utopian,” but “realistic,” and authoritatively sketched an increasingly “realist” bird’s-eye view of international politics: no, the Obama administration isn’t as weak as Kennedy thinks, nor are its pro-Israeli supporters closely aligned with Netanyahu’s objectives; yes, the PA is weak (speaking as it does for a minority), but it is in both its own and Israel’s long-term interest to adopt something resembling a two-state solution; the US should also be motivated by how such a solution may defer Israel’s motivation to bomb Iran and how a regional arrangement somehow aligning Israeli/Palestinian interests would draw neighboring states closer (because “no one has any incentive to make anyone else’s life miserable”), further isolating and weakening Iran.
So where Kennedy may be seen as a disappointed and skeptical, yet patient lefty activist, Feldman presented as a member of some governing, expert elite, able to employ game-theoretical modeling (even though he would probably refuse such a label) to map possibilities across time, space, and personality, asserting his stance as conveying just one of (presumably) more-than-one “practical” opinions out there. Now, it is of course unexceptional to find that established thinkers such as Kennedy and Feldman should have deeply entrenched personal philosophies that uniquely refract the conflict in question. For myself, however, what made the evening distinctive was the way it inadvertently, almost uncontrollably, exemplified just how deeply differences in style and personality inform conversations of substance.
Say what now?
While there can be no doubt that issues relevant to the conflict between Israel and Palestine are substantial, conversations about them (on a college campus, in a coffee shop, or in some secured situation room) and practices involving them (by students, activists, lawyers, institutions, occupiers, and the occupied) are inevitably, endlessly infected with style. I point this out not to underplay the reality of damaged generations suffering in the Middle East, but to suggest that much of how things are perceived, and therefore (at least to some extent) how things will play out, all rely on a multitude of often fundamentally divergent conceptions of personality, space, place and time.
Beginning with our respective self-perceptions, our reactions vary based on as little as whether we see ourselves in Feldman’s orange neckwear (evoking mental images that say, “professional” or “expert”) or Kennedy’s grey, wooly-cardigan (evoking, in turn, a sense of the “professor,” “academic,” or “activist”) or if we identify with some other aspects of their respective larger-than-life personalities, to much heavier expressions surrounding personal faith and attachments to private property or perceptions of social justice. In some significant way therefore the reality that the listener is drawn towards, be it Kennedy’s or Feldman’s, is as seriously invested with aesthetic choices as aesthetic perceptions of conflict (e.g. media blitz) structures the listener/audiences understanding of the reality of the on-the-ground conflict. In the middle of every real-world crisis tropes abound, incorrigibly. Kennedy himself hinted at this when he acknowledged that, his own professorial tone and position notwithstanding, it would be unrealistic to see him as speaking with any real authority about a historical conflict like the one in the Middle East.
As such, it is important to remember that whether the tropes be of left-wing activism or realistic/efficient/practical/productive international relations, they are ultimately deeply personal, stylistic modes responding to real-world issues. Simultaneously, however, real-world issues are germinated and ultimately entrenched by our interaction with those modes of existence. It would be a mistake to see this as being about aesthetics alone. To put it differently, the ways in which we receive and portray our world are inextricably tied to our strategies for existing within it.
A debate like the one between Kennedy and Feldman, held before a Harvard audience, powerfully illustrates this generalized continually regenerated process of co-production. This discussion, one of a continuing series organized by the JFP though completely unlikely to solve the Middle East conflict is dedicated to producing both knowledge and perspective on the crisis. Further, given its likely audience, the evening carried the added burden of speaking to a relatively elite, interested-in-being-persuaded, socially concerned group of students and community members.
Consequently, a conversation this heavily loaded must be understood not only for what was said, but how it was heard. Specifically, we should judge whatever was said for how it helps make up for various deficits engendered by the evening’s promise of personality and intellectual ostentation. Given the longevity of this conflict, meaningful conversations must, I think, involve more strenuous efforts to orient the conversation more towards the audience member that will leave the room than the one who came in. After all, such debates will no doubt continue to be had. This is all the more crucial when the room is run by people with perspectives and public personalities as heavily sculpted as Feldman and Kennedy. As more eloquently conveyed by the other Kennedy towards the end of the session, “How ought we to think about all of this?”
Consider the following scene: As Feldman finishes sketching his extensive map of rational-thinking/acting states, it is later in the evening. Members of the audience have begun to filter out of the room. I mention this not to point out a conversational lull nor fault in these students, but rather to stress that Israel/Palestine is not only about space, it is also about time, patience, and, ultimately, endurance. It is about how differently such aspects are constructed and experienced by the people engaging with the Middle East at a variety of levels—from the occupiers and the occupied to everyone else. Regardless of what we read in the newspaper or listen to on NPR, the Harvard-community audience’s ability to go home to a DVR in some secure, quiet-ish neighborhood uncontrollably structures everything from time to priorities to memory to interest and commitment and ultimately to its exhaustion with such issues.
It is time and exhaustion, perhaps more than the original issue of space, that now construe and govern the handling of the conflict, and even define it, and the desire to find a “solution” on the part of actors at every level of engagement (the Obama administration, activists, scholars, experts, occupier, occupied, student, avid news-reader, troubled tree-hugger, and on and on). Such exhaustion and frustration are continually aggravated by the gradual and inevitable shrinkage of ways and means: means of dealing with the on-the-ground conflict (sure), but also means of thinking about it, of explaining it to ourselves and each other, and ways of conversing that are capable of shaking loose the grime that we inherit from innumerable experts coming at us in high definition or otherwise. It can be difficult to see beyond the battle between a professional necktie and the academic cardigan. Needless to say, finding other perspectives and explanations may be especially important to the long-term goals of the JFP and other groups dedicated to keeping interest alive and the conversation going.
Accordingly, for myself, one of the real telling points of the conversation came late in the evening during a brief exchange about the propriety of labeling the “situation” in Israel/Palestine as akin to apartheid. Jimmy Carter, in his recent book “Peace Not Apartheid,” likened the Middle East conflict to such a regime; Kennedy referenced the same; Feldman expressed reluctance to think in such terms. He pegged the label as likely to detract from a useful conversations about the “real” underlying issues—the kind of intellectual goose chase that persons who want the conflict to continue would cheer on. He further contested the description briefly by pointing out that Blacks in South Africa had citizenship on their side (certainly a cautious though controversial assertion), but concluded in his earlier vein: “I think we just had a conversation about some of the underlying issues, I don’t know if we made any progress, but we talked about them,” he said. Presumably, this was opposed to any number of non-productive hours that could be squandered on whether the Middle East crisis is “like” an “apartheid.” The assertion that one discussion is “productive” and the implication that another is not may, of course, be equally counter-productive. To Feldman’s protest I would suggest that even Kennedy’s “dystopian” sketch and certainly Feldman’s own “realistic” or “practical” imaginings, and, of course, the very possibility of a “solution” to the crisis may each be considered more or less helpful but certainly not, even to the speakers themselves, “the real” discussion to be swallowed by the audience as opposed to dated or otherwise unproductive arguments.
Am I then saying that we should only internalize the really-real and not Kennedy or Feldman’s real? No. The responsibility of the organizers and the audience, I’m afraid, is much greater than this. As listeners we need to develop a better sense of our role in any and all such discourses—including debates or essays like this one. We are not just activist students organizing a discussion forum or other interested students coming to hear our faculty. We are all—sitting rapt with attention, or sneaking in a tweet—contributors to the persisting reality of the Middle-East conflict even if we never find ourselves traveling there. Given this, we must not buy into even the mere notion of some general public reality, but insist on struggling to shape our own competing contribution towards such global conversations.
After all, isn’t that the reason for organizing such an event? Isn’t the biggest threat that people will just get bored and wonder what could possibly be said about this conflict that hasn’t already been said elsewhere? A crucial part of trying to expand and tweak the available ways and means of understanding and dealing with such a conflict is struggling with possible vocabularies. For this reason, the evening’s brief exchange on “apartheid” becomes important. Surely, we know too well how the meanings of words change in crises. The now-irrevocably altered meanings of once common words and phrases—“rendition,” “stress position,” “collateral damage,” or even “comfort” + “women” = “comfort women”—are only the loud symptoms of a much subtler and insidious disease: dodging inequities, hypocrisy, violence, and suffering with little more than a turn of jargon. Whether or not “apartheid” is actually helpful or appropriate should not be determined by relying on some ubiquitous responsibility of words to promote “useful” conversations. The debate over the word itself may be useful, if that is the concern.
Debating such descriptions forces us to speak to a multitude of realities incorporating the preconceptions, prejudices, personalities, and motivations of myriad actors that may, unfortunately, be set aside when a debate is only understood for its ability—through clinical, activistic or other expert-authority based assessment—to produce value; for isn’t the expectation of just such a complex, murky discourse what differentiates a public-debate before a student-community audience from the antiseptic, valuable word-salads leaking out of mass-media bordellos? Assertions of “productive,” “useful” conversations and ways of thinking are unhelpful given how they appear all cocktail-attired and predestined as speaking to more “real” issues than other conversations. Another (perhaps more agreeable) reality is that conflicts such as the one considered here generate real issues without end.
Considering it is unlikely that a conversation at Harvard would solve any of the many crises at play, I would suggest that it is equally hasty to assume that the abundance of debates on “real” or “substantive” concerns alone is what matters. And, of course, what is understood as “real” or “substantive,” both in classroom discussions as well as on-the-ground, cannot be considered independent of what is stylistic (or even “impractical” if you prefer).
Finally, one other admission, I think, is owed. When thinking about how to “understand” this debate on paper, I, myself, faced the sticky problem of putting together something that would somehow be “useful” to my potential readership; why else would someone pick up (or click on) to read this, I thought. What followed also involved an unsteady negotiation between my desire to convey a personal sense of the evening, all the while staying behind the mostly unseen line between supplying a thoughtful (but “student observer—faculty speaker” hierarchically-bounded) contribution, and something altogether audacious and surly. This resulting piece is an assessment that I hope may be meaningful even when it falls short of being “productive.” It is only fair to point out that much more was said in the actual conversation between Kennedy and Feldman than can be conveyed here. I would encourage readers to flesh out their own thoughts on the subject by visiting Harvard Law School where a portion of the evening’s conversation is available.
