The Modern Language Association’s (MLA) annual convention doesn’t kick off until next week. But major Jewish groups like Hillel aren’t waiting to take aim at the MLA over a panel on the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement that they say is one-sided.
The conference, to be held in Chicago, has become the latest battlefield over Israel in American academia because of a January 9th panel on academic boycotts. It features three strong supporters of the academic boycott of Israel: Omar Barghouti, the most prominent Palestinian advocate for BDS; David Lloyd, a scholar and organizer with the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI); and Barbara Harlow, a professor who endorses the call for an academic boycott. The panel also features Samer Ali, a scholar who is critical of the Israeli occupation but not supportive of academic boycotts, and Richard Ohmann, whose views on academic boycotts are unclear but who supports efforts to pressure a pension fund to divest from corporations doing business with the Israeli military.
As Ali told the Chronicle of Higher Education, it’s not a panel to debate the Israeli occupation. Rather, it’s a panel to explore the merits of an academic boycott. But pro-Israel groups are coming down hard on the MLA for not including their perspective–echoing frequently heard calls for balance when critics of Israel come to college campuses.
On January 1st, the Chicago Tribune published an Op-Ed by members of the American Jewish Committee arguing that it makes no sense to target Israel–” the only democracy in the Middle East, where academic freedom is alive and well”–and that the panel “doesn’t even pretend to examine both sides of the question.”
One day later, Hillel International and the Israel on Campus Coalition issued a statement criticizing the MLA for refusing to include their perspectives at the conference. The organizations were denied the ability to do so since the deadline to put together panels was April 1, 2013. (The complaints over balance come in the midst of a separate controversy over how Hillel bars anti-Zionist Jewish students and advocates from speaking under the organization’s roof.)
The two groups say they are exploring hosting an off-site panel near the Chicago convention to counter the boycott panel and to hear MLA members who oppose a resolution being voted on at the conference condemning Israel’s denial of entries to academics invited to Palestinian universities.
Rosemary Feal, the executive director of the MLA, told Inside Higher Ed‘s Scott Jaschik that the association “often accepts sessions that present a particular viewpoint.” Feal added that audience members will be given at least 30 minutes to discuss the issue.
BDS proponents also said that the issue of balance only comes up on this issue.
“Only in the context of Palestine does such a question arise,” David Lloyd told Jaschik. “It used, indeed, to be a regular condition of hosting an event on Palestine on many campuses that it should take the form of a debate or dialogue, spurious as dialogue must be under such asymmetrical conditions of power and violence.”
Considering the Jewish establishment’s ownership of our media, we should remember Amira Hass’s point that reporters are supposed to report on the powerful and how they exercise that power, which for her means one doesn’t give equal time to the prison guard and the prisoner.
Good. Make sure that if the MLA vote does go the wrong way narrowly American Zionists can talk about vote rigging, biased panels, suppression of the pro-Zionist viewpoint directly prior to the vote…. The more corrupt, unbalanced and non-democratic the better. I’d want as many grounds for objection grounded in fact as possible.
Unlike the ASA the MLA is genuinely prestigious. The MLA vote is not a token defeat. Israel was able to thrive when American Academia still had anti-Jewish quotas so I don’t see this endorsement as a threat. But still it is rather unpleasant to see an organization like MLA seriously flirting with explicit institutional anti-Semitism in endorsing BDS. There is no way to argue anymore in academia that treating Jews / Israel unlike the rest of the countries in the world is beyond the pale if MLA endorses it.
A symbol but an important one for the Palestinians.
Bethlehem Unwrapped in London invited the Israeli Ambassador to put the case for the wall that is strangling the town. He pulled out. Hasbara is dead, baby.
Jews are less than 2% of our population – they are already well represented in this argument. BDS is the only way to change this Israeli apartheid against the Palestinians. We have tried every other reasonable path.
RE: “Hillel International and the Israel on Campus Coalition issued a statement criticizing the MLA for refusing to include their perspectives at the conference.” ~ Kane
MY COMMENT: This nothing more than a tactic. The Israel on Campus Coalition has little interest in a debate. It wants to silence any and all criticism (inclucing BDS) directed at Israeli policies.
SEE: “The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics”, by David Theo Goldberg & Saree Makdisi, Tikkun Magazine, September/October 2009
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/sept_oct_09_goldberg_makdisi