Let’s have reasoned debate on the academic boycott

On March 16 of this year, the Los Angeles Review of Books published a forum entitled, “Academic Activism: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Ethics of Boycott.”  David Palumbo-Liu–a member of the Association for Asian American Studies, which in April 2013 became the first academic organization to endorse the boycott, and also of the American Studies Association, whose endorsement of the boycott in December 2013 brought the issue into the headlines all over the country and indeed the world–felt the need to have a more sustained and substantial discussion put before the public, which had been instantly presented with numerous, quickly-drafted op-eds.  Chief amongst the criticisms of the boycott were the charges that it unfairly singles out Israel, and that it stifles academic exchange and inquiry. The LARB forum gathered essays that not only addressed those topics, but also delved deeper into the issues, bringing forth arguments based on history, critical works, cultural studies.

One of the most comprehensive and thorough of the essays which took a stance against the boycott was written by Russell Berman, an eminent professor at Stanford and past president of the Modern Language Association, the largest body of teachers of literature in the world, and an organization currently voting on a resolution regarding the Right to Enter.  Upon its publication, three other Stanford scholars, Joel Beinin, Hilton Obenzinger, and Palumbo-Liu, feeling the need to address several fundamental errors in Berman’s piece, wrote a lengthy and systematic rebuttal, which was also published in the LARB.  They felt it was important to do so because for them Berman’s contribution rehearses the main distortions and misconceptions regarding the boycott; they felt it was critical to correct the record.

Here are three key excerpts from that piece, which is available via this link.

Russell Berman: “The boycott movement bases its animosity toward Israel on the twin claims that it is a colonialist state and that it relies on an apartheid system of racial segregation.”

The BDS movement targets Israel because, as a recent report released by the British government documents, its actions in occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since 1967 — expropriating land and water resources of the indigenous population, establishing civilian settlements, failing to provide services for the occupied population, etc. — violate international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israel also systematically discriminates against the 20 percent of its citizens who are Palestinian Arabs. And it resolutely refuses to acknowledge that the establishment of the state of Israel was the result of the expulsion or flight of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, who have an internationally recognized right to return to their homeland.

For Palestinians, these reasons are more than sufficient, regardless of what terminology is used to describe Israel, to advocate Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. Even if we agreed that Israel were a model liberal democratic state (as it claims to be), and it committed these acts, there would and should be international protests against them. For Americans, the fact that our government supplies Israel with roughly $3 billion a year in aid — a total of $233.7 billion since 1948 (adjusted for inflation; $112 billion nominally) — is also a sufficient reason to be engaged in this issue. Israel has been by far the largest single recipient of US aid every year since the 1970s.

Perhaps what really distresses the opponents of the BDS movement, besides its successes in the recent period, is that the cause of Palestine has come to be an emblem of international solidarity in the struggle for global justice. This does not mean that everything that Palestinians or supporters of BDS do is beyond criticism. It is a broad movement with many different currents and different political orientations (including some people who describe themselves as Zionists).

Russell Berman: “The point of declaring that Israel is a settler colonialist regime is to associate Israel, and the Zionist movement that preceded it, with the history of European colonialism.”

Berman believes that the categorization of Israel as a settler colonial society calls forth “the colonialism calumny,” as if acknowledging Israel’s history of settlement is inherently wrong. It is, therefore, important to underscore that the category of “settler colonial society” is a scholarly designation, not a political label — certainly not a slur — that has been used quite broadly, not only by the Israeli scholars noted above. In the last 15 years or so, the academic field of settler colonial studies has flourished; it is as rigorous as other fields.

As long ago as 2001, faculty at Stanford convened a Mellon Foundation seminar at the Stanford Humanities Center on “Settlement, Race, and Sovereignty in North America, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine,” examining similarities and differences, paving the way for other comparative studies. Today there is at least one transnational journal, Settler Colonial Studies, with essays on a wide range of settler societies. Understanding how the United States is founded as a settler society with the exclusion of indigenous people and the expropriation of their land is not a calumny but an aid in understanding all of the further developments of the United States, including the “plantation colonialism” of slavery and the necessity of importing workers as immigrants. Scholars now examine a wide range of societies with this rubric.

Russell Berman: “The boycott, if it means anything, threatens to impede the international exchange of ideas and knowledge. It encourages professors to make decisions on political, rather than pedagogical, grounds, and this will undoubtedly seep into the character of classroom instruction as well: expect further politicization of the student experience.”

Berman creates a much more complicated case than actually exists to make his point. The terms of the BDS movement’s academic boycott are clear: an organization honoring the boycott will not engage in any official partnerships with Israeli institutions, but its members are free to do as they wish. Period. Not only are American Studies Association members (for example) free to travel to Israel, collaborate with Israeli scholars, and invite them to speak on their campuses, the ASA has even invited Israeli scholars to its convention and paid for their travel so that they do not have to use state funds to do so. Whatever “politics” might find their way into “the character of classroom instruction” (and Berman does not offer a single example) simply cannot be attributed to the boycott.