Academic BDS arrives in the US
The BDS movement does not care whether the ASA boycott itself is effective. What is important to the BDS movement is isolating Israel in every way possible. BDS will take watered-down symbolic isolation if that is what it can get. That is why BDS also seeks boycott resolutions from non-academic professional groups and to prevent the sale of hummus and coffee by Israeli companies. It’s not about supporting academic freedom for Palestinians, it’s about destroying Israel.
The ASA boycott, if approved by the membership, will not be a wall around Israel, but it will be a brick in the wall.
It is against that background that we should consider how we got to the point that the most academically-free nation in the Middle East is the only nation subjected to an academic boycott by academics in the U.S.
The ASA proposed boycott provides a prime example in the form of Claire B. Potter, Professor of History at The New School for Public Engagement, whose specialty is “feminism, political history and cultural criticism.” She blogs at the Tenured Radical column at The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Potter, an ASA member, originally took a principled stand against the ASA boycott of Israel. While paying homage to many of the false anti-Israeli tropes, she nonetheless expressed concern with an academic boycott.
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Goldberg spoke with Potter about the change of position, and updated her post as follows (emphasis mine):
Update, December 7, 2013, 5:30pm: After I posted this piece, I learned that Claire Potter had changed her position on the ASA resolution and voted yes. Reached by phone, she explained how the shift in her thinking came out. When she first expressed qualms about the academic boycott, she says, “The response was overwhelming. There were massive numbers of people, including a lot of people I know, just writing these nasty things on my blog about what a horrible person I was.”
As the debate about BDS and academic freedom has moved forward, she looked for a way to engage in it constructively, but increasingly felt like she couldn’t do so from outside. “The problem, when you hold to a position so rigidly, you yourself become part of the polarization,” she says. “I all of the sudden became a cause célèbre for all kinds of other people, when that is really not what I intended at all. I would like to have a conversation about academic freedom within this strategy.”
A couple of things convinced her that that was possible. First, the ASA National Council adapted the boycott resolution to make its commitment to academic freedom clearer. And then, rather than simply passing the resolution itself, it took the unusual step of putting it to a vote of the ASA membership, which struck her as an effort at compromise. “If there had been concessions on both sides and they had been able to come to a consensus around this vision, I felt like I should support them, because compromise is hard work.”
Essentially, she decided to give her colleagues the benefit of the doubt. “It has become clear to me that there is a shift in political concerns, that maybe I need to see how it works,” she says. “Everybody in BDS says this is not a restriction of academic freedom, that individuals will not be targeted. I’m going to take a leap of faith and say ok, lets see if this does in fact work out the way you say its going to work out.”I reached out to Potter as to the pressure on her, which she emailed had no effect on her. I doubt that, given the Twitter history and Potter’s comments to Goldberg, but here’s what Potter wrote to me:
WAJ: In Michelle’s writing she mentions how you were concerned about the reaction to your initial position. Reading through your Twitter timeline and blog comments, it does appear that there was a rather furious reaction to your initial position. Is that a fair characterization? Did the reaction cause you, at least in part, to reconsider?
Read the whole thing. Sadly, academics can no longer be trusted with academic freedom. It has become yet another casualty in the struggle for a 'Palestinian state.'Potter: No– I have plenty of experience with strong responses to my views. I did engage with several people who were critical of my stance, and that was productive.
Labels: academic boycott, BDS
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:49 PM
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