Anti-Zionism in women's and gender studies departments and programs

"The national effort to organize an entire academic discipline around anti-Zionism represents a new and dangerous phase in the politicization of academe, argues Cary Nelson."

Excellent op-ed in Inside Higher Ed by Cary Nelson on an extreme anti-Israel statement signed by more than a hundred women's and gender studies departments and programs.

On May 21, the day after a ceasefire was announced in the latest war between Gaza and Israel, a coalition of women’s and gender studies departments and programs made it clear that, for their part, the war of words, at least, will not stop. More than 100 such academic programs signed a statement condemning Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, thereby endorsing the accusation that Israel’s conduct constitutes a war crime. Academic freedom protects the right individual faculty have to take aggressive political stands. But departments and programs speak for the institution. A department’s adoption of a controversial political stance has implications for all who work with that department.

The statement in question, “Gender Studies Departments in Solidarity With Palestinian Feminist Collective,” is far from the generic, anodyne calls for decency, sensitivity or basic fairness that university bodies often issue. On the contrary, it uses incendiary rhetoric not just to support the rights of Palestinians but also to condemn Israel by taking sides in the political struggle: “We do not subscribe to a ‘both sides’ rhetoric that erases the military, economic, media, and global power that Israel has over Palestine.” The statement characterizes the current war as part of an ethnic cleansing program that began in 1947, thereby condemning Israel’s whole history. By declaring “we call for the end of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine and for the Palestinian right to return to their homes,” they make clear that their attack on “settler colonialism” applies not just to the West Bank but to Israel within its pre-1967 boundaries as well. “This is not a ‘conflict’ that is too ‘controversial and complex’ to assess,” it concludes.

Read the whole op-ed in Inside Higher Ed.

The academic boycott of Israel affects American students

John Cheney-Lippold, an associate professor Department of American Culture of the University of Michigan, refused to write a letter of recommendation for a student to study abroad in Israel. He initially had said he would write it for her, but when he realized she wanted to go to Israel he withdrew his offer. The BDS movement is opposed to study abroad programs in Israel. These are the guidelines from the PACBI website:

Study abroad schemes in Israel for international students.  These programs are usually housed at Israeli universities and are part of the Israeli propaganda effort, designed to give international students a “positive experience” of Israel, whitewashing its occupation and denial of Palestinian rights.  Publicity and recruitment for these schemes through students’ affairs offices or academic departments (such as Middle East and international studies centers) at universities abroad should come to an end.

Guideline 10 requires faculty supporting the academic boycott not to write recommendations for students who want to study in Israel:

Furthermore, international faculty should not accept to write recommendations for students hoping to pursue studies in Israel, as this facilitates the violation of guideline 11 below. 

This is guideline 11:

International students enrolling in or international faculty teaching or conducting research at degree or non-degree programs at an Israeli institution. If conducting research at Israeli facilities such as archives does not entail official affiliation with those facilities (e.g. in the form of a visiting position), then the activity is not subject to boycott. 

I've had a visiting research position at Hebrew University (in 2012), so I guess I've violated the academic boycott - proudly, I must say.

The University of Michigan Board of Trustees has rejected the academic boycott of Israel:

Six of the eight members of the board signed the letter, and criticized BDS as an assault on the institution’s values. 

“Our university has long been a community that seeks to study and improve the human condition through our research and scholarship,” the statement said. “We work together to better understand the most complex challenges we face on campus and beyond. We do this work through active engagement in the world around us. To boycott, divest or sanction Israel offends these bedrock values of our great university.”

The day after the student received the note from Cheney-Lippold, she wrote to the president of the University of Michigan:

“I firmly believe that any student’s abroad experience should not be impacted or dictated by any professor’s personal political beliefs,” they wrote. “I feel that his response is very disturbing, as he is allowing his personal beliefs (and apparently those of ‘many university departments’) to interfere with my dreams of studying abroad.” 

“All I asked for was an academic recommendation regarding my work habits, diligence, and aptitude as a student,” they continued.

They called this stance “unconscionable and hypocritical, as presumably he would have no problem in issuing a letter of recommendation” to students who seek to study abroad in “totalitarian” countries and territories as part of a formal U-M program, namely “China, Cuba, Russia, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories.” 

The student pointed out that Cheney-Lippold’s rejection did not appear to stem from any objection to their work ethic or other characteristics, but rather “his own political views.” 

The student further suggested that Cheney-Lippold’s conduct appears to be in violation of a 2017 statement by U-M’s Board of Regents rejecting the BDS campaign, as well as Public Acts 526 and 527, which were signed into law in Michigan in 2016. The bipartisan bills, similar to others that have been passed in nearly two dozen states, bar state agencies from contracting with an individual who is engaged in “the boycott of a person based in or doing business with a strategic partner,” namely Israel.

Will the university do anything to assist this student, perhaps by making sure that another professor write her a recommendation to study in Israel?

This is the university's official response thus far:

Rick Fitzgerald, a spokesperson for the University of Michigan, told The Algemeiner on Monday that the school “has consistently opposed any boycott of Israeli institutions of higher education.” 

“No academic department or any other unit at the University of Michigan has taken a position that departs from this long-held university position,” he confirmed. 

“The academic goals of our students are of paramount importance. It is the university’s position to take all steps necessary to make sure our students are supported,” Fitzgerald continued. “It is disappointing that a faculty member would allow their personal political beliefs to limit the support they are willing to otherwise provide for our students.” 

He said the school will engage its faculty colleagues “in deep discussions to clarify how the expression of our shared values plays out in support of all students.”

The Department of American Culture at the university says about itself that it is "the top American studies department in the world." What was the department's stance toward the ASA (American Studies Association) endorsement of the academic boycott in 2013? Do they support it? Have other professors in the department also refused to write recommendations for students who wish to study in Israel?

This is the continuation of the web statement: "Our students and faculty are uniquely committed to social justice and the highest standards of scholarship. We are proud, too, to be home to ethnic studies programs at Michigan: Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies, Arab and Muslim American Studies, Latina|o Studies, and Native American Studies." Jewish American Studies is nowhere to be seen in this list of programs, which is common - Jewish Studies is commonly excluded from participating in ethnic studies and/or multicultural studies.

One wonders if this "commitment" and being "home to ethnic studies" has led to the department's alignment with the BDS movement.

Thus, contrary to the claim of the BDS movement and its advocates, the academic boycott *does* have an effect upon individuals, not just institutions, including this undergraduate whose professor should have put his political commitments aside and just written her the recommendation.

What are the goals of the Palestinian Academic Boycott of Israel?

According to the website of PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, the goals of the BDS movement are threefold:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

Of these three goals, the first two are compatible with the continued existence of the state of Israel, although the existence of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and in the area of municipal Jerusalem outside the Green Line (in the area annexed by Israel after the 1967 war) complicates matters, and is one of the primary subjects of the current negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. If Israel withdraws from the lands conquered in the Six Day War in 1967, the state will continue to exist with a Jewish majority. If the state of Israel treats Israeli Palestinians as equal citizens, it will be fulfilling the promises of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, issued in 1948:

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

Israel has not, in fact, ensured complete equality of rights to all of its inhabitants. Between 1948 and 1966, the Arab citizens of Israel lived under military rule. Even today, there is governmental discrimination in the allocation of funds to predominantly Arab towns and cities, and there is discrimination in housing and employment against Arabs (sometimes government imposed, sometimes not – for example, in the last couple of years, the government has been pushing for employers to hire Arab college graduates, who have generally had a very hard time getting hired in certain professions).

It is the third demand of PACBI that is the problem – that Israel agrees to “respect, protect, and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return their homes and properties.” Refugees from the 1948 war numbered about 711,000 people. As of 2012, 30,000-50,000 were still alive. Their descendants, as of 2012, are estimated to number 4,950,000, with a total number of 5 million people (according to UNRWA). If the PACBI demand covers only the people who themselves are refugees from 1948, then there would be no particular problem in those 30,000-50,000 people returning to what is now Israel. Since the places that they live are probably now occupied by other people, Israel would have to find comparable places for them to live. The problem is that the demand of return covers the descendants as well. If all of those people go to Israel, the population will become majority Arab-Palestinian, and the country will no longer be majority Jewish.

If the goals of BDS, as articulated by PACBI, are met, the state of Israel will cease to exist as a Jewish state, and the Jews living within its boundaries will become a minority.

The claim is often made that a “one-state solution” is ideal – that Jews and Arabs should live together in one state where the rights of each group will be safeguarded. There is no evidence from the history of the Jews in the surrounding Arab states that such a thing could be possible. For example, in Egypt, there are very few Jews left, perhaps about a hundred. There are probably no Jews left in Syria. The Jews of the Arab world, who numbered about 900,000 in 1948, have dwindled to tiny minorities in all of the Arab states. They were driven out or fled because of anti-Jewish persecution. Many of them went to Israel in the late 1940s and 1950s, while others went to France, other European countries, and the United States. Is there any reason to suppose that a new state with an Arab majority will treat its Jewish residents any better than the other Arab states?

If the ultimate goal of PACBI and the BDS movement is to make Jews a minority in an Arab dominated state, I see no reason why anyone with a concern for justice would support this movement.

BDS and the attack upon academic freedom at Vassar College

Legal Insurrection, the blog maintained by Professor William Jacobson of Cornell University, just posted a story about how the controversy over BDS at Vassar has taken a truly awful turn. I had previously read about the conflict on the Vassar campus on the Mondoweiss website, which I usually find completely unreliable, but Philip Weiss's article seemed fairly responsible to me. Even he seemed a bit unnerved by what's going on at Vassar. Perhaps he can begin to reflect on the damage he is helping to create in the United States around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He reported about a meeting that occurred at Vassar to discuss a study abroad trip to Israel/Palestine (part of a course - International Studies 110) that explored water issues and resources in the region.

I was at the March 3 meeting that so upset Schneiderman [one of the faculty members teaching IS 110], and it was truly unsettling... 

If a student had gotten up and said, I love Israel, he or she would have been mocked and scorned into silence. Or bedevilled by finger-snapping—the percussive weapon of choice among some students, a sound that rises like crickets as students indicate their quiet approval of a statement. 

I left the room as soon as the meeting ended. The clash felt too raw, and there was a racial element to the division (privileged Jews versus students of color). Vassar is not my community, and I didn’t want to say anything to make things worse.

(I'm not sure why Weiss assumes that all Jews are privileged, that no Jews are people of color, and that no white students belonged to the pro-BDS side. In fact, the president of the Jewish student union spoke out in favor of the academic boycott of Israel.)

Legal Insurrection gives all of the details about the ongoing conflict, which has given rise to some extremely nasty attacks upon pro-Israel faculty and students. One day the faculty members teaching International Studies 110 were confronted by a picket line of students from the group Students for Justice in Palestine at Vassar.. (The two professors are Rachel Friedman, Associate Professor of Greek and Roman Studies, and Jill Schneiderman, Professor of Earth Science and Geography).  The SJP students urged the students in the class to drop it and not go on the study tour of Israel/Palestine. This is a flyer they handed out to them:

From Legal Insurrection [Jacobson interviewed Friedman, and reports on the interview]:

In late February, Friedman arrived at Kenyon Hall on campus for her regularly scheduled class. 

As she entered the lobby of the building, near her class, Friedman was confronted with a line of SJP students holding posters and passing out flyers demanding that students not participate in the class and not go to Israel on the class trip. 

I spoke with Friedman at length about the incident. 

As Friedman describes it, protesters were lined up side-by-side across the lobby such that Friedman and the 28 students in her class had to push through the line to get to the classroom. While not physically blocked, Friedman described that this required her to physically cross the protest line, as the protesters created a space to walk through as she approached. 

The protesters made loud ululating sound similar to what is traditional among women in some Middle Eastern countries.... 

The protesters carried posters with slogans urging students to drop the class. While Friedman doesn’t have photos of the posters, Friedman recalls wording similar to ”It’s not too late to drop the class,” “Indigenous Palestinians don’t want you to take the class,” and wording regarding oppression of Palestinians.

Friedman said that she was “shocked” and “in 17 years at Vassar never experienced anything like this.” She said she “couldn’t believe protestors crossed over into [the] space of classes.” Even though the protesters didn’t enter the classroom itself, they imposed themselves physically in the pathway to the class. 

Friedman considered these physical actions to be a “new kind of transgression.” Friedman felt that the protest was “dangerous” from an academic perspective, and “crossed a line that no other protest crossed.” 

She said she would not have minded if the protest took place outside of the classroom vicinity and in a way that did not impose on those entering the class. SJP frequently leaflets and has a table set up in the student center, and Friedman said she doesn’t mind that. 

The protesters continued to make noise as class started, but eventually quieted down and left. The students in her class looked “shell shocked” according to Friedman. 

The class spent about a half hour talking about what had happened. Student comments during that session included that they “felt unsafe,” “bullied” and “harrassed.” Some other students felt that their “intelligence was insulted” by the protest.

The ASA claimed that their endorsement of the academic boycott of Israel would not have an impact upon individual scholars. They argued that it was aimed only at a boycott of Israeli institutions, not Israeli professors, and would not stop academic exchanges between individuals. Likewise, they argue that the boycott would not affect individual American (or other foreign) scholars.

I believe that this ongoing series of incidents at Vassar proves them wrong. The SJP students harassed both the students taking IS 110 and the professors teaching it. Their aim is to prevent anybody from going to Israel, even if the goal is to study the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What they are doing is fully in concert with what PACBI and USACBI have advocated.  The academic boycott of Israel is aimed squarely at the academic freedom of Israeli and international scholars. This is a particularly egregious case, in my opinion, because the SJP did its best to disrupt the free conduct of a class, thus damaging the academic freedom of the professors teaching the course and the students taking it.

Professor William Jacobson speaking against the academic boycott of Israel

Last night, Professor William Jacobson spoke at Ithaca College against the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. This was the second of two talks at the college last night on the boycott. Professor Eric Cheyfitz, also of Cornell, spoke the hour before in favor of the boycott. Professor Jacobson's talk was recorded, and he has put it up on Youtube for those interested in what he had to say.

 

While there doesn't appear to be a video of Professor Cheyfitz's talk last night, he was interviewed by Democracy Now! debating with Professor Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which is one of the academic bodies that has come out in opposition to the boycott. The video of the debate is online at the Democracy Now! website - link above.

Update: References to Cheyfitz's and Jacobson's talk

Daled Amos - William Jacobson speaks at Ithaca College
The Ithacan - Guest Speakers Debate Academic Boycott

Jacobson reached out to the organizers of the first lecture, in which Cheyfitz defended the Dec. 4 decision by the ASA. 

Jeff Cohen, director and associate professor of the journalism department and director of the Park Center for Independent Media, which co-sponsored the Cheyfitz event, said organizers of the pro-boycott lecture responded to Jacobson’s request and offered him five minutes to present the opposing viewpoint immediately following Cheyfitz’s lecture but before the question-and-answer period. 

Jacobson said he requested equal time, but Cheyfitz organizers declined. He subsequently approached Hillel to sponsor an independent second event. 

“I would have loved to be on the stage with someone I disagree with vehemently on this issue,” Jacobson said. “I think that would have been a better approach.” 

Beth Harris, associate professor of politics at the college, said via email that while debates can be positive learning experiences, they serve a different purpose than what this event intended. 

“In my 14 years at Ithaca College, I have never heard of an outsider demanding that he get equal time in program that has already been planned with a guest scholar that he disagrees with,” Harris said. 

Harris also said Hillel set up a program that she thought was deliberately rude to Cheyfitz because it ultimately drew people out of the room before his presentation was over. 

“If you want to have a collaborative event, you don’t try to sabotage an existing program,” Harris said. “You call for a planning meeting and discuss what would be the best way to work together to meet a common goal. Neither Hillel nor Jewish Studies took this kind of initiative. While I am not surprised by Hillel’s approach, I am disappointed that Jewish Studies, as another academic unit, would not want to work collaboratively on events.” 

According to the Hillel community on campus, there was no intent to sabotage the Cheyfitz lecture. Igor Khokhlov, executive director of Hillel at the college, said Hillel intentionally planned the Jacobson event at 8 p.m. to allow time for the pro-boycott lecture and subsequent Q-and-A period to conclude. 

“When I went back to my board members, they said if Cheyfitz was talking for 30 minutes and there would probably be another 30 minutes of Q-and-A, likely they would be done within an hour or so,” Khokhlov said. “There was no ill intention to cut them off or control the agenda.” 

Harris said while Hillel hosts speakers on campus, the group does not make an effort to expose students to diverse opinions about the Israeli academic boycott issue.
“In none of Hillel’s events about Zionism or Israel have they ever sought a second speaker who would be anti-Zionist or critical of Israeli policy,” Harris said.
However, Hillel could face challenges if it tried to co-sponsor a joint event that included a pro-boycott speaker. According to Hillel’s international guidelines for campus Israel activities, Hillel will not partner with, house or host organizations, groups or speakers who support the boycott of, divestment from or sanctions against the State of Israel. 

While Khokhlov said he would not financially sponsor pro-boycott speakers, in accordance with Hillel’s international guidelines, he will find ways to make sure his students can attend conversations both for and against the boycott. 

“We have academic partners,” Khokhlov said. “This last event yesterday was sponsored by the Jewish studies department, as well. That’s a very easy solution for us. When the Jewish studies program co-sponsors an event, then Hillel doesn’t necessarily have to formally sponsor it.” 

Both Cheyfitz and Jacobson want academic freedom for all but have different ideas about how to accomplish that end. Junior Rebecca Levine, president of the campus Hillel community, said she encouraged both sides to come together in the future.

“I do think it is very important to keep the conversation open and encourage those who are willing to share their opinions and explore further,” Levine said.

Jews in Whispers - Roger Cohen

Roger Cohen of the New York Times has written a column that I actually mostly agree with, on "Jews in a Whisper," on the contrast between the forthright acknowledgement of Jewish identity in the United States with the half-embarrassed standpoint of (some) Jews in Britain. Nonetheless, he still has one irritating paragraph that strikes me as irrelevant to his argument.

His paragraph:

The lesson is clear: Jews, with their history, cannot become the systematic oppressors of another people. They must be vociferous in their insistence that continued colonization of Palestinians in the West Bank will increase Israel’s isolation and ultimately its vulnerability.

That — not fanning Islamophobia — is the task before diaspora Jews. To speak up in Britain also means confronting the lingering, voice-lowering anti-Semitism.

Cohen seems to saying here that the way to get rid of some forms of antisemitism in western countries is to oppose the settlements, and the Israeli occupation, in the West Bank.  Does Roger really think that opposing the settlements in the West Bank is a way to get rid of antisemitism in western countries? He's ascribing a rationality to antisemitism that simply isn't there. If Israel didn't have settlements in the West Bank, I suspect antisemites would find plenty of other reasons to hate Jews.

I also oppose the settlements (most of them) as an obstacle to peace, but I don't say so with the goal of  opposing antisemitism, or for that matter opposing anti-Muslim prejudice. It's something worth doing for its own sake, rather than worrying about what antisemites think - for the sake of the future of Israel.

In my opinion, the way to oppose antisemitism is simply to speak out against it forthrightly whenever it appears in any of its forms: if it's the supposedly genteel antisemitism that he's writing about in Britain, to call it out and say it's not funny. (And how genteel is it in fact? Such genteel antisemitism existed before WWII - was it a contributing factor in the lack of sufficient welcome to Jewish refugees from Hitler, and the White Paper that cut off Jewish immigration to Palestine?). It seems to me that the anti-Zionist antisemitism that has taken up residence among some of the British intellectuals (see the UCU - University and College Union and its attempts to forward the academic boycott of Israel) needs to be opposed by forthrightly calling it what it is, and refusing to back down in the face of the pathetic attempts to deny that it's antisemitic.

US campaign for academic boycott of Israel

One of the things that is so distressing about the campaign for an academic boycott of Israel (U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel) is that people whom I respect are participating in it, and I simply don't understand how they can add their names to a campaign that denies academic freedom, and in particular denies the right of scholars of Jewish Studies to work with colleagues in Israeli universities. Israel is one of the world centers of Jewish Studies, and if the academic boycott succeeded in the United States, it would strike an enormous blow to it. It's for this reason that I call the campaign for the academic boycott antisemitic.

Scholars and writers whom I respect who have signed on include: Ammiel Alcalay (poet and scholar), Judith Butler (gender theorist, UC Berkeley), Marilyn Hacker (poet whose work I first encountered as quotes in the novel "Babel-17" by Samuel R. Delany), Barbara Ehrenreich (well-respected feminist and political author of among other books, "Nickel and Dimed"), and Adrienne Rich, a Jewish lesbian poet whose work I have loved for decades. I feel betrayed by them - however bitter their criticisms of Israel, is it necessary to be part of a movement that is contrary to all of the academic values that we claim to hold dear?