In Defense of Academic Boycotts: A Response to Martha Nussbaum: Replies
Nussbaum, Martha
AS BEFORE, I shall not debate the specific facts concerning Israel and Palestine; this must be left to those whose expertise lies in that area. As my article went to press, however, the National...
...and even if it does not, one's choice of morally appropriate tactics will in88 DISSENT / Fall 2007 spire respect for one's cause and its people, as Gandhi's resistance strategy won the support of the entire world for the cause of Indian independence...
...I believe that Abed rejects such conditions, rightly...
...At the APA, he proposed that those invited to such conferences should ask that they be relocated to a Palestinian venue...
...I call on him to denounce the British resolution as an inappropriate measure...
...I don't even think it's wise to relocate all conferences that might be relocated, because an important goal of dialogue is to address members of the broader Israeli public, who badly need to hear from scholars such as Abed, and who would probably not travel to the West Bank to hear a lecture, even if they were able to...
...so it would appear that Abed does not favor the ostracism of individual academics that the British boycott proposes...
...I can't imagine that such boycotts will work either, given the powerlessness of academics...
...So far as I can see, then, Abed's proposal amounts to a boycott only in the sense that it asks foreign academics not to give lectures or hold conferences inside Israel...
...academics to the Vietnam War had no discernible effect on U.S...
...This argument seems to me to tell in favor of the tactics I recommend, censure and public protest directed at institutions, rather than in favor of isolating individuals whose capacity for bringing pressure to bear on their government is surely slight...
...Consider the case of Narendra Modi: withdrawing his U.S...
...MARTHA NUSSBAUM is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Chicago...
...I find this distasteful...
...Abed's response to my "double standards" argument is, again, strategic: it will do no good to boycott Sudanese or Chinese universities and scholars, but it might do some good in the case of Israel, which is sensitive to the world community in a way that those nations are not...
...Let me begin by addressing his constructive proposal...
...We can at least agree, however, that such measures would not contribute to the type of understanding that Abed rightly seeks, and I am very glad that he opposes them...
...I think that the blunt instrument of a boycott would prove similarly counterproductive in the present case, even if the moral arguments in its favor were sound, which they aren't...
...Many versions of such a boycott also violate a key principle of academic freedom by making normal academic relations with an individual conditional on that individual's political position...
...ABED'S ARGUMENT at this point appears to be strategic: we have tried these other measures, he says, and they have not worked...
...visa was widely perceived as appropriate by Indians, because it was directed at the real culprit of the Gujarat pogrom, and I think it has done some real good in showing the powerful Gujarati community in the United States that religious hatred of the type that Modi purveys is unacceptable to the world community...
...DISSENT / Fall 2007 89...
...A conference on social justice could usefully be relocated, and all involved would be likely to profit from the experience of meeting in East Jerusalem or on the West Bank...
...By contrast, a lecture I plan to give at Hebrew University this December, in memory of a scholar who dedicated his career to rabbinical education, could not plausibly be relocated, since rabbinical education is not a topic on which Palestinian academics focus...
...Obviously, however, the goal of increasing understanding will be reached only if Israeli academics are (as he proposes) included...
...I think that this is often a good idea, but not always...
...I do not believe that refusing to publish people's articles, refusing to referee their materials for tenure, refusing to write letters of recommendation, and refusing to invite them to conferences (all of which have been repeatedly proposed in Britain and elsewhere in Europe) are at all "minor," particularly for younger academics...
...As I suggested, if a given university has engaged in wrongful practices, it is possible for a group to censure that university or any culpable individuals involved and/or to organize (nonviolent) public protest of their activities...
...To boycott the institution as a whole (meaning all of its faculty and students) will only sweep into the condemnation those uninvolved and powerless individuals whom we agree we do not want to harm...
...In short, we should applaud and follow Abed's positive proposal to foster dialogue, but steer clear of his (albeit highly limited) espousal of the flawed boycott idea...
...A sweeping boycott of universities and scholars in India, by contrast, would have made an utterly murky statement, and people would simply have thought that Americans hate India or don't know what's really going on there or who bears responsibility for the awful crimes that were committed...
...Because Abed agrees with me that boycotts should not target vulnerable and powerless individual academics, and because he clearly believes that what the region needs is more dialogue and understanding, rather than less, I am puzzled that he continues to support an academic boycott at all...
...foreign policy...
...Abed later confirms this reading, when he speaks of crafting any boycott so as to avoid "minor cases of injustice to individual academics...
...As my article went to press, however, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) in Britain has voted to boycott Israeli universities and academics, and I shall discuss this case, because it illustrates several points in my argument...
...Because targeting the real wrong-doers has not worked, should one really target powerless people whose involvement in the alleged wrongs is simply the involvement that any citizen of a nation shares...
...Even the virtually unanimous and highly vocal opposition of U.S...
...Isolating all the individual scholars and students might possibly work...
...I am very grateful to Mohammed Abed for the commitment to civil dialogue that he has shown throughout our exchange, which began last year at the American Philosophical Association...
...Abed's proposal has two parts: first, that American and European academics might refuse to take part in academic activities inside Israel...
...I shall then turn to his counterarguments...
...Sooner or later, it may yet work...
...Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., were correct: one should persist with the strategy that is morally appropriate, even if it does not appear to work for a time...
...I find the latter proposal a wonderful idea, DISSENT / Fall 2007 87 and I hope to join Abed in organizing such a conference, on issues of social and global justice...
...second, and most centrally, that they should work together on creating dialogue by sponsoring events in Palestinian universities that "put Israeli, European, and American academics face-to-face with each other and with the appalling conditions in which Palestinians —academics included—are forced to live...
...to lecture on that topic on the West Bank would be utterly bizarre...
...But my main worry is that important moral principles are being violated for merely instrumental reasons...
...But to refuse to give such a lecture on the grounds that it cannot usefully be relocated would be (I think) to impose the type of isolation on individuals (the colleagues who work on this topic, the family of the deceased professor) that Abed and I agree in finding inappropriate...
Vol. 54 • September 2007 • No. 4
