Whether academics have different responsibilities than citizens
Hausknecht, Murray
IN HER EXCELLENT, tightly reasoned "Against Academic Boycotts" (Dissent, Summer 2007), Martha Nussbaum notes that the "main force of the boycott" is directed against "individual members of the...
...Still, it is a useful distinction in attempting to see whether scholars qua scholars have responsibilities different from those of citizens...
...But nations and communities are also threatened by external forces...
...According to conventional democratic theory, a democracy requires the active participation of its citizens in the affairs of the society...
...This is best illustrated by a current case in point...
...But more than arrogance is at issue here...
...an answer that also provides a footnote to her critique of the proposed boycott from a somewhat different perspective...
...This distinction between the status of a person as scholar and as citizen is a purely analytical one...
...Scientists may join these protests on those grounds or on the grounds that inclusion of intelligent design is in reality an attack on science itself or for both reasons...
...In any given instance it is difficult to tell whether the scientist is speaking as a scholar or as a citizen...
...As responsible citizens of their respective communities, they must participate in public debates that bear on defending and maintaining both their society and an international community...
...Only authoritarian governments punish their "bad citizens" for not living up to authoritarian notions of good citizenship...
...Thus, the ideal-typical "good citizens" are those who keep themselves well informed about the current public issues and actively participate in the debates on those questions by, for example, joining civic groups, attending meetings, writing to politicians...
...MURRAY HAUSKNECHT is a sociologist who writes frequently for Dissent...
...But the consequences of a boycott would differ little from the damage to fellow academics and the community of scholars inflicted by the actions of the authoritarian government of Iran, whose conception of justice has no place for the principle of human rights...
...Democracies also have "bad citizens": individuals who are completely indifferent to the public debates, national and local, raging about them and many who do not even meet the minimal responsibility of citizenship, voting...
...From this perspective, then, the belief that Israeli scholars could have done more to condemn their government and, therefore, should be boycotted is an arrogant attempt by foreign scholars to condemn and punish Israeli scholars who, they believe, are bad Israeli citizens...
...What follows is an attempt to answer Nussbaum's implicit question about the responsibility of scholars...
...Sponsors of the academic boycott accuse the Israeli government of violating the rights of Palestinians— the Israelis are unjust...
...In her capacity as director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Dr...
...The strength of any given academic discipline—that is, its capacity to extend and deepen its knowledge— depends on maintaining relationships across national borders and the channels of communication those relationships embody...
...Although Nussbaum finds this rationale and the boycotting of individuals "both implausible and deeply repugnant to the values of academic life," she also notes "that we can only debate this questioning in a philosophically responsible way if we first offer a principled account of the responsibilities of scholars to engage in public debates...
...For example, in the current public debate about the teaching of evolution, many citizens will actively oppose the inclusion of "intelligent de10 DISSENT / Fall 2007 sign" into lessons about evolution as an inappropriate introduction of religion into a science curriculum...
...The nature of that community is exemplified by academics who publish papers in foreign journals, attend international conferences, and collaborate with colleagues in research projects...
...said a letter published in the New York Review of Books (June 28) that protested her arrest as a violation of "human rights" and a campaign "to intimidate and silence human rights activists and promoters of civil society . . ." The letter was DISSENT / Fall 2007 11 signed by more than fifty scholars—a partial listing—almost all citing university or other scholarly affiliations, American and foreign...
...But people in all societies occupy more than one status: a professor of English or a plumber, for example, may also be a parent, a member of a religious denomination, a coach of a little league baseball team and, most salient for the present discussion, a citizen...
...Democratic societies may even have more bad citizens than other kinds of societies...
...To be recognized as a "scholar" or "academic" means that a person occupies a specific occupational or professional status or position in the structure of a society...
...all this, and more, at least to the extent that the obligations entailed by their other statuses allow them the time and energy to be good citizens...
...In sum, they have the responsibility to defend the community from subversion from within—as with the proposed boycott of Israeli scholars—and attacks from without —as with the Iranian arrest of Esfandiari...
...In this respect, then, academics considered as members of an international community of scholars can be likened to citizens of a nation...
...In effect, democracies allow a citizen to choose to be a good citizen or a bad one...
...Or, put somewhat differently, the arrest of Esfandiari is an attack on the international community of scholars...
...As scholars, however, they are also members, citizens, in effect, of an international community to which they have an obligation to actively engage in public debates...
...This is also true of the humanities: the strength of any given philosophical argument or, say, any interpretation of Hamlet depends upon its critical reception by other philosophers or Shakespeare scholars...
...An answer—keeping in mind the analytical distinction between citizens of a nation and citizens of an international community of scholars—is no...
...A boycott, therefore, that would forbid access to scholars of one nation or forbid collaborative work with those scholars represents a form of subversion...
...In May of this year the Iranian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, was arrested by the Iranian government while she was on a visit to her mother...
...by definition, a democracy cannot force its citizens to meet the moral obligations of good citizenship and punish them if they don't...
...Scholars who are good citizens of a nation are obliged, like other good citizens, to participate in public affairs...
...In the sciences the results of research are accepted as valid only when published in peer-reviewed journals and opened to further inspection and testing by other members, foreign and domestic, of the community...
...Although the signatories to the letter chose to stress the violation of human rights, the fact that they also chose to highlight their academic affiliations means that the letter can also be read—and, I think, is meant to be read—as members of the scholarly community rising to the defense of a fellow scholar...
...Esfandiari has been a staunch advocate of peaceful dialogue between Teheran and Washington in resolving their disputes...
...it erodes the very foundations upon which the community is built...
...In terms of actual behavior the roles of scholar and citizen often overlap...
...Like the citizens of a nation who are expected to defend their nation against the threats of external enemies, the scholars here accept the responsibility of meeting the same kind of threat to their community...
...it is not only an attempt "to intimidate and silence human rights activists and promoters of civil society" but to intimidate and silence all individual scholars...
...SUBVERSION SUGGESTS a community endangered by internal forces...
...If the status of "citizen" means that persons are members of a nation, the status of "scholar" or "academic" means that those same persons are also members of a community that transcends national boundaries...
...Are, then, the responsibilities of scholars different from those of citizens of a democratic society...
...12 DISSENT / Fall 2007...
...This suggests rephrasing the question: are the responsibilities of academics to engage in public debate different from their responsibilities as citizens...
...IN HER EXCELLENT, tightly reasoned "Against Academic Boycotts" (Dissent, Summer 2007), Martha Nussbaum notes that the "main force of the boycott" is directed against "individual members of the [Israeli] institutions," who are accused of not condemning their "government as much as they might have," among other faults...
...Finally, the latter example casts an ironic light on the proposed boycott...
Vol. 54 • September 2007 • No. 4
