01.06.23
Editorial Note
The American Anthropological Association (AAA) will vote electronically between June 15, 2023, and July 14, 2023, on a petition to boycott Israeli academic institutions. On March 3, 2023, around two hundred members petitioned the AAA Executive Board requesting a full-membership vote on the resolution.
The full resolution by the AAA states:
“Whereas, Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the Israeli state’s regime of oppression against Palestinians… including by providing research and development of military and surveillance technologies used against Palestinians;
Whereas, Israeli academic institutions do not provide protections for academic freedom, campus speech in support of Palestinian human and political rights, nor for the freedom of association of Palestinian students on their campuses;
Whereas, Israeli academic institutions have failed to support the right to education and academic freedom at Palestinian universities, obstructing Palestinian academic exchanges with academic institutions in the US and elsewhere;
Whereas, in 2018, the Israeli government enshrined the principle of Jewish supremacy in a law stating unequivocally that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people” and that “Jewish settlement is a national value,” mandating that the state “will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development,” thus further codifying the second-class status of Palestinians within Israel and normalizing the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank;
Whereas, from the onset of the Nakba, the catastrophic events of 1948 that led to the mass expulsion and displacement of Palestinians from their homes, Palestinians—including activists, artists, intellectuals, human rights organizations, and others—have documented and circulated knowledge of the Israeli state’s apartheid system and ethnic cleansing;
Whereas, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories have confirmed that Israeli authorities are committing apartheid against the Palestinian people, and have documented the institutionalisation of systematic racial oppression and discrimination, which has been established to maintain the domination of one racial-national-ethnic group over another. These reports corroborate Palestinian knowledge of the Israeli state’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians;
Whereas, the United States funds, arms, defends, and otherwise plays a decisive role in enabling and sustaining the Israel state’s apartheid regime (and see also and also), including the Israeli state’s military occupation of the West Bank, its building and expansion of settlements throughout the West Bank, which international law defines as illegal, and its ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip;
Whereas, U.S. academic institutions facilitate the complicity and normalization of Israeli apartheid by engaging in academic exchanges with Israeli universities, and otherwise maintaining close, extensive and privileged ties with Israeli universities;
Whereas, the Middle East Studies Association, the leading learned society concerned with the region, has extensively debated an academic boycott resolution and passed it, with a super-majority of 80% of its voting members supporting the resolution, indicating a broad scholarly consensus of area experts on this matter;
And whereas, the AAA is a leading U.S.-based learned society;
And, Anthropological frameworks and methods, ethnographic and archaeological, are actively used by the Israeli state to further its system of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.”
Adding that members of the AAA have, for many years, organized forums for discussions and debates of the Palestinian civil society’s call for BDS against the Israeli state.
The petition intends to resolve the following:
“Be it resolved that the AAA as an Association endorses and will honor this call to boycott Israeli academic institutions until such time as these institutions end their complicity in violating Palestinian rights as stipulated in international law; and
Be it further resolved that the AAA leadership, in accord with the governance procedures of the Association’s bylaws, is charged with implementing this boycott and determining how to do so with reference to the Association’s own mission; and
Be it further resolved that this boycott pertains to Israeli academic institutions only and not to individual scholars, and also that individual anthropologists who are members of the AAA are free to determine whether and how they will apply the boycott in their own professional practice; and
Be it further resolved that in implementing this boycott.” It ends by stating that the AAA will “support the rights of all students and scholars everywhere to engage in research and public speaking about Palestine and Israel” and in support of BDS.
In 2015 a similar resolution was voted on and endorsed at the AAA business meeting. It was again voted for but narrowly defeated in 2016.
The petition claimed that “Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the Israeli state’s regime of oppression against Palestinians, including by providing research and development of military and surveillance technologies used against Palestinians. They gave the Tel Aviv University Institute for National Security Studies as an example.
The petition also claims that “Israeli academic institutions do not provide protections for academic freedom, campus speech in support of Palestinian human and political rights, nor for the freedom of association of Palestinian students on their campuses.”
Pro-Israel advocates issued an opposing statement.
Cary Nelson, a professor emeritus of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Has stated: “Our argument is that people shouldn’t use the opposition to government policies as a reason to attack Israeli universities, which by and large are opposed to those policies.”
The pro-Israel group argued that the call for an academic boycott which “pertains to Israeli academic institutions only and not to individual scholars’ is untenable and has proven inadequate in preventing discrimination against Israeli academics… Indeed, the boycott of Israel’s universities cannot be meaningfully separated from the faculty and students who work, teach and study in them… Israel’s academics have long been among the most vocal critics of the Israeli state and its society… An academic boycott would undercut the important work for peace and social justice being undertaken by many Israeli academics, as well as constructive and potentially transformative efforts to bring Israeli and Palestinian scholars together on joint projects.”
The many Jewish groups opposing a boycott include well-known NGOs such as the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) B’nai B’rith International, the Combat Antisemitism Movement, Hillel International, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs, StopAntisemitism and Zionist Organization of America, among others.
The renewed boycott activity of the AAA should be viewed in the context of significant political development in the United States in the last few years. The ADL’s Antisemitism Tracker has reported that antisemitic incidents have reached the highest level since the group started the monitoring project in 1979. The situation became so acute that in 2022, the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism was elevated to the rank of ambassador. Deborah Lipstadt, the renowned historian of the Holocaust, is currently holding the position. In another sign of action, the Biden administration has signaled that it is moving closer to adopting the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, albeit with some possible caveats.
As IAM has repeatedly clarified, pro-Palestinian advocates, including radical Israeli academics, vehemently reject the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism because it defines the double standards used to criticize Israel as an antisemitic act. So much so that a group of Israeli scholars acting under the auspices of Van Leer Institute adopted the alternative Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.
Should the Biden administration adopt the IHRA Working Definition, the AAA resolution could face some serious legal headwinds.
IAM will report on this issue in due course.
References
https://www.anthroboycott.org/the-resolution
The Resolution
On March 3, 2023, 206 members of the American Anthropological Association submitted a petition to the Executive Board requesting a full-membership vote on a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. A similar resolution was endorsed by a vote of 1040-136 at the AAA business meeting in Denver on November 20, 2015, and narrowly missed adoption in the subsequent full membership vote by a margin of only 39 votes. The membership will vote on the resolution from June 15-July 14.
The current resolution is below:
AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION (AAA) RESOLUTION TO BOYCOTT ISRAELI ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS
Whereas,
In 2005, 175 Palestinian civil society organizations, including the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE), issued a call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against the Israeli state, in support of the Palestinian struggle for human and political rights, including the basic right of freedom;
Whereas,
The Israeli state operates an apartheid regime from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including the internationally recognized state of Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, and
The 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 1998 Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court (ICC) define apartheid as a crime against humanity. (See also, and further links below).
Whereas,
Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the Israeli state’s regime of oppression against Palestinians (and see also and also), including by providing research and development of military and surveillance technologies used against Palestinians;
Whereas,
Israeli academic institutions do not provide protections for academic freedom, campus speech in support of Palestinian human and political rights, nor for the freedom of association of Palestinian students on their campuses;
Whereas,
Israeli academic institutions have failed to support the right to education and academic freedom at Palestinian universities, obstructing Palestinian academic exchanges with academic institutions in the US and elsewhere;
Whereas,
In 2018, the Israeli government enshrined the principle of Jewish supremacy in a law stating unequivocally that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people” and that “Jewish settlement is a national value,” mandating that the state “will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development,” thus further codifying the second-class status of Palestinians within Israel and normalizing the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank;
Whereas,
From the onset of the Nakba, the catastrophic events of 1948 that led to the mass expulsion and displacement of Palestinians from their homes, Palestinians—including activists, artists, intellectuals, human rights organizations, and others—have documented and circulated knowledge of the Israeli state’s apartheid system and ethnic cleansing;
Whereas,
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories have confirmed that Israeli authorities are committing apartheid against the Palestinian people, and have documented the institutionalisation of systematic racial oppression and discrimination, which has been established to maintain the domination of one racial-national-ethnic group over another. These reports corroborate Palestinian knowledge of the Israeli state’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians;
Whereas,
The United States funds, arms, defends, and otherwise plays a decisive role in enabling and sustaining the Israel state’s apartheid regime (and see also and also), including the Israeli state’s military occupation of the West Bank, its building and expansion of settlements throughout the West Bank, which international law defines as illegal, and its ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip;
Whereas,
U.S. academic institutions facilitate the complicity and normalization of Israeli apartheid by engaging in academic exchanges with Israeli universities, and otherwise maintaining close, extensive and privileged ties with Israeli universities;
Whereas,
The Middle East Studies Association, the leading learned society concerned with the region, has extensively debated an academic boycott resolution and passed it, with a super-majority of 80% of its voting members supporting the resolution, indicating a broad scholarly consensus of area experts on this matter;
And whereas,
The AAA is a leading U.S.-based learned society;
And,
Anthropological frameworks and methods, ethnographic and archaeological, are actively used by the Israeli state to further its system of apartheid and ethnic cleansing;
And,
The AAA’s Statement of Purpose affirms a commitment both to “take action on behalf of the entire profession” and to “promote the… constant improvement of professional standards in anthropology;”
And,
The AAA’s 1999 Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights states, “Anthropology as a profession is committed to the promotion and protection of the right of people and peoples everywhere to the full realization of their humanity” and “the AAA has an ethical responsibility to protest and oppose… deprivation;”
And,
The discipline of anthropology, as the study of humanity, bears a distinct and urgent responsibility to stand against all forms of racism and racist practices;
And,
Members of the AAA have organized various forums, over many years, for discussion and debate of Palestinian civil society’s call for BDS against the Israeli state, in full embrace of the AAA’s deep commitment to academic freedom and open debate;
Now therefore,
Be it resolved that the AAA as an Association endorses and will honor this call to boycott Israeli academic institutions until such time as these institutions end their complicity in violating Palestinian rights as stipulated in international law; and
Be it further resolved that the AAA leadership, in accord with the governance procedures of the Association’s bylaws, is charged with implementing this boycott and determining how to do so with reference to the Association’s own mission; and
Be it further resolved that this boycott pertains to Israeli academic institutions only and not to individual scholars, and also that individual anthropologists who are members of the AAA are free to determine whether and how they will apply the boycott in their own professional practice; and
Be it further resolved that in implementing this boycott, the AAA will support the rights of all students and scholars everywhere to engage in research and public speaking about Palestine and Israel and in support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
================================================================
The Threat to Academic Freedom: From Palestinian Exception to Global Norm
by Lori Allen, SOAS, University of London; and Ajantha Subramanian, Harvard University
Since the American Anthropological Association narrowly missed passing a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions in 2014, the conditions of academic life in Palestine have sharply deteriorated. Anthropologists considering support of the 2023 boycott resolution should understand it as an issue of academic freedom that operates at many levels in cross-cutting contexts.
First, within Palestine and Israel, the academic freedom of Palestinian scholars and students is intentionally stifled—both as a direct aim and as a consequence of the Israeli military occupation and the Israeli state’s discrimination against its Palestinian citizens. Palestinian civil society organizations continue to call for a boycott of Israeli institutions as an urgent protest against the systematic repression of Palestinians and as a show of solidarity with their liberation struggle.
Second, the academic freedom of scholars and students advocating for Palestinian rights is being violated, often on spurious grounds with false accusations of antisemitism. A campaign of harassment and surveillance against Palestinian scholars and scholars of Palestine has spread across North America and Europe. Speech about Palestine is a prime target of liberal actors and authoritarian forces alike.
Third, attacks against Palestinian scholarship and advocacy are being orchestrated in a political environment of widespread and increasing right-wing repression of dissent. Violations of academic freedom are on the rise everywhere—as a glance at the American Association of University Professors’ Journal of Academic Freedom attests for the United States and around the world.
That Palestine advocacy stands as a lightning rod at the center of far-right trends in Israel and globally makes passage of the AAA boycott resolution an urgent necessity.
The suppression of people categorized as intellectuals and left-wing elitists. The exclusions of people demonized as “other” to the nation or civilization. The targeting of Jews. That incidents of antisemitism, violations of academic freedom, misogynist legislation, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, and Islamophobia are on the rise across North America and Europe should come as no surprise. They are manifestations of the far-right turn that has swept much of the globe into its stifling embrace, squeezing the air out of democracy. These are cuffs that authoritarian “strong men” and their supporters have clamped onto their victims in their efforts to reorder the world according to traditional hierarchies. In the spaces where the defense of human rights, democratic freedoms, and civil liberties should be happening, authoritarian politics and supremacist ideologies have muscled in. To vote for the AAA boycott resolution is to push back against these terrifying trends.
Repression of Palestine Scholars and Scholarship
In March 2022, a new Israeli government policy—the “Procedure for Entry and Residency of Foreigners in Judea and Samaria Region”—was passed, granting the Israeli occupation authorities new powers that further infringe on academic freedom. Condemned by the Middle East Studies Association Committee on Academic Freedom “as an attack on the Palestinians’ right to education,” the policy “grants the Israeli military the authority to prevent international faculty, students, and researchers who wish to teach, study, and conduct research at Palestinian universities from entering Occupied Palestinian Territories.” In their call for colleagues to oppose this draconian policy, members of Insaniyyat, the Society of Palestinian Anthropologists, explain that “the regulations will exacerbate the already besieged status of Palestinian higher education, further legitimize its de facto international isolation, while divesting it of the ability to exercise basic decisions that are a fundamental condition for academic freedom.”
In addition to severely restricting interaction between Palestinian and foreign students and scholars, Israel is also actively undermining the legitimacy of Palestinian academic institutions. There is a proposal before the Israeli cabinet to discredit degrees awarded by Palestinian universities on the grounds that students at these institutions “are exposed to anti-Israel materials and messages.” If this proposal is approved, it will extend an earlier December 2018 decision to not recognize degrees from Al-Quds University on the grounds that it “supports terrorism against the state of Israel.” Palestinian students, faculty, university leaders, and campuses are also the direct target of Israeli violence and interference. The blockade of the Gaza Strip in place since 2007 severely restricts freedom of movement, including that of people seeking higher education outside.
Members of the AAA might expect Israeli universities to be vocal in their condemnation of violations of Palestinian rights, including to academic freedom. They are not. Not a single Israeli university has ever spoken out against or condemned the occupation. Nor has the Israeli Anthropological Association.
In fact, Israel’s academic institutions are directly and materially involved in the occupation. Virtually all Israeli universities are involved in defense-related research with the Ministry of Defense. Ben Gurion University, Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University and Haifa University all made explicit statements of support for the summer 2014 assault on Gaza, including providing financial benefits to soldiers. Universities have been part of the colonization of Palestinian territory: part of Hebrew University’s campus is built on confiscated Palestinian land; Ariel University is located in a West Bank settlement.
Israeli universities also discriminate against Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Some 20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinian, yet they make up only a tiny percentage of university faculty; these scholars face barriers to promotion, especially if they are known as critics of the government. Palestinian students in Israeli universities have less access than their Jewish counterparts to scholarships and campus housing, as a result of privileges offered to those who serve in the military. The freedom of political and cultural expression by Palestinian citizens of Israel is regularly curtailed. The 2018 Jewish Nation-State Basic Law comprised a raft of principles further demoting the status of Palestinian citizens of Israel, granting exclusively to Jews the right to self-determination, and downgrading the Arabic language from an official language to one with “special status.” In the words of the civil society organization, Adalah, it “transforms discrimination into a constitutional, systematic and institutional principle” of Israeli law.” Israeli Jewish faculty members openly critical of state policies are also marginalized and threatened.
In addition to Palestinians in the region, scholars and students who teach about and study Palestinian society and who support Palestinian rights are also targeted. So extensive is the repression of peaceful advocacy for Palestinian rights that two organizations—Palestine Legal (founded in 2012) and the European Legal Support Center (ELSC, founded in 2019)—have come into being to fight back against the criminalization of the Palestine solidarity movement in the United States and Europe.
New Gags on Freedom of Expression
In recent years, the controversial redefinition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) is being used increasingly to facilitate and justify anti-Palestinianism. Ostensibly devised “to address this rise in hate and discrimination” of Jews, the IHRA’s working definition conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel and Zionism. In doing so, it short-circuits legitimate political debate. As a university working group on racism and prejudice at University College London found, the IHRA definition “may in fact undermine institutional responsibility to enforce [existing university] policies and procedures” to combat antisemitism and other forms of prejudice on campus. With a venomous energy resembling a purge, Palestinian academics in Germany—where the association of public and government-recognized universities has publicly supported the IHRA—are being surveilled and hounded relentlessly. Forty countries have adopted this IHRA definition, despite the fact that it is widely recognized as a method of liberal virtue signalling—attempts to claim social conscience without taking the necessary actions for being moral. The IHRA definition is not a serious tool to combat antisemitism.
Unfortunately, rather than strengthening the fight against antisemitism, the IHRA definition has been weaponized to stifle speech and intimidate scholars and student activists. As evidence of its use in an intensified campaign of lawfare against Palestine scholars and scholarship, the work of Palestine Legal shows how often antisemitism accusations are levelled against faculty and students as a form of legal bullying to suppress speech critical of Israel. The Trump administration’s cynical deployment of the IHRA definition makes obvious the political intent behind its abuse—reasons far from addressing antisemitism meaningfully. Some universities in the US have recognized the flaws of this definition and rejected it as a model for preventing prejudice on their campuses, but this has not stopped frivolous claims and campaigns against Palestine solidarity organizations. A forthcoming briefing paper to be issued by the ELSC and the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies shows that the vast majority of cases accusing Palestine advocates of antisemitism in the UK are false allegations, the main purpose of which is to chill free speech.
A similarly repressive tool is the “Prevent Duty” (originally devised in 2003, revised in 2015 and updated in 2021) part of the UK government’s antiterrorism agenda. It requires public institutions, including institutions of higher education, “to have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.” Its terms are vague, and some UK universities have bent over backwards to police student and faculty research and teaching and vet events, narrowing the space for critical public debate. In schools and universities, “Prevent” has encouraged institutional surveillance of Palestine solidarity on campuses. It has given academic administrators motivation and justification to interfere with conferences and other events about Palestinian rights and Israel, sometimes leading to their cancellation.
Why Vote for the AAA boycott
Supporting the AAA boycott resolution is support for anti-racism and for the fight against Islamophobia and xenophobia. But opponents would cast it as something sinister. Since Palestinian advocacy involves criticism of Israel, a state that falsely claims to represent Jews everywhere, a cloud of suspicion can immediately be summoned, especially in this disturbing climate of rising antisemitism. It may be easier, for some, to decry Palestinian advocacy as antisemitic than to address the problems of Israel as a state that deserves scrutiny and criticism as any other state.
But if you stand against racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, then you should stand also against anti-Palestinianism as a manifestation of those social ills. It may be easier to ignore violations of Palestinian rights than to speak out for them and risk the label of antisemite. But it is those false accusations of antisemitism that stifle research and shield Israel from analysis and legitimate critique. Jewish Voice for Peace is one among a growing number of organizations that decries antisemitism and the suppression of Palestinians simultaneously. So, too, should the AAA.
Assaults on academic freedom—relentlessly lobbed from every direction—can be stultifying, leaving those who care about rights and democracy unsure how to respond. One modest action by which to stand up and shake the malaise is voting for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. In standing for Palestinian academic freedom, we anthropologists can do our part to refuse fascism and defend the rights of all.
============================================
To: Professor Ramona Pérez, President American Anthropological Association 2300 Clarendon Blvd, Suite 1301 Arlington, VA 22201 USA
Via email (perez@sdsu.edu)
April 3, 2023
A RESPONSE TO THE PROPOSED RESOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION (AAA) TO BOYCOTT ISRAELI ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS
Following a long, divisive struggle on the issue in 2016, on March 3, 2023, 206 members of the American Anthropological Association have again submitted a petition to the Executive Board to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
The Israeli Anthropological Association opposes the boycott of Israeli academic institutions as counterproductive, especially at a time when Israeli academic institutions are at the forefront of the struggle to maintain democracy and equal rights for all citizens against an oppressive right- wing Israeli government. Our opposition is based on the following reasons:
The resolution calls for a ban on Israeli universities specifically but does not distinguish between the actions of the Israeli state and the actions of Israeli universities in its justifications. Israeli academia is very often in an active fight against the actions of the Israeli state, as indeed it is at
the present time. A boycott can only undermine these efforts and weaken the ability of academia to speak truth to power.
Israeli academia has for years been seen by those in power as a major threat to the right-wing administration, as well as the ultra-nationalist parties which currently control the Israeli government. This is due to Israeli academia’s long record of resistance to human rights violations by the Israeli government and the state’s suppression of and discrimination against the Palestinian people and their rights. The right-wing “Israeli Academia Monitor” surveilles and targets wide swaths of Israeli professors for their “anti-Israeli” activities and rhetoric.
Recently, the coalition parties of the Israeli government launched an unprecedented attack on the Israeli judiciary and the democratic nature of the country by threatening to severely limit the independence of the Israeli judiciary which has often intervened to protect civil and human rights. Many anticipate that Palestinians, both citizens and non-citizens of Israel, would be amongst the first to suffer from the government’s legislation. Israeli universities have been at the vanguard of the harrowing struggle to prevent this co-optation of the judiciary. Professors, students, and university administrations marched and protested, and all the universities went on a collective strike to prevent the further degradation of Israeli democracy. The fight is active and ongoing.
The proposed boycott resolution decries Israeli universities’ role in developing weapons for the Israeli military and surveillance technologies used against Palestinians. Many Israeli universities, like hundreds of American universities, and other universities around the world, have Department of Defense contracts that develop weapons which are used in unjust wars. Many of those who organized the boycott resolution belong to universities that also have DoD contracts. Any call for boycott should start at home, and not attack Israeli targets already beleaguered in their defense of minorities.
Contrary to the claims of boycott resolution supporters, the public discourse at Israeli universities and in classrooms is open and free. Palestinian students and the large Jewish community that advocates for Palestinian rights and sovereignty hold organized activities and protests to articulate their positions on campus, educating a new generation on this vital issue and raising awareness among the broader population. Israeli universities also have major campaigns to enroll Palestinian students. They have much higher inclusion rates of Palestinian students than American Ivy League universities have of African American students.
While many of us are critical of the Israeli government, one cannot but note the hypocrisy of the call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. When American democracy was under threat by the Trump administration, did American universities collectively go on strike? Are American universities not deeply complicit in the activities of the American military with no end in sight? Do American universities do enough to protect the American minorities targeted by the state? While we are fully aware of our own inadequacies, we nevertheless reject the narrative of American moral superiority.
The Israeli academy has been and continues to be engaged in a desperate struggle against a repressive government that seeks to abrogate the rights of citizens who belong to the Palestinian minority or oppose their policies. Israeli anthropologists stand out for their criticism of the status quo and defense of minorities. An international boycott of the Israeli academy would only aid and abet the government’s attempts to target Israeli universities as the enemy. At this crucial point in the survival of Israeli democracy, we call upon our fellow anthropologists to reject the call for a boycott.
Sincerely,
The Executive Committee of the Israeli Anthropological Association
======================================================
Israeli anthropologists to pro-BDS, US colleagues: We’re already fighting the state
Nearly 100 groups are pushing the American Anthropological Association to reject a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
DAVID SWINDLE, MENACHEM WECKER
(May 11, 2023 / JNS)
Many people of all backgrounds oppose the BDS movement, which they consider concerted antisemitism against the Jewish state. So the news that nearly 90 groups, plus a contingent of Israeli anthropologists, signed a letter urging the American Anthropological Association to reject a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions seems to fall in line with that belief.
But there’s a twist: All of these groups cite, in part, the fact that Israeli professors are actively fighting the Jewish state as a reason to avoid the boycott.
This includes the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, B’nai B’rith International, the Combat Antisemitism Movement, Hillel International, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs, StopAntisemitism and Zionist Organization of America.
Morton Klein, national president of the ZOA, told JNS exclusively on May 10 that the ZOA, which just realized that the letter opposes judicial reform in Israel, is now retracting its signature.
“ZOA believes this is an absolute democratic necessity,” he told JNS. “These reforms will make Israel more democratic, not less democratic. More elected officials will be involved in choosing Supreme Court justices, not mainly unelected Supreme Court judges and unelected Israeli bar association members.”
And Israel needs a “reasonable override provision,” Klein said, because “the Supreme Court regularly overrides Knesset-passed Israeli laws.”
Convened by the Alliance for Academic Freedom and the Academic Engagement Network, the letter from the groups urges the American Anthropological Association to “unequivocally reject” the resolution.
“Everyone agrees that it’s absolutely fine to be critical of Israeli policy. The key point is that boycotts—academic boycotts—are simply antithetical to academic principles,” says Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network
Among the reasons the letter cites is that Israeli academic institutions are not “complicit” in the oppression of Palestinians, but “the reality is that Israeli university leaders and faculty work hard to foster Arab-Jewish coexistence and ensure a diversity of opinion on their campuses, including support for Palestinian voices.”
“Moreover, Israel’s academics have long been among the most vocal critics of the Israeli state and its society. An academic boycott would undercut the important work for peace and social justice being undertaken by many Israeli academics, as well as constructive and potentially transformative efforts to bring Israeli and Palestinian scholars together on joint projects,” it added.
Although Israeli academic institutions “commendably rarely take formal political stands nor do they routinely weigh in on government policy,” recently, upon perceiving “a threat to the democratic character of the state they did not hesitate to act, collectively deciding to shutter their schools in protest,” according to the letter. “Punishing Israeli universities now of all times is nonsensical when the schools have shown themselves to be fierce champions of democracy and democratic principles.”
‘Antithetical to academic principles’
Other signatories of the letter do not interpret it as supporting judicial reform.
“The letter accurately describes the perceptions of the heads of Israel’s research universities, and subsequent actions they have taken,” Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs, told JNS. “The letter does not take a political position on behalf of the groups that signed the letter.”
Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network—one of the letter’s organizers—told JNS that the letter’s reference to “most vocal critics” means disagreeing with specific decisions of the Israeli government but not broad critiques of the state or its legitimacy. For example, both supporters and critics of the judicial reform were welcome to sign, she said.
“Everyone agrees that it’s absolutely fine to be critical of Israeli policy,” she said. “The key point, of course, is that boycotts—academic boycotts—are simply antithetical to academic principles.”
Elman noted that left-wing, progressive Zionist groups, rather than conservative ones, were more hesitant to sign initially, due to the letter countering reference to Israel as an “apartheid regime” in the resolution.
“I would suspect that some of the groups on the far-left, who signed this, might be facing flak from others in their space,” Elman told JNS.
In June, members of the American Anthropological Association will vote on the resolution that calls on the organization to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
“The Israeli state operates an apartheid regime from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including the internationally recognized state of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” according to the resolution, which adds that “in 2018, the Israeli government enshrined the principle of Jewish supremacy in a law.”
The resolution calls for boycotting “Israeli academic institutions only and not to individual scholars, and also that individual anthropologists who are members of the AAA are free to determine whether and how they will apply the boycott in their own professional practice.”
‘Weaken ability of academia to speak truth to power’
In a March 20 letter, Ramona Pérez, association president, noted that the resolution received the 50 signatures of members in good standing required to move forward, and it will be put to a vote from June 15 to July 14. He noted that the association voted against boycotting Israel in 2016 with the membership “deeply divided on the issue.”
An April 3 letter from the Israeli Anthropological Association, which the American Anthropological Association posted on its website, opposed the resolution and called it “counterproductive, especially at a time when Israeli academic institutions are at the forefront of the struggle to maintain democracy and equal rights for all citizens against an oppressive right-wing Israeli government.”
“Israeli academia is very often in an active fight against the actions of the Israeli state, as indeed it is at the present time,” the Israeli group stated. “A boycott can only undermine these efforts and weaken the ability of academia to speak truth to power.”
The group added that American universities did not collectively go under strike during the Trump administration.
“Are American universities not deeply complicit in the activities of the American military with no end in sight? Do American universities do enough to protect the American minorities targeted by the state? While we are fully aware of our own inadequacies, we nevertheless reject the narrative of American moral superiority,” it stated. “While many of us are critical of the Israeli government, one cannot but note the hypocrisy of the call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.”
The association, which is based in Arlington, Va., was founded in 1902 and is “the world’s largest scholarly and professional organization of anthropologists,” per its website. It publishes 22 journals.
==========================================
May 10, 2023
A Revived Call to Boycott Israeli Universities
In 2016, American Anthropological Association members rejected, by a hair, a resolution “to boycott Israeli academic institutions.” The issue returns this summer.
By Ryan Quinn
merican Anthropological Association members will vote this summer on a resolution “to boycott Israeli academic institutions,” after a similar effort failed by just 39 votes in 2016.
A group called the Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions says on its website that 206 members of the American Anthropological Association requested a full membership vote on the new resolution.
“Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the Israeli state’s regime of oppression against Palestinians, including by providing research and development of military and surveillance technologies used against Palestinians,” the proposed resolution states. It links to a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement website’s criticism of, among other institutions, Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies.
The resolution also says, “Israeli academic institutions do not provide protections for academic freedom, campus speech in support of Palestinian human and political rights, nor for the freedom of association of Palestinian students on their campuses.”
In an email, the group said, “There hasn’t been a simple ‘reviving’ [of the resolution], but the mobilization has been ongoing and intensified by the 2022 and 2023 apartheid reports from mainstream organizations, also due to the ramping up of abuses of Palestinians’ academic freedom by Israel.”
“Should AAA members pass a resolution in support of academic boycott, this would require the AAA as an organization to suspend official ties with Israeli academic institutions—but not individual Israeli scholars and students,” the group says. “For example, this would involve the AAA not running ads or promotions for academic programs at Israeli institutions, such as Haifa University, which has been criticized for its collaborations with the Israeli military and involvement in human rights violations against Palestinians.”
Jeff Martin, spokesman for the American Anthropological Association, said that if at least 50 members petition the organization’s executive board, a resolution can go before the full membership. That’s the route this year’s effort took.
“We are encouraging our members to inform themselves about the likely impacts of their vote on Israeli government policies and practices, on the Palestinian people and on the association, and vote accordingly,” he said. The electronic vote will take place June 15 to July 14.
The 2016 resolution came about differently. At the association’s annual business meeting the prior year, Martin said, there was a 1,040-to-136 vote to put that resolution before the whole membership.
The roughly 4,800 members who then voted in 2016 represented 51 percent of the association’s eligible members, “the largest turnout in AAA history,” Martin said. They rejected the resolution, 2,384 to 2,423.
Cary Nelson, a professor emeritus of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has been working against the resolution, said adopting “a controversial, divisive political position” with a low voter turnout would be a “hollow” victory that “splits an association.”
The Alliance for Academic Freedom, which he chairs, and the fellow Israel-defending Academic Engagement Network released a joint statement Monday opposing the resolution. It also bears the endorsements of about 90 other groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, the National Association of Scholars, the North Carolina Coalition for Israel, Partners for Progressive Israel and StandWithUs.
“Back in 2016, the AAA’s full membership was also asked to endorse a similarly deeply divisive measure and voted against a boycott,” the statement says. “Seven years later, the principles at stake are unchanged and cutting off relationships with Israeli universities is more ill-advised than ever.”
“The resolution’s claim that an academic boycott ‘pertains to Israeli academic institutions only and not to individual scholars’ is untenable and has proven inadequate in preventing discrimination against Israeli academics,” the statement says. “Indeed, the boycott of Israel’s universities cannot be meaningfully separated from the faculty and students who work, teach and study in them.”
“Israel’s academics have long been among the most vocal critics of the Israeli state and its society,” the statement says. “An academic boycott would undercut the important work for peace and social justice being undertaken by many Israeli academics, as well as constructive and potentially transformative efforts to bring Israeli and Palestinian scholars together on joint projects.”
Nelson did say, “The situation has changed now,” primarily because of opposition to Israeli policies he himself opposes, like the recent proposed judiciary changes that set off protests across Israel.
“Our argument is that people shouldn’t use the opposition to government policies as a reason to attack Israeli universities, which by and large are opposed to those policies,” he argued.
He also said, “We worry that if the AAA votes in favor of an academic boycott, it may spread to other organizations” that have been “quiet” on this issue in recent years.
“This could open the floodgates again, and I personally would like to do my scholarship,” he said.
==========================================
About
Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic institutions works in support of justice and human rights in Israel/Palestine.
Our organizers and supporters are scholars working in all major sub-fields of the discipline, including tenure-track and adjunct faculty, graduate students, post-docs, and practitioners.
The campaign is managed by an organizing collective, whose members include:
Nadia Abu El-Haj, Barnard College and Columbia University
Lara Deeb, Scripps College
Ilana Feldman, George Washington University
Lisa Rofel, UC Santa Cruz
Ajantha Subramanian, Harvard University
For media and other queries, write to anthroboycott [at] gmail dot com.
The campaign acts in consultation with and under the guidance of an advisory group, whose members include:
Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University
Talal Asad, CUNY Graduate Center
Glenn Bowman, University of Kent
Brian Boyd, Columbia University
Karen Brodkin, UCLA
Steven Caton, Harvard University
Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University
Donald Donham, UC Davis
Abou Farman Farmaian, New School for Social Research
James Ferguson, Stanford University
Les Field, University of New Mexico
Roberto Gonzalez, San Jose State University
Sondra Hale, UCLA
Thomas Blom Hansen, Stanford University
Engseng Ho, Duke University
Rhoda Kanaaneh, Columbia University
Ahmed Kanna, University of the Pacific
J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Wesleyan University
Saba Mahmood, UC Berkeley
Joseph Masco, University of Chicago
Sunaina Maira, UC Davis
Nadine Naber, University of Illinois at Chicago
Julie Peteet, University of Louisville
Jemima Pierre, UCLA
David Price, Saint Martin’s University
Junaid Rana, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Daniel Segal, Pitzer College
Michael Taussig, Columbia University
Erica Williams, Spelman College
* Institutions listed for identification purposes only
========================================
“Yes, but…”
This website is intended to enable and encourage individual anthropologists to join the boycott of Israeli institutions, as called for by Palestinian civil society. We oppose the state of Israel’s widespread, systematic, and long-standing violations of the rights of the Palestinian people, especially the right to education. Those of us with ties to the United States in particular feel compelled to act due to Washington’s unconditional military, financial, and political support for Israel’s acts.
Some colleagues may share the boycott’s concerns but still have reservations about joining. Below we address some of these reservations.
“Yes I oppose Israel’s actions but I don’t want to boycott individual Israeli scholars.”
This objection is unfounded. The boycott targets academic institutions only. The boycott does not apply to individuals. Nor is it directed at Jews or Israelis.
The boycott of Israeli academic institutions entails a “pledge not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or to attend conferences and other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel.” Cooperation and exchange with individual scholars is encouraged, so long as it does not happen on the grounds of or through the auspices of an Israeli academic institution.
Under the boycott, individual Israeli scholars can still be invited to conferences outside Israel, publish in academic journals outside Israel, and the like. The guidelines are flexible: for example, because we do not call on Israelis to boycott their own institutions, an Israeli scholar with state funds can still be invited to a conference abroad. For more information, see the guidelines published by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel.
“Yes I oppose Israel’s actions, but cannot in principle boycott academic institutions.”
This objection is not an argument against this boycott; it is a blanket position against all academic boycotts that would also preclude, for example, the academic boycott against apartheid South Africa. We hold that academic boycotts can be legitimate tools for social change and wish to convince colleagues that this is such an instance.
We are boycotting Israeli academic institutions because they are an extension of a state whose policies we wish to affect and because we take as a starting point for change our own professional location as anthropologists.
Israeli universities are very much part of the state, including its military-security complex. Israeli universities are directly complicit in and at times willingly support violations of Palestinian rights and academic freedom. Some, like Ariel University and parts of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, are built directly on occupied Palestinian lands. Tel Aviv University, Ben Gurion University, and the Technion develop the technological capacities and military doctrines that are used in the occupied Palestinian territories. The Interdisciplinary Center in Herzilya has set up programs where students gain course credit for defending the state’s wars and policies to an increasingly skeptical public. Among the targets of these doctrines and technologies are Palestinian universities.
Israeli academic institutions actively discriminate against their own Palestinian students. Israeli universities provide preferential admissions, scholarship, and even housing on the basis of military service. Because the vast majority of Palestinians do not perform military service, they experience de facto discrimination at all educational levels.
Israel enjoys close ties at the governmental and non-governmental levels with the United States and many countries in Europe, including academic ties. As anthropologists, we are in a position to disrupt those relationships as a means of signaling to Israel that its actions are not legitimate and that we refuse to carry on “business as usual” under these circumstances.
“Yes I oppose Israel’s actions, but a boycott would undermine attempts to change Israeli society from within because many Israeli scholars are critics of the state’s actions.”
This objection assumes that any boycott is invalid if it inconveniences or otherwise adversely affects anyone who is not directly responsible for the harms being protested. We assume that boycotts can still be legitimate if they are reasonable under the circumstances and wish to persuade colleagues that this is the case here.
There are courageous scholars in Israel who oppose their state’s actions. We wish to support these allies and as mentioned above, the boycott does not preclude collaboration with them.
At the same time, critics of the boycott often point to the existence of any dissent within Israeli universities as a blanket argument against all boycott efforts. Yet decades of “engagement” with Israeli academic institutions (often in the name of nurturing dissent) have not succeeded in producing any appreciable positive change from within. Israeli academia is not only part of the state but acts to defend it against outside critique. So far, the Israeli Anthropological Association’s most notable action in this regard has been to attack the American Anthropological Association merely for permitting panels that discuss the boycott. As an important dissenting letter by Israeli colleagues points out, “the IAA [Israeli Anthropological Association] has never, as a body, dissociated itself from the Israeli society-military complex.”
“Yes I oppose Israel’s actions, but this boycott is unbalanced since both sides have done wrong.”
This objection ignores the root lack of “balance” in Israel/Palestine: the state of Israel exercises supreme authority from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean and subjects Palestinians to occupation, exile, or second-class citizenship, not the other way around. Moreover, the United States government provides Israel with advanced weapons, unconditional diplomatic support, and billions of dollars of annual assistance, far more than it does to any other state. Indeed, Israel’s attacks on Palestinian universities are conducted with aircraft and bombs supplied by the United States.
A “balanced” boycott makes no sense in an unbalanced situation. Israeli universities enjoy the legitimacy of close ties with their counterparts in the U.S. and Europe. Palestinian universities must contend with siege, arrest raids, and aerial bombardment by Israeli forces with U.S. military and political assistance. The academic boycott is a protest against this state of affairs.
“Yes I oppose Israel’s actions, but boycotts violate academic freedom.”
This objection is not an argument against this boycott; it is an argument against all academic boycotts.
This argument misconstrues how the boycott works. This boycott involves individuals exercising their right not to collaborate with Israeli academic institutions or participate in their activities. This does not violate anyone’s academic freedom.
Indeed, the boycott seeks to restore academic freedom, not to abridge it. Academic freedom is meaningless if it is enjoyed only by a privileged group. The occupation has made academic freedom and basic educational rights unavailable for students and faculty at Palestinian universities, and has curtailed the rights of Palestinians at Israeli universities. The Israeli government and academic institutions also routinely punish scholars – both Jews and Palestinians – who criticize the state’s policies.
“Yes, I oppose Israel’s actions, but why aren’t you boycotting the United States or other countries that do bad things?”
One of the biggest myths about boycotts is that they are only appropriate in uniquely egregious situations or that boycotts are not valid if they do not encompass every other comparable situation in the world.
This boycott is a specific tactical call expressed in solidarity with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel. Supporting this boycott does not automatically entail accepting or rejecting any other boycotts; we encourage everyone to assess each boycott on its own terms. The American Anthropological Association did not examine the record of every hotel or beverage provider in the world before signing on to the Hyatt or Coca-Cola boycotts. Cesar Chavez did not examine every agricultural product in supermarkets before asking us to boycott grapes. When we are called to adopt a particular boycott, we should mainly ask if it is warranted and likely to be effective.
“Yes I oppose Israel’s actions but it isn’t fair to demand that Israeli academic institutions act against their own government in order to avoid a boycott.”
This objection assumes that the main problem is how to help Israeli academic institutions, not how to end the systematic violation of Palestinian human rights.
The question that animates this boycott is not, “What can the universities do to avoid being boycotted?” but rather, “How can we, as engaged academics, support just outcomes in this situation, and put pressure on this regime?” It is true that boycotts, like strikes, are imperfect forms of collective action because they sometimes impose costs on people who are not directly responsible for the harms at issue – but their intent and effect is to call attention to the fundamental responsibility of those in power. And under the current political configuration, such a boycott would impose legitimacy costs on Israel that are worthwhile as well as on universities for their specific forms of complicity.
Positive actions by Israeli institutions would remove them from the boycott list. They could make explicit statements supporting Palestinian rights in their entirety. Rather than coming out in support of the Gaza war and other campaigns, as many Israeli universities did, they could make statements condemning such actions. They could stop cooperating with the Israeli military, stop granting privileges and scholarships to those who have served in the army, and stop employing army officials to teach military strategies.
[Update: Nearly a year after the launch of this boycott campaign, the Israeli Anthropological Association in June 2015 issued a resolution against the boycott that also called in general terms for an end to the occupation, equality for Palestinians in Israel, and for a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. The resolution did not call for any concrete steps to end Israeli universities’ discriminatory policies or complicity with the occupation. Moreover, its criticism of the government was only issued under pressure from the boycott campaign. For more, see our statement on the IAA resolution as well as the statement of some 30 dissenting Israeli anthropologists.]
It is important to note that the demands of the boycott are purposefully broad because all complicity with the military occupation and discrimination against Palestinians needs to end.
“Yes I oppose Israel’s actions but the boycott’s demands are not feasible. The boycott will be ineffective, since Israeli universities and academics can’t oppose their government.”
No program for political change can predict whether or when it might achieve its goals. This boycott is an attempt to pressure the state of Israel to change its behavior. Lack of accountability for Israel’s systematic discriminatory activity and policies is what has allowed the occupation to persist for forty-seven years. This boycott is a demand for accountability. Taking a public stance in favor of this boycott is also a means for opening up conversation about the United States’ unwavering support of Israel’s occupation.
Of course, no individual Israeli citizen can single-handedly change the behavior of their government. But since Israel claims to be a democracy, it is incumbent upon universities and their scholars to speak out against their government’s decisions and actions that negatively affect academic freedom and other rights of Palestinians living under its rule. Much of the Israeli academy actively supports, and materially and practically nurtures, the military occupation. This boycott is an attempt to put pressure on those institutions.
israel-academia-monitor.com 
One thought on “Petition to Boycott Israeli Academic Institutions by the American Anthropological Association”