In the wacky world of campus debate, it seems that calling for academic boycott against Israel is an acceptable expression of one’s free speech, even though the practice itself – applying political criteria on who can and can’t be part of the debate – is an inherent violation of free speech.
But to compile a list of professors who support academic boycott, as a watchdog called AMCHA did in the beginning of September, is “deplorable” because it’s “designed to stifle debate” and “deaden” academic exchange, according to 40 Jewish Studies professors in a public letter published this week.
AMCHA’s tactics are designed to stifle debate on issues debated in Israel and around the world, and the presumption that students must be protected from their own universities is misguided and destructive. Efforts such as these do not promote academic integrity, but rather serve to deaden the kind of spirited academic exchange that is the lifeblood of the university.
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AMCHA, which monitors anti-Israel activism on some 300 campuses across the US, issued a list of professors who had previously signed a call for academic boycott during the summer. The stated purpose of the list was to inform students about the views expressed by the professors so that they don’t find themselves in a class unprepared.
Students who wish to become better educated on the Middle East without subjecting themselves to anti-Israel bias, or possibly even antisemitic rhetoric, may want to check which faculty members from their university are signatories before registering. In the petition, the professors called on their colleagues in Middle East Studies “to boycott Israeli academic institutions,” and pledged, “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.”
Given the harsh language of the public letter from the Jewish Studies professors, it’s hard to see how the accusation of stifling debate accomplishes anything other than the very thing they accuse AMCHA of doing. If naming professors who have publicly taken a particular stand is “misguided and destructive,” how exactly is telling them to keep quiet going to promote the “spirited academic exchange that is the lifeblood of the university?” Jonathan Tobin at Commentary Magazine noted the academics have misplaced their priorities:
Rather than seeking to silence AMCHA, Jewish academics need to find the guts to speak up against the growth of anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic activity on campuses. If they don’t, sooner or later Jews will find that it won’t just be Middle Eastern studies where they are unwelcome.
Or, as the rapper Ice-T wisely said two decades earlier, “Freedom of speech, just watch what you say.”
Image: CC BY-NC-SA Jared Rodriguez/Truthout (via flickr)
