In the never-ending battle of American academics attempting to prove that their own specialty is more devoted to the ‘Palestinian’ cause and more interested in teaching their students and the rest of the world how evil Israel is, the American Anthropological Association has entered the petition activism olympics.
The anthropology academics are so brave they not only tell everyone how bad Israel is (even when they get some of the facts wrong), by signing the petition they assert their right to “boycott” the Israeli institutions they believe are “complicit” in “Israel’s ongoing violations” of ‘Palestinian’ rights.
The anthropologists, you see, are taking this opportunity to distance themselves from their discipline’s historical complicity with the evils of colonialism. And so, who better to work out their own guilt issues than the Jewish State, of course.
What they are trying to do, like Lady Macbeth, is remove the bloodstains from their hands, through their own inverted apology, spun as a reprimand of Israel.
These are not anthropologists, they are anthro-apologists.
Here is what they wrote:
The recent military assault on the Gaza Strip by Israel is only the latest reminder that the world’s governments and mainstream media do not hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law. As a community of scholars who study problems of power, oppression, and cultural hegemony, we have a moral responsibility to speak out and demand accountability from Israel and our own governments. Acting in solidarity with Palestinian civil society continues a disciplinary tradition of support for anticolonial and human rights struggles, itself an important departure from anthropology’s historical complicity with colonialism. [emphasis added]
And so these academics have dramatically decided that withholding their collaboration with Israeli academic institutions is what will bring a breakthrough in the Arab-Israeli conflict, by forcing Israel to yield to their wishes.
Because, heck, without these academics, Israeli institutions may not be able to continue functioning, and, as soon as those institutions realize they will be deprived of the honor of working with these anthropologists, why they will rush into Jerusalem, storm the knesset, and force the Israeli government to mend the error of their ways. Because otherwise, these brave academics will abandon them.
If only.
Here is the pledge these anthro-apologists oh-so-solemnly swear to uphold:
We 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. We call for doing so until such time as these institutions end their complicity in violating Palestinian rights as stipulated in international law, and respect the full rights of Palestinians by calling on Israel to:
End its siege of Gaza, its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967, and dismantle the settlements and the walls;
Recognize the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel and the stateless Negev Bedouins to full equality; and
Respect, protect, and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.
As the scholars from the AMCHA Initiative point out, on at least eight campuses, the chair of the anthropology department signed the petition, including Harvard University, Miami University, Scripps College and Wesleyan University.
AMCHA further points out that on some of the campuses, between one-quarter and one-half of the anthropology department’s core faculty signed the anti-Israel petition. These include the New School for Social Research (50%), Georgetown University (46%), Wesleyan University (45%), Columbia University (41%), the University of Chicago (33%), Johns Hopkins University (30%), Harvard University (29%), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (25%).
Even the United Nations, one of the world’s most notoriously biased institutions against Israel, has decreed that Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip is legal. But the amazing anthro-apologists state as one of their boycott justifications that the Jewish State has “maintained an illegal siege on the Gaza Strip for seven years.”
If we can’t expect intellectual honesty from these academics, how about just the bare minimum of fact-checking?
The American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting is scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 3 – 7, 2014. The executive director of the AAA, Prof. Ed Liebow, said that no boycott motion has been submitted, and that the AAA has never engaged in academic boycotting.
Liebow’s reassuring claim, however, is undermined by the assertions of David Rosen, a professor of anthropology at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Rosen noted in a comment on the excellent site Legal Insurrection: four roundtables are scheduled for the AAA meeting, three of which are filled with hard-core BDS activists and supporters. The key panel will include such Israel boycott “professionals” (and non-anthropologists) as Omar Barghouti, Rebecca Vilkomerson, head of the most vituperatively anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace, Richard Falk of UN anti-Israel fame, and Noura Erekat, BDS activist.
