Will Congress Stand Up for Academic Freedom?

[Valin]

Politico Magazine:

MICHAEL B. OREN

12/20/13

 

This week, the American Studies Association, a group with nearly 4,000 U.S. members, voted to boycott Israeli academic institutions. The resolution is in solidarity with scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom and it aspires to enlarge that freedom for all, including Palestinians," the ASA explained in a statement.

 

The move has been broadly and passionately condemned, and rightly so. By banning interaction with fellow scholars, the ASA is undermining the very academic freedom it purportedly represents. Moreover, by singling out Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East and a country renowned for its liberal universities, by ignoring the Palestinian Authority's opposition to such a boycott, and overlooking vast human rights abuses in many other countries, the ASA is guilty of prejudice. ASA President Curtis Marez, who defended the selection of the Jewish state for his organization's first-ever boycott by saying one has to start somewhere," has been especially denounced as anti-Semitic in effect if not intention.

 

Such outrage sounds notes of moral clarity, even sanity, in a biased and dysfunctional academic environment. It is inconceivable that the ASA would sanction scholars in any black African or South American state the way it has Israelis. Under a similar ban, Amos Ozinternationally acclaimed author, peace activist and literature professor at Ben-Gurion Universitycould not attend a seminar on conflict resolution in the United States. Out of the more than 193 countries in the world, the ASA has selected one, Israel, for special treatment.

 

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Legal Insurrection Tag: American Studies Association

[Valin]

Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is ASA

Alan Luxenberg

December 20, 2013

 

The vote by the 5,000-member American Studies Association to support the academic boycott of Israel, reportedly by a 2-1 margin, has evoked many responses, but none so far has identified the irony at the core of the matter. To show that irony, and the deeper problem it illustrates, you need to know that a couple of weeks before the ASA vote, the ASAs 20-member National Council, which administers the ASA and is elected by the ASA membership, pre-voted in favor of the Israel boycottand did so unanimously.

 

Can you imagine twenty serious scholars in any discipline voting unanimously on any controversial issue? I cant, so I thought it worthwhile to examine the composition of the ASAs National Council and to peruse its members academic profiles, as described on the webpages of their home institutions. This simple exercise reveals a stunning lack of diversity of intellectual interests and perspectives in a sector of American society, the university, that explicitly places a very high premium on diversity. The apparent obsession with gender, gay and race studies (or of U.S. imperialism) among the members of ASAs National Council seems to come at the expense of scholarship on just about everything else.

 

You dont have to take my word for it. See for yourself or, if you like, scan through the abridged academic profiles below of 18 of the 20 members of ASAs National Council. All the information is drawn from the faculty profiles as presented on university webpages; none of the language is mine.

 

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Indiana, Wash U. St. Louis, GWU, Northwestern, Cornell reject academic boycott of Israel

William A. Jacobson

Sunday, December 22, 2013

 

The list of Universities condemning the academic boycott of Israel passed by the American Studies Association and two smaller academic groups is growing.

 

New announcements are being made daily, although I expect a lull in new announcements as most universities are closed until after New Years Day.

 

Announcements were just made by more universities, either through emails forwarded to me or website announcements:

 

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I'm thinking The American Studies Association went (To quote Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick 'Boy' Browning) A Bridge Too Far.

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Caucus on Academic and Community Activism

 

 

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Intimidation and frivolous legal arguments against boycott are part of a long-standing history of repression of Palestinian human rights activism in the United States. The ASA resolution for boycott is legal. Tactics of intimidation may be illegal. We will try to address any academics and administrators who participate in undemocratic, unethical, and illegal behavior, and if necessary we will take legal action with the support of our legal team.

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H/T Legal Insurrection

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Tireless Enemies of Israel: America’s Academic Boycotters

EDWARD ALEXANDER

Dec 23, 2013

 

If there are still many Americans who believe that college and university professors are harmless drudges obsessed with moldy futilities, people who know so much about so little that they can neither be contradicted nor are worth contradicting, they should be disabused of their illusions by the recent decisions of three (ostensibly) academic organizations to boycott the academic institutions of the state of Israel. First, the Asian American Studies Association in April, and more recently the American Studies Association, and the Council of Native Americans and Indigenous Studies Association. All have decided that they can no longer share the globe with a Jewish-majority state, any more than the academics included in Max Weinreich’s classic study of Hitler’s Professors (YIVO, 1946) could continue to share Europe with its Jewish minority.

 

It was these German professors who made anti-Semitism academically respectable and complicit in raw murder. They called into question—and quite successfully, of course—the Jews’ “right to live”; our homegrown anti-Semites—and let us not flinch from calling them what they are—now dispute Israel’s “right to exist,” making themselves accessories before the fact to the planned erasure of Israel by Iran and its Arab satellites. When the new, academic version of the 1933 Nazi boycotts began, ten years ago in England, it appealed to Europeans who were convinced that the Holocaust had given anti-Semitism a bad name, and that it deserved another chance. Now it has found a foothold in America’s universities.

 

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Leftist Thought Led To Fascism – And Is Doing So Again

Nov 29, 2009

 

Liberals think that the title of Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism is an oxymoron. They’re wrong. Goldberg himself writes:

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[Valin]

John Batchelor and Malcolm Hoenlein Joined by William A. Jacobson

Clinical Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and founder of legalinsurrection.com to discuss the implication of the ASA Israel boycott.

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Academic boycotters dont want done unto them what they did unto Israelis

Anti-Israeli academic boycotters can dish it out, but cant take it

William A. Jacobson

Thursday, December 26, 2013

 

Setting off an academic boycott is something like going nuclear. Once you set it off, its hard to know where the damage to academia stops. For every action there is a reaction.

 

That is why so many University Presidents so quickly have rejected the American Studies Association anti-Israel academic boycott. If left in place, academic BDS can and will set off a daisy chain of retaliation and demands for counter-BDS.

 

Now there is a reaction and the boycotters are whining that the fierce pushback violates their academic freedom, and they are begging their friends for help.

 

This same group also has threatened to sue fellow professors and administrators who criticize them (in their words intimidate), and erroneously characterized vigorous disagreement as harassment.

 

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Anti-Israel Amsterdam boycott group uses Anne Frank for Avatar

William A. Jacobson

Friday, December 27, 2013

 

I guess nothing surprises me anymore about the anti-Israel Boycott Divest and Sanctions movement.

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Politicians get ready to take on anti-Israel academic boycott

William A. Jacobson

Saturday, December 28, 2013

 

I predicted a couple of weeks ago that it was only a matter of time before American political society also gets involved in fighting the anti-Israel academic boycott passed by the American Studies Association and two smaller groups.

 

The involvement of politicians was to be expected because the boycott is a uniquely political act, discriminatory in its intent and implementation, and directed towards causing political damage to Israel. Or worse:

 

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Having turned themselves into political weapons and abandoned core principles of academic freedom for others, the boycotters should not have expected to keep politics out of the solution.

 

Having become willing tools, or at best useful idiots, in the war on Israel, these academic boycotters could not reasonably have expected American political society to step aside.

 

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