Corey Robin's Blog, page 90

More News on Charges Involving Brooklyn College Worker Education Center

The New York Times today has a lengthy article on the corruption charges associated with the Brooklyn College Graduate Center for Worker Education, about which I blogged twice last summer.

While my posts focused on the academic side of things and only briefly mentioned the charges of financial corruption, the Times piece focuses exclusively on the latter, in great detail.

These charges include: more than $200,000 that are alleged to have been taken over a two-year period by the former director of the Center; personal enrichment through misuse of grant monies that were intended for students of color; misuse of university funds to purchase items for apparent personal use, including a television purchased “on or about Christmas Eve” and school books purchased at the boarding school of the former director’s daughter; falsification of invoices and time sheets; and improprieties involving international travel to Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.

The article also introduces a new actor to the story, a former professor of political science who resigned abruptly from Brooklyn College in the summer of 2012.

You can read the entire story here.

The Lights of Jaffa

The Palestinian writer and human rights lawyer Raja Shehadeh has an okay piece in The New Yorker on the death of Ariel Sharon. Shehadeh can be a wonderful writer, but this reflection of his seems flat and perfunctory. Seeing his byline, however, reminded me of one of the most affecting passages in his memoir Strangers in the House about his relationship with his father and growing up in the West Bank.

Shehadeh’s family had been expelled in 1948 from Jaffa, a port city with a thriving Arab population just south of Tel Aviv. Throughout his youth, Shehadeh and his father would walk in the evenings to a hilltop near Ramallah and look out on the twinkling lights of Jaffa, far off to the west. They would notice with satisfaction how the town was growing, gradually eclipsing Tel Aviv, its much smaller Jewish neighbor to the north. It was one of his father’s great solaces and pains, to see those lights of Jaffa and think of returning home.

But at some point in Shehadeh’s life, he or perhaps he and his father—my copy of the memoir is buried in Greg Grandin’s basement, so I’m going on memory here—had a terrible realization: the lights they saw were really Tel Aviv. It was the Jewish city that had grown to such massive proportions, surpassing and ultimately incorporating the Arab city to the south.

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem

In response to my challenge to critics of BDS—if not BDS, what would you have the Palestinians do?—defenders of Israel, many of them Jewish, have said to me that the first thing the Palestinians need to do is get over 1948. That was the year that the Israelis drove out some 700,000 Palestinians from the land, creating a nation of permanent refugees who would never be allowed to return to their homes. Aside from not really providing a credible alternative to BDS, it’s a brutal, almost grotesque, argument for a Jew to make. We have an entire liturgy devoted not only to the sorrow of being expelled from that very land, but to the obligation not to forget it. You would think a people who never got over what happened to them two millennia ago—and whose arguments for the land are often based on claims from two millennia ago—would be a little less cavalier about the memory of a people who haven’t gotten over what happened to them less than seven decades ago.

The Implication of “Why Single Out Israel?” Is Do Nothing At All

Fresh on the heels of the ASA boycott, the Delegate Assembly of the Modern Languages Association just adopted the mildest of resolutions criticizing Israel, this time for putting “restrictions on scholars’ ability to travel to Israel and the West Bank to work at Palestinian universities.”

During the debate on the resolution, opponents repeatedly raised the same issue that has been raised against the academic boycott: Why single out Israel?

Which proves the point I made in my critique of Michael Kazin: the “why single out Israel” line can and will be—and now has been—used to criticize any statement, no matter how anodyne, against Israel. As I wrote there:

It occurs to me that there is one other problem with the selectivity argument….It does too much work. It is an argument that applies not only to an academic boycott of Israel but also to any statement or action against the State of Israel.

Think about this way. If a bunch of students on campus decide to organize a rally to protest Israel’s bombing of Gaza—and don’t organize (or haven’t organized) rallies to protest every other instance of bombing—they are being selective. And thus—in the eyes of many of Israel’s defenders or critics of the BDS movement—anti-Semitic. Therefore, their rally is illegitimate and shouldn’t be supported. If Peter Beinart criticizes the bombing of Gaza, the same argument applies. If Congress passes a resolution—work with me—condemning the bombing, the same argument applies. If the UN passes a resolution, the same.

In the end, the real function of the selectivity argument…is to make impossible any criticism of or action against the State of Israel.

The “why single out Israel” line is not an argument against BDS. It’s an argument against saying anything critical of Israel. Or doing anything about it.

A Challenge to Critics of BDS

For the last month I’ve been responding to critiques and challenges of BDS. Now I have a question for its opponents and critics. What do you propose as an alternative strategy? The Palestinians have tried four decades of armed revolt, three decades of peace negotiations, two intifadas, and seven decades of waiting. They have taken up BDS as a non-violent tactic, precisely the sort of thing that liberal-minded critics have been calling upon them to do for years (where is the Palestinian Gandhi and all that). So now you say BDS is bad too. Fine. What would you have the Palestinians—and their international supporters—do instead?

Alan Dershowitz Wants You!

Alan Dershowitz tells the Jerusalem Post that he’s thinking of becoming an Israeli citizen. He wants to send a message to supporters of BDS that “if you’re boycotting Israel, you’re boycotting me.”

Is this supposed to be a deterrent? Or an incentive?

I asked Freddie deBoer to turn it into a recruiting poster; he kindly obliged.

The New McCarthyites: BDS, Its Critics, and Academic Freedom

As the attacks on the BDS movement and the ASA boycott escalate, the arguments grow wilder.

It’s no longer enough, it seems, to make unfounded claims that the academic boycott violates academic freedom. The new line of march is that mere advocacy of the boycott is itself a violation of academic freedom.

What’s more, it’s not crazies who are peddling this claim; as Haaretz reports, it’s coming from the heart of the academic establishment.

“The mere calling for a boycott will impede the free flow of ideas,” Russell Berman, a comparative literature professor at Stanford University and a past Modern Language Association president, said on the conference call. “The calling of a boycott will have a chilling effect on academic life.”

If it’s true that merely calling for a boycott shuts down the free exchange of ideas, it seems logical that such calls should be prohibited. Not only prohibited, but punished.

One prominent critic of the BDS movement, Edward Beck, makes just that argument in a recent piece in The Jerusalem Post.

Beck begins from the premise that the successful vote for the ASA boycott demonstrates that defenders of Israel can no longer wait for its opponents to act; Israel’s defenders must go on the offensive, preventing the virus from spreading further.

To be reactive may well be to be too late; being vigilant and proactive is the only way to ward off these attacks on academic freedom.

What does that mean in practice?

It means that every academic who opposes academic boycotts for any reason, whether it be purely academic terms or political or other reasons, must work within his or her own institution, discipline and professional society to develop the codified organizational and institutional policies that state in language that is clear and bold that the group will not entertain any proposals for academic boycotts based on national origin or institutional affiliation because such resolutions are discriminatory, may violate legal and tax statutes and are based on the notion of collective punishment, and such, are disruptive to the flow of academic discourse and research and anathema to the basic concept of academic freedom.

The policy also has to state sanctions for individual members engaging in such behavior, as this would be a violation of institutional or organization policy and regarded as academically unethical.

Read that language carefully. No academic institution is to entertain or consider a proposal for a boycott. Presumably this is to be codified in a set of bylaws or a faculty code of conduct, though Beck does not say. What he does say is that it is not the boycott itself that violates academic freedom; it is the “resolution” for a boycott. The vote for a boycott, in other words, interferes with the basic campus activities of research and discussion.

That policy must be enforced with sanctions—Beck doesn’t specify the sanctions but presumably these could include anything from a reprimand in one’s file to being fired—on any individual faculty member “engaging in such behavior.”

But what exactly is “such behavior” that would warrant the sanction? At first, I thought Beck meant an individual faculty member engaging in a boycott. So my personal refusal to attend a conference in Israel, because it is in Israel, would qualify.

But the antecedent for “engaging in such behavior” is not the boycott itself but “such resolutions.” Beck, remember, wants the defenders of Israel to move beyond reacting to boycotts that are happening; in fact, he wants to move beyond successful votes for boycotts.  He wants to head those votes off at the pass, to prevent them from becoming votes at all.

The only way to make sense of what Beck is saying is that he thinks individuals who advocate for boycotts ought to be sanctioned by their universities and professional associations.

Thus, if I push my college or professional association to adopt a BDS resolution, or publicly proclaim my intention to vote for one (with the clear purpose of persuading others to do the same), I am “engaging in such behavior.” If I merely call for a boycott, to use Professor Berman’s language, I am “engaging in such behavior.”

Berman says he’s not willing to go as far as sanctions: “But I don’t think I would want to elevate the principle that political statements should be grounds for academic sanctions.” It’s not clear why he thinks this: given what Berman said about mere advocacy impinging on academic freedom, it would seem entirely appropriate to punish such advocacy. After all, if I walk into the classroom of my colleague next door, shouting and screaming nonsense, being needlessly disruptive and preventing her from teaching her students, I would be subject to disciplinary action. For the very reason that my activity prevents the free flow of ideas and communication that is the essence of campus life. So if the mere call for a boycott does essentially the same thing, why shouldn’t it be punished?

Who knows? But the mere fact that we’re even having this discussion at all should tell us how far down the road of repression the opponents of the ASA boycott are willing to go—all in the name of academic freedom.

These bizarreries of freedom being squelched in the name of freedom remind me of nothing so much as arguments that were common during the McCarthy era.

Deploying similar chains of extended causality, anticommunists—including a great many liberals—argued that the problem with the Communist Party in the United States was not that it had attempted a violent overthrow of the US government; clearly it had not. It was not that it had organized an attempt to violently overthrow the government; clearly it had not. It was not that it had organized a movement that would attempt to violently overthrow the government; it hadn’t even done that.

No, the real crime of the Communist Party, as the Supreme Court put it so beautifully in Dennis v. United States, was that it had organized a movement that advocated, and sought to teach its members, the notion that when the time was right, at some completely undefined point in the future, it would be entirely justified and appropriate, indeed necessary and obligatory, to attempt a violent overthrow of the government.

In making this argument, the Supreme Court drew from a particular definition of political speech crimes, which were found in the Smith Act,  the 1940 statute upon which the leadership of the Communist Party was tried and convicted in 1949. The relevant sections of the statute do not criminalize the violent overthrow of the government or even advocacy of the violent overthrow of the government. Instead, they criminalize the following:

Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence….

Notice just how many steps removed from actual violence these speech crimes are, how many discrete actions must be engaged in before we even get anywhere near something like a violent overthrow of the government: “attempt”….”to organize”….”a group”….”that advocates”…”the violent overthrow of the government”…at some undefined moment in the future. Talk about six degrees of separation!

Here’s how the Supreme Court interpreted that language in the Dennis case, which upheld the conviction of eleven leaders of the Communist Party.

Obviously, the words cannot mean that, before the Government may act, it must wait until the putsch is about to be executed, the plans have been laid and the signal is awaited. If Government is aware that a group aiming at its overthrow is attempting to indoctrinate its members and to commit them to a course whereby they will strike when the leaders feel the circumstances permit, action by the Government is required….In the instant case, the trial judge charged the jury that they could not convict unless they found that petitioners intended to overthrow the Government “as speedily as circumstances would permit.” This does not mean, and could not properly mean, that they would not strike until there was certainty of success. What was meant was that the revolutionists would strike when they thought the time was ripe.

….

The mere fact that, from the period 1945 to 1948, petitioners’ activities did not result in an attempt to overthrow the Government by force and violence is, of course, no answer to the fact that there was a group that was ready to make the attempt. The formation by petitioners of such a highly organized conspiracy, with rigidly disciplined members subject to call when the leaders, these petitioners, felt that the time had come for action, coupled with the inflammable nature of world conditions, similar uprisings in other countries, and the touch-and-go nature of our relations with countries with whom petitioners were in the very least ideologically attuned, convince us that their convictions were justified on this score. And this analysis disposes of the contention that a conspiracy to advocate, as distinguished from the advocacy itself, cannot be constitutionally restrained, because it comprises only the preparation. It is the existence of the conspiracy which creates the danger.

It’s that kind of repressive language and logic of containment, of nipping the threat in the bud, of suppressing speech before it becomes action, of holding that the speech itself is a crime, that we see in opponents of BDS and the academic boycott.

Like their predecessors—I’m thinking now of Sidney Hook, who argued that members of the Communist Party should not be allowed to teach in schools, also on the grounds of academic freedom—our latter-day McCarthyites throw around the word of freedom as they slowly and steadily destroy it.

From Here to Eternity: The Occupation in Historical Perspective

Benjamin Netanyahu (2014):

There’s a problem that the Palestinians are there, and I have no intention of removing them. It’s impractical and inappropriate. I don’t want a binational state, and I don’t want them as either citizens or subjects. On the other hand, I don’t want another Iranian state or Al-Qaida state. Currently, we have no solution.

Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1923):

The expulsion of the Arabs from Palestine is absolutely impossible in any form. There will always be two nations in Palestine – which is good enough for me, provided the Jews become the majority….

…

Thus we conclude that we cannot promise anything to the Arabs of the Land of Israel or the Arab countries. Their voluntary agreement is out of the question. Hence those who hold that an agreement with the natives is an essential condition for Zionism can now say “no” and depart from Zionism. Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy.

…

All this does not mean that any kind of agreement is impossible, only a voluntary agreement is impossible. As long as there is a spark of hope that they can get rid of us, they will not sell these hopes, not for any kind of sweet words or tasty morsels, because they are not a rabble but a nation, perhaps somewhat tattered, but still living. A living people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions only when there is no hope left. Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups. Only then would these moderate groups come to us with proposals for mutual concessions. And only then will moderates offer suggestions for compromise on practical questions like a guarantee against expulsion, or equality and national autonomy.

I am optimistic that they will indeed be granted satisfactory assurances and that both peoples, like good neighbors, can then live in peace. But the only path to such an agreement is the iron wall, that is to say the strengthening in Palestine of a government without any kind of Arab influence, that is to say one against which the Arabs will fight. In other words, for us the only path to an agreement in the future is an absolute refusal of any attempts at an agreement now.

A Very Elite Backlash

The speed and scale of the backlash against the ASA boycott have been formidable.

But the backlash has a curious feature: it is a very elite backlash, as this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education makes clear. It is spearheaded almost entirely by university presidents (not exactly my go-to sources of moral instruction on academic freedom), government officials, and institutional actors like the American Council on Education and the Association of American Universities.

If you want to understand the sources of that elite backlash, particularly among university presidents, Bard College President Leon Botstein—by no means a progressive on this issue—breaks it down in that Chronicle piece.

Leon Botstein, president of Bard College and a boycott opponent, said calls from alumni to take a stand against the boycott had also played a role. “As an active member of the Jewish community, I recognize that the American Jewish community is disproportionately generous to American higher education,” he said. “For the president of an institution to express his or her solidarity with Israel is welcomed by a very important part of their support base.”

Or as George W. Bush put it: “Some people call you the elite, I call you my base.”

Critics of the boycott ought to be a little concerned about the elite provenance of this campaign against the ASA. As Peter Beinart—no friend of the boycott—makes clear in this article in Haaretz, the cause of Israel has increasingly become an institutional cause of politicians and big organizations, while the case against Israel has shifted to the grassroots. In the long run, that does not bode well.

{US Secretary of State John] Kerry himself has said that if “we do not succeed now, we may not get another chance.” He’s right. If he fails, the United States won’t take another shot until it inaugurates a new president in 2017, and maybe not then. In the meantime, the Israeli-Palestinian struggle will move outside Washington as Palestinians take their case to international organizations, college campuses, religious and labor groups and European consumers. And for the organized American Jewish community, that’s a disaster because universities, international organizations and liberal religious groups are exactly the places the American Jewish establishment is weak.

It’s sadly ironic. The organized American Jewish community has spent decades building influence in Washington. But it’s succeeded too well. By making it too politically painful for Obama to push Netanyahu toward a two-state deal, the American Jewish establishment (along with its Christian right allies) is making Washington irrelevant. For two decades, the core premise of the American-dominated peace process has been that since only America enjoys leverage over Israel, the rest of the world should leave the Israel-Palestinian conflict in America’s hands.

But across the world, fewer and fewer people believe Washington will effectively use its leverage, and if the Kerry mission fails, Washington will no longer even try. The Palestinians are ready with a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign that shifts the struggle to arenas where the American Jewish establishment lacks influence. In the Russell Senate Office Building, Howard Kohr and Malcolm Hoenlein’s opinions carry weight. In German supermarkets and the Modern Language Association, not so much.

…

In Congress…that hard-line agenda remains popular. But in the country at large, it risks alienating the Americans who will dominate politics in the decades to come.

It’s no secret that young Americans are less unwaveringly “pro-Israel” than their elders. According to a 2013 Pew Research Center poll, while a majority of Americans over 65 say they sympathize primarily with Israel, among Americans under 30 it drops to just over one-in-three, with a plurality of respondents saying they sympathize with both sides.

…

These are long-term trends. The American Jewish establishment won’t become irrelevant anytime soon. But 2014 may be the year when the downward trajectory of its power becomes clear. Wiser American Jewish leaders, aware of the BDS movement’s efforts to move the Israeli-Palestinian conflict outside of Washington, might have pushed Netanyahu to embrace the core tenets of a two-state agreement, and thus given skeptics more reason to believe Washington can still deliver….

…For the leaders of Jewish America, 2014 may be the year it becomes too late.

It’s a favored trope, in discussions about the Israel/Palestine peace process, to warn that time is running out. This time it may be true, though not in the way those who like to make these warnings think.

Are Israeli Universities Critics of or Collaborators with the Israeli Government?

Critics of the ASA academic boycott often claim that the boycott is illegitimate because it targets Israeli universities, which are the site of some of the greatest criticism of the Israeli government and support for the Palestinian cause. As prominent scholar and former ASA president Shelley Fisher Fishkin said:

Israeli universities are often at the forefront of fostering dialogue between Arabs and Jews, of educating the future leaders of Arab universities, and of providing the next generation with the tools of critical thinking that can allow them to construct a society more equitable and just than that of their parents.

Uh, it’s a little more complicated.

Here are just some of the facts about the Israeli academy that Fishkin failed to note but which eight professors in Indiana emphasized in their letter to the presidents of Purdue and Indiana University.

Israeli universities, like Hebrew University, have illegally built parts of their campuses in the occupied territories.
20% of the Israeli population is Palestinian, yet only 11% of university students are Palestinian. (In the US, by contrast, which is no picnic for African Americans, the black population is 13.1%, while the black student population in universities is 14%.) Palestinian applicants to Israeli universities are three times more likely to be rejected than Jewish applicants. 32% of Jewish applicants meeting minimal requirements are accepted into Israeli universities, while only 19% of Palestinian students meeting those requirements are accepted.
20% of the Israeli population is Palestinian, yet only 1% of the university staff is Palestinian.
In 2008, a petition for academic freedom in the occupied territories was sent to about 9,000 Israeli academics. It was signed by 407 professors, about 4.5% of the total.

In the United States, professors have a reputation for being far more radical than they are. Seems like the same may be true in Israel.