In December of last year, members of the American Studies Association voted to endorse a boycott of Israeli academic institutions by a 2-1 margin. The statement noted, “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.” Opposition to this resolution illustrates how universities refuse to oppose injustices using rhetoric of “academic freedom.”
This boycott is part of a growing movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel — called for by Palestinian civil society — to exert economic and political pressure on Israel until it complies with international law. The ASA is not the first to sign on to the academic boycott of Israel. It is joining a group of organizations such as the Association for Asian American Studies and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association in refusing to be complicit in the ideological and material defense of the occupation fostered by Israeli academic institutions. Israeli universities have direct ties to the Israeli military, play a critical role in providing research that supports the occupation and some are located on illegally seized land. No major Israeli university has yet denounced the growing and continuous occupation of Palestinian land, which has been globally condemned for violating international law.
The aim of the academic boycott is to put pressure on Israeli universities that play a central role in the maintenance of a settler-colonial project in Palestine based on ethno-racial supremacy. The ASA’s resolution is, at its very core, a statement of support for Palestinian students and scholars who face tremendous obstacles in accessing education. Schools and universities in the occupied Palestinian territories are frequently closed by Israeli military orders and have been destroyed by Israeli military strikes. Palestinian students and faculty members face violations of their right to mobility due to the extensive system of checkpoints, where they face not only hours of delays but also harassment. Israel has frequently denied visas to Palestinian students to travel abroad to study or attend conferences. Students in Gaza have also been barred from studying in the West Bank since 2000. Israel’s continued blockade of Gaza deprives its inhabitants of access not only to food, fuel and medicines but also textbooks and school supplies.
Israeli universities’ institutional support of the occupation means that they are actively involved in producing these realities.
The ASA boycott has been widely misunderstood. It is a refusal to enter formal collaborations with Israeli academic institutions and academics who are serving on behalf of the Israeli government. It is not binding for its members. It does not target any individual scholars affiliated with Israeli universities nor does it discriminate against scholars based on citizenship or political and ideological viewpoints.
Yet opponents of the ASA boycott have overwhelmingly adopted a rhetoric of “academic freedom.” On December 23, President Christina Paxson joined many university presidents in denouncing academic boycotts in general, stating that they were “antithetical to open scholarly exchange and would inhibit the advancement of knowledge and discovery.”
But what kind of freedom should we be talking about? Through the academic boycott, the ASA, the AASA and the NAISA stand in support of the freedoms and rights of Palestinians living under occupation. Critics of the ASA ignore the role of boycotts in challenging Israel’s everyday suppression of education for Palestinian scholars, students and universities. To frame these actions as the silencing of scholarly exchange is to cynically and disingenuously deploy the notion of academic freedom to advance its very denial.
Critics like Paxson illustrate that the voices of a select few are protected at universities. It should come as no surprise that those in power are consistently defending the freedoms of the oppressors. Only last fall, the president threatened disciplinary action against students who protested a public lecture by New York Police Department commissioner Ray Kelly, the chief architect of New York City’s unconstitutional and discriminatory stop-and-frisk policies. She denounced the action as “antithetical” to the “free exchange of ideas.”
It is ironic that the defense of academic freedom by the critics of the ASA has taken the form of the criminalization of dissent in universities. Earlier this month, the “Protect Academic Freedom Act” was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives, seeking to deny federal funds to any academic institutions that support the BDS movement. If the bill passes, universities in the United States will be in the company of those in Israel, where support for BDS was criminalized in 2011.
By supporting the academic boycott, the ASA and other associations remind all of us that the “free exchange of ideas” at universities is never separate from their political contexts. Academic institutions around the world must work to use their powerful role as privileged centers of knowledge production to reject, rather than maintain, an oppressive status quo.
To shield universities, Israeli or otherwise, from the outcomes of their activities with misleading claims of “academic freedom” is to say that only the freedoms of a few actually matter. We are only free to support the status quo, even when it is the illegal and unjust colonization of an entire people.
What kind of free is that?
Brown Students for Justice in Palestine can be reached at brownusjp@gmail.com.
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