[Peace] AAUP on BDS

[David Green via Peace]

This afternoon, the American Association for University
Professors, local chapter, presented a panel on the BDS movement in relation to
academic boycotts of Israel. The national AAUP has opposed it. Supporting the
(for example) American Studies Association boycott motion was Robert Warrior, a
professor of Native American Studies. Opposing was Richard Ross, a law
professor. 
Warrior gave an articulate statement that was cognizant of
the lack of moral equivalence in this conflict. Apparently it takes a colonized
person to know it when he sees it, at least at the U of I, barring Francis
Boyle.
Ross gave the liberal Zionist line—they just don’t get
along, both sides have bad actors, the Palestinians are equally to blame, but we all need to keep talking and try to be nicer people, and boycotts
just aren’t nice. Can’t do that by boycotting, and once you start that, you
might have to boycott China, Turkey, etc., a real slippery slope.  He recited many of the oldies but goodies of
Israeli hasbara, e.g., when Israel left Gaza, the Palestinians launched 9,000
rockets, etc. -- Camp David in 2000, etc.
Cary Nelson was there with his high-minded opposition to
academic boycotts. He shared his fantasy that Israel would simply decide to abandon
the settlements. I don’t get Nelson; never have, never will. Rhona Seidelman,
the Schusterman Family Israel Lobby history professor of liberal Zionist
propaganda, was there to sanitize the facts on the ground within Israel proper.
She’s as fanciful a liberal Israeli Zionist as you could hope to find; she teaches the
only course on I/P on this campus. She’s paid by the Israel Lobby to do so. She
shared her fantasy of liberal Israeli academia, which needs our support to
challenge state-supported settlement and colonization, ongoing for 47, no 66,
no 120 years. I pointed out that truly dissident Israeli academics are treated
horribly, and many become expatriates.
Niloofar made a good contrarian statement for starters. I
followed and tried to provide some context. I pointed out the hypocrisy of the
U of I doing water research with Israel while the Israel’s deprive Palestinians
of water, and pollute some of the water they do have access to. I pointed out
that discourse on this campus regarding I/P has been under lockdown by the
local Jewish organizations and Israel Lobby—a boycott, in effect, of the Palestinians.
Professor Ross was flabbergasted by the latter assertion. I explained to him
about the Israel Studies Project, which invites only Israeli Jews, never
Israelis of Palestinian background. There’s a boycott for you! 
In general, I was very firm with Ross: I told him that he
simply had not bothered to inform himself on the history of this conflict. He
asserted, more or less, that he reads the New York Times, thus agreeing with me. When he said that the
Palestinians have the support of 1 billion Muslims, I told him that that’s
racist. It really is.
And so it went. Lots of furrowed brows and complicated
language about the advisability of a boycott, and discourse that I simply am
not smart enough to grasp; not much concern for the daily moral atrocities
committed by Israel. Actually, not any concern, except from Warrior.
I’m glad that Niloo and I intervened in this event. It would
have been a desultory event without us, and Robert Warrior would have been
alone in asserting a moral or factual perspective; that would be horrible. I
have to say, however, that I’ve always agreed with Chomsky’s opposition to
boycotts of individual academics; that’s why I’m glad that the ASA has
supported an institutional boycott, although I wish I had made these points and
affirmed this distinction, although Warrior I think did at some point.
But here we have I/P at the U of I—an obscure and poorly
attended event during finals week. That’s the way the local Lobby likes it—the less
said in situations where there might be dissent, the better. There are many people who, at this point, at least have the
decency to be embarrassed by what is arguably the most openly culturally and
institutionally racist country on earth.
It’s all really quite astonishing that in 2014, a bunch of
privileged academics discuss a boycott of apartheid practices while largely
avoiding how it got to be that way. None of them have any genuine interest in
doing something about it, as far as I can tell. 
None of this is meant to be critical of Warrior for
participating, even though he has resigned from the AAUP--he can't take it anymore. All in all, this
event was symptomatic of much about political life on this
corporate/military/industrial and depoliticized campus.
DG
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