[Peace] AAUP on BDS

Wed May 14 11:29:59 EDT 2014

 To David Green via Peace:

Thanks for your participation in the discussion at the AAUP on BDS.  I had wanted to go (especially to hear Robert Warrior) but didn't, afraid it might run late and into attending the EPA hearing on the Mahomet Acquifer as Sole Source, which was instructive and very well attended.  I'm glad you and Niloofar made excellent points on behalf of the minority.  I doubt that your  Was Francis Boyle there?  (Wonder if Richard and Dennis Ross are related--sound like they could be brothers).

I was edified by the opening remarks of Dr. Hatem Baziam of U.C. Berkeley speaking on campus last month when he declared that we live in the reigning apartheid state of the West through its past--and current--policy of "settler colonization" toward Native Americans (my home state of Oklahoma "home of the Red Man" the prime example).  I'm sure Robert Warrior represented that point eloquently.  Not only Hitler looked to American history for his "lebensraum" policy, but apparently Israel has learned from the success of the Nazi model. 

I might add that it was England that made settler colonization successful as practiced over 800 years on the  Irish and still in the north of Ireland (Unionists bristle at that designation) which they call "Northern Ireland," before the model was imposed on indigenous populations in the "New World."  It took World War II to bring down the British Empire, which has been replaced by her step-child and client, US!

The audacity of a Zionist teaching a course on I/P at the U.I. reminds me of some years ago the same institution that was so proud of being the "Fighting Illini" did not have any course in Native American studies or even a Native American professor to teach it!  It took many demonstrations and petitions to embarrass it into existence...    

I doubt your remark regarding Ross' reading the NYT ergo not being informed on on the I/P "question" was well taken, if even grasped, but it is a great comeback!

Midge O'Brien

-----Original Message-----
From: David Green via Peace <peace at lists.chambana.net>
To: Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>; peace <peace at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Tue, May 13, 2014 7:30 pm
Subject: [Peace] AAUP on BDS

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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