http://www.dailytrojan.com/opinion/lloyd_s_israel_boycott_harms_usc_reputation-1.1372927
Woe to the wicked and woe to his neighbor (Talmudic proverb)
Dear Fellow Trojans,
I am writing to bring to your attention a new low for our beloved USC. Professor David Lloyd from our Department of English, an expert on Irish literature and culture, is the driving force behind a movement that he calls the first US national campaign for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel.
Professor Lloyd is a literature scholar who, one would think, would be very careful with his choice of
words. Both what he writes and what he omits deserve attention.
From the start, it should be clear that Professor Lloyd’s views have more to do with ideology than with historical accuracy. His underlying thesis is that Israel is the poster-child of Western imperialism (i.e., the original sin of modern history). Accordingly, any act against Israel is simply a reaction to an injustice perpetuated by Israel itself. He is color blind. He sees only in black and white. The world according to him is divided into the good downtrodden and the bad downtreaders.
There is nothing easier than to manipulate history, thus, his criticism of Israel is not inhibited
whatsoever by his ignorance. As a literature scholar it seems that he uses the concept of historical truth from its French meaning. It is noteworthy that the French word “histoire” can mean both “history” and also “story”. In his uninhibited criticism, fact and fiction are dangerously blurred.
According to Professor Lloyd, the sins of Israel, for which the boycott of its universities and cultural
institutions is necessary, go back to the alleged misdeeds of pre-Israel colonialist Zionism. What
Professor Lloyd apparently is saying is that the historical sins of Israel can only be resolved by its
present citizens’ acceptance of its own destruction. Indeed, we should pay attention to what Professor Lloyd writes in an open letter to then President-elect Obama and was published by the Beirut Star on January 12, 2009:“The only hope of a lasting solution is a single state in Israel/Palestine, committed to the civil and human rights of all peoples within its boundaries, irrespective of religion or ethnicity”. The boycotters’ inaugural press release of January 22 stated that “the boycott should be maintained until Israel meets its obligations” which includes “the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.” You may not know however, that Proposition 194 from November 1948 does not recognize the existence of Israel as an independent state at all. So Professor Lloyd apparently desires academics worldwide to boycott Israel’s universities until Israel itself disappears.
Professor Lloyd writes: “We believe that non-violent external pressure on Israel, in the form of an
academic, cultural and economic boycott of Israel, can help bring an end to [ ] the occupation of Gaza and Palestine” But in fact, as Professor Dershowitz rightfully noted some time ago: “A boycott is an act of violence, though of a paradoxical kind – one of recoil and expulsion rather than assault.” It proclaims a moral arrogance; Professor Lloyd is implying that he is “too fine a person to have anything to do with those Israeli academicians,” “They will have to reform themselves before his majesty would be ready to admit them back into his circle.”
Professor Lloyd writes “We urge our colleagues, nationally, regionally, and internationally, to stand up against Israel’s ongoing scholasticide.” As indeed fits an English professor, he created a new word that refers to the so called ‘systematic destruction of Palestinian centers of education and systematic denying of education of Palestinians and the Arab Israeli population’. As evidence, he states that “although Palestinian-Israelis make up 20 percent of Israel’s population, they constitute only 10 percent of its undergraduate student body.” Interestingly, Hispanics comprise over 35% of California’s population and even a much larger portion of the Los Angeles basin, but only 14% of USC undergraduates are Hispanic which is actually higher than the national average of 11%. I am not aware of Professor Lloyd’s call for boycotting our universities because “scholasticide” among Californian Hispanics.
Professor Lloyd states that “Israeli academic institutions and most Israeli academics have by their
silence been complicit with the attacks on Gaza”. In other words, the boycotters wish us to embrace a
version of collective national guilt. Taking this argument one step further, we are complicit for the U.S. invasion of Iraq by the Bush government that caused the death of over 4,000 American soldiers and perhaps 100,000 Iraqi civilians, among them many thousands of innocent women and children.
With the same logic Professor Lloyd should have campaigned for boycotting US universities and
cultural institutions because of torturing, renditions and long term detentions without trial and due
process of thousands of individuals by our government in the last 7 years. Asked by an online interview by a journalist if logic wouldn’t dictate that he and his colleagues boycott themselves, Professor Lloyd responded, “Self-boycott is a difficult concept to realize. But speaking for myself, I would have supported and honored such a boycott had it been proposed by my colleagues overseas.”
OK – no self-imposed boycott, but let’s consider the recent war waged by Russia against Chechnya, in
which tens of thousands of Chechnyan civilians were murdered. How about Russia’s invasion of
Southern Ostenia and the bombardment of town and villages in Georgia in the summer of 2008? Yet
Professor Lloyd has never called for boycotting Russian Universities. So we are left with ‘selective
boycotting’or plain hypocrisy.
Why should we care? The fact of the matter is that the group of boycotters championed by Professor
Lloyd represents a very small minority, at the extreme fringe of the political discourse. Perhaps we
should just ignore them. Giving them any attention may be counterproductive.
But we should care because Professor Lloyd lives among us, his actions affect us and affect the
university and its reputation. Whether we like it or not, he is our neighbor. What he does or says reflects directly on us.
A fitting analogy from the Talmud codified almost 2000 years ago goes as follows: “Keep aloof from a
bad neighbor and don’t associate with a wicked man… as it is said ‘woe to the wicked, and woe to his
neighbor’. To what may this be compared? To one who enters a tannery; even when he buys nothing, he nevertheless absorbs and takes away the bad odors with him.”
We should care because our neighbor makes a mockery of some of the principles that are dear to us. We are an institution of science and learning; we believe that the advance of scholarship is beneficial to all mankind; we believe that contributions to scholarship and science ought to be judged on their own merit; we believe that cooperation among scholars and scientists transcends boundaries of race, religion, citizenship and political persuasion. We do not discriminate against colleagues on the basis of factors that are irrelevant to their academic work.
Professor Lloyd matters to us because boycotting infringes on the academic freedom of our Israeli
colleagues. We are denying their freedom of speech by denying the possibility of dialogue. Freedom of speech is dear to us;-and freedom of speech includes the freedom to be heard, publish, participate in intellectual exchange, etc.
I am calling on our students to be aware of Professor Lloyd’s political extremism and to be vigilant so
that his classroom does not become a pulpit for indoctrination rather than education and honest pursuit of knowledge.
I am calling on both the student and faculty senates to distance themselves from this campaign and adopt resolutions that proclaim that boycotting colleagues from another country is antithetical to our principles.
I am calling on our alumni to make your collective voice be heard clearly in your condemnation of such acts. We need more, not less, international collaboration, and we need more dialogue, not pursuits that aim at stifling it.
Chaim Oscar Jacob MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine and Microbiology
