Prof. William Jacobson, law, said during a lecture Tuesday that he opposed the recent American Studies Association movement to boycott Israeli academic institutions — the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign — in both its tactics and motivations.
“Bad things start small,” Jacobson said in his opening statement. “And academic boycotts are a bad thing.”
The event — titled “The Case for Israel and Academic Freedom” and sponsored by the Cornell Israel Public Affairs Committee — followed months of debate in the academic world regarding Israel’s alleged “apartheid state” imposed upon Palestine, according to Jacobson. He said over 250 representatives from American universities — including Cornell President David Skorton — have expressed opposition to the boycott tactic.
Full speech
“Even if you’re against Israel, you should want to increase academic interaction,” Jacobson said. “You should want to foster that cooperation. Anyone who knows about Israel knows that the academics there are some of the harshest critics of Israeli policies.”
Jacobson compared the situation to his personal experiences studying abroad in Moscow under Soviet rule and said the lack of an academic boycott against the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin could have contributed to the its eventual downfall.
However, The American Studies Association — an organization “committed to social justice” — does not aim to reduce dialogue between American and Israeli scholars, according to the organization’s website.
“The resolution does not prevent the ASA from working with or inviting Israeli scholars or Palestinian scholars at Israeli institutions to participate in ASA activities as individuals,” the website said.
Jacobson, who says he is pro-Israel and runs a conservative blog called “Legal Insurrection,” spent the majority of the talk arguing against using academic boycotts as a tactic.
“It hurts the students,” he said. “By what right do the faculty take the choice away from students? It’s them trying to enforce their will on students. Academic boycotts are not a victimless crime, and the victim is the academic community.”
According to the ASA website, the boycott is a non-violent campaign similar those against South Africa during the apartheid era.
The site added that “Israel’s legalized system of racial discrimination against the Palestinian people meets the apartheid criteria as defined in the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.”
Jacobson said that the vote passed the ASA, though only a third of its constituents showed up for the vote. The ASA website, however, said the voter turnout was the highest in the organization’s history with 1252 voters present and 66.05 percent of them endorsing the resolution.
During the lecture, Jacobson called on students to participate in debates on the topic.
“You’ve got to show up, you’ve got to participate and you’ve got to learn your stuff,” he said in his closing statement.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to Prof. William Jacobson, law, as “Prof. William Johnson.”
