The AAUP, under the influence of Joan Wallach Scott, has finally released in the latest issue of Academe [September-October 2006] the “rump” content of what was to have been its Bellagio conference on academic boycotts. The content of this issue is not, as it purports to be, about the general issue of academic boycotts. It is about academic boycotts of Israel, and why having them might be a legitimate exception to the principles of academic freedom that would otherwise prohibit them (much as the murder of Israeli civilians is seen by some as a legitimate exception to the immorality of the murder of civilians generally).

The fulcrum of this AAUP-sponsored “debate” is the spring 2005 statement on academic boycotts that was AAUP’s official reaction to the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) intention to boycott selected Israeli institutions (Bar-Ilan University and the University of Haifa) and to impose “ideological litmus” testing of faculty who might be excluded from such a ban. This issue of the journal (and the conference) was to include “Supporters of the AAUP Report”, “Critics of the AAUP Report”, reports on “The South African Boycott Experience”, and “Mixed Perspectives”. The section titled “Supporters of the AAUP Report” is empty, on account of the invited participants (Yossi Ben-Artzi, Jonathan Rynhold, Jon Pike, and Michael Yudkin) deciding (rightly so, in my opinion) that their contributions were sought only in order to provide a veneer of fairness to what is otherwise an orgy of anti-Israeli criticism. Joan Scott’s regret over this omission rings hollow and insincere, given her other public statements on the issue, and to the extent that there is true regret, it is most likely about not having gotten the desired figleaf of “anti-boycott” contributions. Contributions from Ben-Artzi, Rynhold, Pike, and Yudkin would only have served to provide intellectual cover for Scott’s anti-Israeli efforts. The “snit”-like impugning of the motives of those who wouldn’t help provide this cover, in her introduction to the issue, serves to reinforce this impression. Scott makes the best of what should be an embarrassment for the AAUP by including, at the end of the section, a report from Ernst Benjamin (a consultant for the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure). This statement is, in Scott’s words, “a strong reaffirmation of the AAUP report … an insistence on the importance of our principled opposition to academic boycotts, no matter what political pressures are brought to bear to challenge it.”

So, what’s the problem with the rest of it? For one thing, the contributors (almost to a person) take the position that Israel is in fact deserving of a boycott, and the only issue under discussion is whether or not Israel’s “crimes” rise to the level of justifying an exception to an otherwise inviolable principle of academic freedom. Being able to read all the accusations of the likes of Omar Barghouti, Rema Hammami, Sondra Hale, Hilary Rose, and Lisa Taraki in one place will, more than anything else, save AAUP members the trouble of visiting the websites of the various Palestinian “solidarity” movements and campaigns. Now, for the first time, they can read about Israel’s sins in the AAUP’s own journal. If this were truly about academic boycotts in general, then someone would have bothered to note that pretty much every justification spelled out in this section could many times more easily be used in support of academic boycotts of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Pakistan, etc.

The section on “The South African Boycott Experience”, with contributions by Jonathan Hyslop, Salim Vally, and Shireen Hassim, supports the impression that the AAUP (or at least Joan Scott) considers Israel to be an “apartheid” state. Even the section labeled “Mixed Perspectives” is mislabeled. The only thing mixed about the perspectives here are whether or not Israel’s crimes trump academic freedom, or vice versa. To be sure, with contributors such as Ur Shlonsky who do not believe in Israel’s right to exist, there is no “mixed perspective” on the illegitimacy of Jewish national self-determination. Consider this “mixed perspective” from Anat Biletzki [who uncannily has the academic freedom to teach at Tel Aviv University and write the following]:

“It is my firm belief that the possibility of recruiting the whole world to sanction or boycott the state of Israel in the manner South Africa was boycotted is nonexistent. The reasons for this impossibility may be unsavory: the automatic charge of anti-Semitism, which is sure to be heard; the power of Jewish lobbies around the world; the mythology of Jewish victimhood; and so on. But the fact that these reasons are distasteful will not make a worldwide movement for sanctions against Israel any more likely.” [http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsresearch/academe/2006/issue5/AcademicBoycottConferencePapers/MixedPerspectives.htm]

Biletzki’s “mythology of Jewish victimhood” will warm the heart of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his campaign to assert the mythology of the holocaust. No wonder the Rector of the University of Haifa (Ben-Artzi) declined, along with the others, to help Scott out.

Sometimes the truth escapes in small bits, inadvertently. This is certainly the case in Scott’s introduction, wherein she blames the failure to go forward with the Bellagio conference on one of those “accidents of history”. As she describes the “accident”,

“A staff member in the AAUP’s national office gathering documents from the Internet related to academic boycotts included one article that had not been properly vetted and that turned out to have come from a Holocaust-denial Web site. Before we realized its provenance, however, it was sent out in a packet of background readings. When we realized our mistake, we notified all conference participants and withdrew the article. But it was too late. For those who needed it, this inadvertent mishap became proof of our lack of credibility; it was as if the document itself had been written by one of the pro-boycott invitees (of course, it was not). The document’s anti-Semitism seemed to substantiate the charge of our critics that the conference organizers were irresponsible, allowing morally unacceptable views to be expressed.” [http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsresearch/academe/2006/issue5/AcademicBoycottConferencePapers/Introduction.htm]

Given the above quote, it seems that Scott is more embarrassed about the source of the document (“a Holocaust-denial Web site”) than about its content (“The document’s anti-Semitism”). Joan Scott was the organizer of the aborted conference, and is the editor of this section of the journal. As one who has himself edited journals and books, and organized workshops and conferences, I can categorically state that the responsibility for the distribution of an anti-Semitic document in a “packet of background readings” lies with the organizer, Scott. Similarly, responsibility for the inclusion of Biletzki’s orthogonal comment on the “mythology of Jewish victimhood” (along with other noxious comments too numerous to mention) lies with the editor, again Scott. So, at the end of it all, I am uncertain whether Joan Scott (like Mel Gibson) is full of politely veneered hatred for Israel, or whether she is just incompetent. I won’t try to reach a conclusion here. Suffice it to say that, as a member of the AAUP, I am embarrassed by the actions of my union and its representative.