September 25, 2006
The Editor, Academe
AAUP
1012 Fourteenth St. NW/Suite 500
Washington, DC 20005-3465
As a long-standing member of the AAUP for over 30 years, I was troubled by the
proposed meeting on the Israeli academic boycott.
First, the framing of the question dictates the content of the conference. The allegations
against Israel that it is an apartheid, racist state, gross violator of human rights, violator of
international law, and perpetrator of war crimes is the usual agitprop “paragraph” that you have
conscripted to frame the discussion. Each of these charges can be refuted but it takes time and
would have diverted the conference away from the boycott. An alternative framing would
produce a different conference. The AAUP’s preparation only disputes the remedy – a boycott –
but not the standard “paragraph” that is routinely replayed at these gatherings. This comes
through in Joan Scott’s article and in her writing on Israel, the papers you published, as well as a
large majority of the speakers you invited.
Second, by granting legitimacy to the premises of the boycott, the AAUP became
involved with academic discrimination against Jews. Do the boycotters have in mind restricting
Israeli-Arab academics and graduate students, of which there are a large number? Or only Israeli-
Jews? Clearly it is the latter.
Third, the preparatory documents and the boycott itself is an extension of the thoroughly
discredited Durban agenda that seeks to delegitimize, demonize, and ultimately bring down the
state of Israel. The Ford Foundation was deeply involved financially and otherwise in this
project. The conference’s hidden agenda was designed both to grant a covering halo to the
foundation and promote its interest in the implementation of the Durban agenda.
The AAUP made a grievous mistake in not consulting widely about the conference before
its reputation was diminished by the whole sorry episode.
Howard M. Wachtel
Founding Director, Center for Israeli Studies
Professor of Economics
American University
202-885-3799
