University President James W. Wagner released a statement on behalf of the University last month opposing academic boycotts of Israeli academic institutions, saying that such boycotts would violate the right of University faculty to academic freedom.
The statement comes after the American Studies Association (ASA) adopted a resolution to participate in an academic boycott of Israeli institutions. The ASA, a national academic organization that supports the study of American culture and history, states on its website that this boycott entails refusing to enter into formal collaborations with Israeli academic institutions and their official representatives. The ASA will not refuse collaborations with Israeli scholars, students and cultural workers as part of the boycott.
Emory Hillel Program Director Meira Kreuter sent out an email to the group’s mailing list stating the organization’s opposition to the ASA boycott, calling the boycott “misguided at best, and anti-Semitic at worst.”
The email provided a list of 18 Georgia professors and graduate students who reportedly voted in favor of the ASA boycott. However, many of those identified denied being a member of the ASA and Anna Julia Cooper, a prominent African-American scholar mentioned in the email, actually died in 1964.
The membership directory for the ASA is only available to ASA members, and voting records for individual members of the ASA’s vote to endorse a boycott of Israeli academic institutions are not publicly available. However, 16 out of the 18 professors mentioned were listed as endorsers of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) on the organization’s website.
In response to this information, Emory Hillel Director Russ Shulkes said Hillel was forwarded the list of Georgia professors and graduate students from an outside organization and that Emory Hillel would be willing to correct its mistakes. He was not able to be reached for comment about the organization’s name by press time.
“We’re happy to retract wherever we had a wrong professor,” Shulkes said.
In the email Emory Hillel sent to its mailing list, Hillel wrote that it wanted students to be aware of the views of Georgia professors and graduate students. It also said that it encourages students to “be vigilant when choosing what classes to take and whose presence to enjoy.”
“If one is taking a class with a professor, you should realize that the information you’re learning from that person is impacted by the personality of the person,” Shulkes said. “People that specifically feel that [the boycott] is an anti-Semitic act, as Hillel does, would want to take that into consideration that they will be taking a professor that is borderline anti-Semitic.”
College junior Hannah Finnie said she was angry and disappointed when she read Emory Hillel’s response to the ASA boycotts. She said she thought Emory Hillel could have dealt with the situation differently and that the response closed off the option of discussion.
“They were just calling out specific names and telling us not to associate with them and not to take classes with them and whose presence to enjoy and it seemed really ridiculous,” Finnie said. “Within the student body, I’ve been surprised at the lack of response to the email.”
College sophomore and Vice President of Israel Affairs for Emory Hillel Aaron Karas said the ASA boycott came off as a way to “delegitimize Israel’s name.” He said boycotting Israeli academic institutions was a violation of academic freedom, which contradicted the ASA’s motivation behind the boycott.
“Hillel’s statement was really just to educate people and tell them what was going on, and I think they really did a good job of that,” Karas said.
In regard to the list of identified professors and graduate students in Hillel’s email, Karas said he would personally be uncomfortable taking a class with a professor who supported the boycott, although he was unsure of how best to approach the situation. Karas, who is also a member of Emory Students for Israel (ESI), said ESI was fortunate to have the support of Wagner and Hillel, and that no Emory professors endorsed the boycott.
College junior Ryan Gorman said he also did not agree with the ASA boycott, although he sympathized with the motivations behind it. Gorman said discussion surrounding the boycott focused primarily on discrimination against Israelis but failed to bring up the motivations for the boycott, which include in part Palestinian scholars at Israeli universities and those who are affected by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Gorman said it was unfair to punish all Israeli academics and universities, when the issue of stifling Palestinian scholars is not something that can “be placed squarely on academic shoulders.”
“It’s very much fighting fire with fire and if any of the backlash [the ASA] has been experiencing is any indication, it was a very counterproductive thing for them to do,” Gorman said.
Amira Jarmakani, associate professor of the Institute for Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Georgia State University, was named in Hillel’s email as a supporter of the ASA boycott. Jarmakani wrote in an email to the Wheel that she was a member of the ASA and that she did endorse the boycott. A statement on Jadaliyya, an independent online magazine produced by the Arab Studies Institute, signed by Jarmakani called the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement a “legitimate, non-violent tool of resistance by peoples enduring settler-colonialism, occupation and apartheid.”
The Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) also voted to support an academic boycott of Israel. Since the ASA announced its resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions, more than 100 universities have opposed the action, including Harvard University, Columbia University and New York University.
The ASA boycott and the USACBI campaign are part of the larger BDS movement. According to the BDS movement website, the campaign calls for economic and political pressure on Israel to end Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory and to recognize and respect Palestinian rights.
– By Harmeet Kaur
The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.
The Wheel is financially and editorially independent from the University. All of its content is generated by the Wheel’s more than 100 student staff members and contributing writers, and its printing costs are covered by profits from self-generated advertising sales.
reading this story, I am struck by the thought that academic freedom is much more imperiled by such efforts to target and blacklist professors who criticize Israel than it is by the ASA’s boycott of Israeli academic institutions, not individuals
PublicPoster –
I am curious. Have you ever written a comment about the following or are all your comments directed towards Israel?
………………
The top ten countries for persecuting Christians over the
last year were ranked: North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi
Arabia, Maldives, Pakistan, Iran and Yemen, according to Open Doors USA, an
organization that monitors and exposes Christian persecution around the globe.
Particularly, the “2014 World Watch List”, a rather nuanced report, has
highlighted these nations based on deep structures of persecution.
……………….
Note that nine out of ten of these countries are Muslim.
Also note that teeny-weeny Israel is surrounded by an ocean of Muslim countries almost all of whom have called for Israel’s destruction.
But let’s not take any of these facts into consideration when condemning Israel. And also take note that we are not unfair or prejudicial vis-a-vis Israel and Jews, we are just happen to pick Israel as our cause-celebre because we’re reasonable people.
The Hillel position eliminates nuance from the conversation when it suggests that a boycott that targets Israeli institutions in their official capacity–and not individual scholars–is anti-Semitic. Such a position implicitly claims that the Jewish perspective necessarily aligns with Israeli policy, and that a peaceful effort to dismantle that policy indicates an act of hate against the Jewish people. That’s pretty sloppy reasoning.
Not Convincing –
Do you ever comment about this reality, or is your entire focus on the democratic nation of Israel where a dozen Palestinians serve in Israel’s parliament, and where Palestinians serve throughout Israel’s judicial system including on their supreme court?
……………….
Globally, the story is the same. Out of the 57 nations which comprise the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, only three rise to the level of flawed democracies, according to the 2010 Democracy Index by The Economist.[7]
With the exception of communist and former communist countries, Islamic nations impose the highest level of government restrictions on religion.
Among the predominantly Islamic countries in the middle east and North Africa, 80% have anti-blasphemy laws and 60% of these nations enforce
them.[8] Democracy, individual liberty, free speech, toleration, and equality
are simply not consistent – or even compatible – with traditional Islamic
theology and Shariah law.
So don’t blame Israel or any other entity for Islam’s inability to lead its people through means other than brute force.
I think you misunderstood my comment because your reply does not appear to respond to what I said.
Isn’t it ironic that the founder of the BDS movement, Omar Barghoutti, graduated from Tel Aviv University.
Today’s anti-Semitism in no different than that experienced over the last three millennia and is illustrated in the two comments written above.
Throughout history people have rationalized their hatred of Jews by saying they control the banks, they drink the blood of children, their goal is to rule the world, etc…
But today we are told it is different. Today we are told by posters like PublicPoster that they do not hate Jews they just hate Israeli policies. And then they tell us that if we take offense at their position then it is us (me) who are mistaken, not them.
How convenient.
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