Brandeis Center Responds to the Journal of Academic Freedom

In its 2013 publication, the Journal of Academic Freedom discussed the topic of academic boycotts, primarily focusing on the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).  In her introduction, the Journal’s editor, Ashley Dawson, wrote that the “reviewers of the submitted articles. . . felt [the articles] could have the salutary effect of pushing the AAUP to discuss criteria for responding to violations of academic freedom. . .” on an international level, since the AAUP’s current policy opposes boycotts.  However, what followed was a compilation of articles presenting one-sided narrow viewpoints on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and academic freedom. 

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In response to this biased presentation, several scholars came together to present a series of response papers.  In “The Very Foundations of the University”, the Brandeis Center’s Kenneth L. Marcus and Sitara Kedilaya outline the alarming yet growing position of several academics: that the Jews are the most dangerous threat to the university.  Too many academics embrace the narrative that Zionists threaten the university by suppressing speech contrary to their nefarious interests, especially their conspiracy to hide crimes inflicted by Israelis on innocent Palestinians.  Such warnings resonate with age-old stereotypes of the Jews as fantastically powerful, diabolically conspiratorial, and cosmically dangerous.  According to these anti-Israel scholars, the Zionist threat consists of orchestrated complaints by pro-Israel students who insist that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.  To assert this position, these scholars too narrowly construe the true definition of anti-Semitism, and therefore must deny that anti-Semitism is the serious problem on many university campuses that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights says it is. In other words, they must create a safe haven for those anti-Jewish bigots who cast their anti-Jewish rhetoric in terms of Israel. 

However, these days, most anti-Semites, even of the extreme right-wing variety, understand that they can easily avoid censure by casting their anti-Jewish rhetoric in the guise of anti-Israelism.  To whitewash resurgent anti-Semitism, anti-Israel activists must resist authoritative definitions of anti-Semitism, such as the U.S. Department of State definition, the EUMC Working Definition, and California House Resolution 35.  These definitions emphasize that criticism of Israel need not be anti-Semitic but that there are circumstances in which anti-Semitism can be discerned in anti-Israel hostility.

Furthermore, Marcus and Kedilaya’s article addresses the inherent hypocrisy of anti-Israel scholars’ position on the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.  Under the guise of advocating for the speech rights of proponents of the BDS movement, anti-Israel scholars promulgate that protection of Jewish advocates and students from anti-Semitism are violations of academic freedom.  These scholars advocate for the ability of people to “nonviolently” protest against Israel and participate in the BDS movement, while simultaneously denouncing and devaluing the speech of Jewish and pro-Israel supporters. For them, Jewish students and faculty face no discrimination, but those who “critique” Israel face “campaigns of distortion, intimidation, threats of termination and denial or loss of tenure….” Marcus and Kedilaya counter by outlining several incidents of anti-Semitism and suppression of pro-Israel speech, most notably the 2010 “Irvine 11” incident at U.C. Irvine.  They demonstrate that the logic of the anti-Israel narrative requires its exponents to deny the persistence of anti-Semitism in contemporary academia, the absence of anti-Israel bias, and the inexistence of anti-Israel censorship.

The series of response papers are a powerful compilation that counterbalance the initial presentation of the BDS movement, and many of the arguments made in favor of it.  Advocacy on behalf of the Jewish population by such scholars as Cary Nelson (Academic Boycotts Reconsidered), Ernst Benjamin (Why I Continue to Support the AAUP Policy in Opposition to Academic Boycotts), Emily Budick: (Response to JAF Volume Four), Joshua A. Fogel (Say It Ain’t So, Joan), Kenneth Waltzer (Narrowing Academic Freedom, Discriminating against Israeli Nationals), Gerald M. Steinberg (Boycotts, Bias and Politics in the Arab-Israeli Conflict), Samuel M. Edelman (Binding Academic Freedom with Ideological Bonds), and Peter Haas (Clear, Simple and Wrong) is necessary in the current academic climate, and these authors have done a commendable job.