New at Reason

David Weigel | May 26, 2006

Ari Paul investigates the movement to stiff Holy Land professors.

Comments

|5.26.06 @ 4:58PM|#

Why isn't there a similar movement to boycott Palestinian academics over the tactics of the intifada, which have included blowing up teenage girls at pizza joints?

|5.26.06 @ 5:28PM|#

Name a "Palestinian academic".

|5.26.06 @ 5:37PM|#

Well, I suppose there is that.

Maybe if the Palestinians had dealt rationally with the impacts of the partition, instead of focusing on their victimhood for the past half-century, they wouldn't be so fucked up now, hm?

|5.26.06 @ 5:46PM|#

The other S.R.: Well, I suppose Edward Said counted himself one, although frankly, I'd be in complete support of a boycott against him (or his estate, now) for reasons that have nothing to do with collective hatred of an entire nationality.

Warren|5.26.06 @ 6:13PM|#

I'm all in favor of ending the oppression of the Palestinians. However, I am generally opposed to boycotts as being counter-productive. The impotence of this one rises to the ludicrous level.

|5.26.06 @ 6:17PM|#

"Maybe if the Palestinians had dealt rationally with the impacts of the partition, instead of focusing on their victimhood for the past half-century, they wouldn't be so fucked up now, hm?"

Those n*ggers should get over Jim Crow, too.

|5.26.06 @ 6:43PM|#

"Those n*ggers should get over Jim Crow, too."

Actually, yeah, they should.

|5.26.06 @ 6:47PM|#

Harboring intergenerational grudges is a spectacularly self-defeating habit among those who don't want to take responsibility for their own current situation.

American Blacks and Palestinians have that in common, yes.

|5.26.06 @ 6:53PM|#

"Yet if Britons were so well informed about injustice and more critical of bad-acting states, then why aren't groups like the NATFHE also calling for a boycott of American academics for their government's occupation of Iraq..."

Now we sit back and wait for the looppy antisemites to point out that the American government is occupying Iraq on behalf of the devilishly clever Israelis. One, two, three...

|5.26.06 @ 7:12PM|#

Since I'm part Irish, I should refuse to collaborate with the English guy in my lab.

|5.26.06 @ 7:24PM|#

Thoreau

If your suffering at the hands of the English were of a more recent vintage--and you identified closely with the Irish half--you might well refuse to collaborate with your English colleague. The question is whether you would try to get all your non-Irish colleagues to snub the Englishman as well.There is nothing inherently wrong with organized opposition to oppression, but you have to have a compelling victim narrative. We Jews are tough competition when it comes to victim narratives.

|5.27.06 @ 5:18AM|#

I'm just a retired investor with a pension, I went to Israel because as a Jew I wanted to live there in my twilight years.

Why is Israel boycotting Jewish pensioners in poor health?

|5.27.06 @ 11:22AM|#

When the people calling for the boycott of Israeli academics begin also to call for the boycott of Cuban, North Korean, Chinese, Burmese, Syrian, and Sudanese academics becuase of the principled objections to those countries' policies, I will believe that perhaps there is something other than anti-semitism involved here. Until then, the calls for boycotts are just the metaphorical yellow stars of our time.

|5.27.06 @ 7:05PM|#

The boycotting of Israel instead of other human rights abusers has nothing to do with anti-semitism, and almost everything to do with hatred of America and its "empire". If Israel wasn't buddy-buddy with America, you would not see these boycotts.

It's also why you'll see some of the same people calling for a boycott of Israel supporting Castro or the extreme ones supporting Kim Jung Il, namely because they also hate America.

|5.27.06 @ 11:56PM|#

Nonsense, Herrick. Boycotting Israeli academics has everything to do with anti-Semtism. Anti-Semites blame the Jews--or certain representative Jews--for everything. For British Facists, the war with Germany was a war for "Jewish interests." The Amnerican Nazi David Duke will tell you that American soldiers are dying in Iraq on behalf of Israel. Blaming Israeli academics for Israel's bad policies is child's play compared to what the anti-Semites can come up with, but it's still anti-Semtitism, not anti-Americanism.

|5.28.06 @ 12:31AM|#

Wow,

For once we actually agree on something Joe. You are absolutely right.

|5.28.06 @ 2:46AM|#

North Korean academics aren't getting boycotted because they're not -here-.

As I understand it, North Korea doesn't exactly let its college professors just trot off to the US for a year or so. If a professor is here, and North Korean, that means he escaped.

|5.28.06 @ 10:21AM|#

"Wow, For once we actually agree on something Joe."

"Joe" isn't "joe", however.

|5.28.06 @ 10:24AM|#

http://www.jewwatch.com/index.htm

|5.28.06 @ 1:29PM|#

I didn't notice that SR, but you are right. Oh well I will take the high road and believe that even "Joe" is not that narrowminded and would have said the same thing.

|5.28.06 @ 4:52PM|#

Joe,

I agree that the actual anti-semites like David Duke are anti-Israel because they are anti-Jew, but lefties harangue Israel more than other human rights abusers because of the relationship with America more than anything else.

|5.28.06 @ 5:03PM|#

Herrick:

Many leftists berate the U.S. for its support of Israel. Anti-Semites of the right believe that Israel controls America--and everything else--like a puppet master.

|5.28.06 @ 7:31PM|#

It's not anti-semitism, and it's not really America-hatred either. It's because the words "Israel" and "Zionism" trigger giant spasms of post-colonial guilt among the Euro-left.

Hence it should be no surprise that the epicenter of this pathetic movement happens to be the nation that was, by far, the greatest European colonizer of them all. And it should be even less surprising to find its proponents using lines like "brutal and illegal expansionism" and "slow-motion ethnic cleansing" to justify it. Freud has to be chuckling from his grave.

Larry A|5.29.06 @ 10:32AM|#

So we have an anti-Israel academic calling on anti-Israel institutions to boycott other mainly anti-Israel academics therefore stifling one of the loudest anti-Israel voices in the region.

Earth to Pappe. Earth to Pappe.

|5.29.06 @ 10:48AM|#

Larry:

Calling Pappe and other Israeli intellectuals who oppose Israel's occupation of the West bank "anti-Israel" is unfair. One can oppose specific policies of Israel and still be a patriotic Israeli. But your point is well taken.

Larry A|5.29.06 @ 11:39AM|#

Point noted. It would have been clearer if I had said, "anti Israely occupation policy" for most of them instead of "anti-Israel."

OTOH, "An anti-Zionist who believes in the dissolution of the Jewish state" sounds pretty "anti-Israel."

|5.29.06 @ 3:47PM|#

A small minority anti-Zionist Jews favor a bi-national state, but given the current mentality of the Palestinians, one can imagine how long it would remain bi-national. Anti-Semites who pass themselves off as anti-Zionists feign great compassion for the Palestinians and really do want to destroy the Jewish state and all the Jews in it. You can spot the latter by their over-the-top demonization of Israel.

|5.30.06 @ 2:55AM|#

John and Herrick (who is not to be mentioned without his balls), you're beating opposite flanks of the same four legged beast. Being anti-US and being anti-Isreali seem to go pretty much hand-in-hand on American campuses, far as I've seen.

OTOH,

there is a consensus among academics that even if a government's actions are contemptible, the nation's intellectuals should not be held responsible.

Sure. The consensus among academic "intellectuals" (i.e. humanities/liberal arts profs) is that they aren't responsible for anything. They influence people's thinking by what the choose to teach, but this should never be construed as amounting to any sort of "responsibility". All it can ever amount to is "academic freedom", which generally means "being free to be anti-Isreali, anti-capitalism, anti-individual rights", etc. Oh, and pro-environmentalism ("Mother Earth is worth far more than people" varieties).

We'll leave aside the fact that academic intellectuals are the ones who popularized the whole field of eugenics, which was anti-Semitic above all, at least in Europe. And we'll leave aside the fact that academic intellectuals are the ones who have popularized the whole anti-US, anti-capitalism, anti-individual rights trend. And the environmental movement.


Anti-US, anti-Isreali -- even with Uri's comment noted -- it's all part of the same ball of rot. Without it Nazi Germany would not have been possible, just to pick the biggest and easiest example.

I can only wish that academic intellectuals aren't really responsible.