http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/31/gordonIsrael and Academic Freedom
August 31, 2009
Neve Gordon has no illusions about the ability of Palestinian terrorists
to harm Israelis. In 1986, while serving as a paratrooper on Israel's
border with Lebanon, he suffered severe injuries from hand grenades and
bullets.
These days, Gordon is under a very different kind of attack -- one that
he and other Israeli academics say endangers the state of academic
freedom in their country. Gordon is the chair of politics at Ben-Gurion
University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame and
publishes widely in Israel and the United States -- with much of his
writing critical of his country's government. Ten days ago, he published
an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times in which he called Israel an
"apartheid state" and called for an international boycott of Israel to
push the creation of a Palestinian state.
Reaction was immediate and intense -- donors (many of them American)
threatened to stop giving to Ben-Gurion, Israeli political leaders lined
up to condemn Gordon, and his university's leaders expressed disgust
with the piece, with comments suggesting he might want to work
elsewhere. Gordon has tenure, which is Israel is roughly equivalent to
what it is in the United States, and his university acknowledges that he
can't be fired over the op-ed.
But in a move that stunned and outraged many Israeli academics
(including many who disagree with Gordon's analysis), the university
also said it was looking for legal ways to discipline him. Scholars like
Gordon have long criticized Israel's policies -- from their home
country, the United States and elsewhere -- without being disciplined,
so the reaction to this essay is seen as significant far beyond Gordon's
op-ed.
"The infliction of such sanctions is a declaration of war on freedom of
speech and academic freedom. It will have very grave consequences for
the Israeli academic community and will harm greatly its international
reputation," says a petition being circulated by professors at Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv University and the University of Haifa.
In the United States, the Middle East Studies Association (which has in
the past sent letters protesting the treatment of scholars in Egypt,
Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and areas controlled by the Palestinian
Authority, among others) last week sent a letter to Ben-Gurion
University, saying: "In refusing to reiterate the university’s
obligation to protect Dr. Gordon’s professional and civil freedoms and
in failing to clarify that it will not be blackmailed into suspending
the freedoms of particular faculty members that some donors do not like,
your administration has given a green light to those attacking him and
in some cases threatening his physical safety."
In interviews, both Gordon and his university's president said that
their views were being distorted -- but they have very different views
of the controversy and its implications.
Gordon and His Op-Ed
Gordon is currently on a trip to the United States, doing research for
his next book (on homeland security issues) and preparing to speak later
this week in Toronto at the annual meeting of the American Political
Science Association. He said in an interview that he didn't always
believe in a boycott, and that he came to this view gradually, based on
his research and his interactions with Palestinians.
"Growing up, I was never aware of the Palestinian narrative of these
issues," he said. But now he is. He came first to believe that Israel's
occupation of the West Bank and its objections to the creation of
Palestinian state there and in Gaza were both morally wrong and
destructive to Israel. This view shows up in his political writing and
his scholarly work. His most recent book is Israel's Occupation,
published last year by the University of California Press.
The argument in the op-ed is about what to do about the occupation.
Gordon writes that he has come to the view that the Israeli public will
shift its views only if faced with tough outside pressure. "It is
therefore clear to me that the only way to counter the apartheid trend
in Israel is through massive international pressure. The words and
condemnations from the Obama administration and the European Union have
yielded no results, not even a settlement freeze, let alone a decision
to withdraw from the occupied territories," he writes.
Specifically, Gordon endorsed the Bilboa Initiative, which calls for a
boycott conducted in a "gradual, sustainable manner that is sensitive to
context and capacity." Expanding on what this means in the interview,
Gordon said that it would start with a boycott of products produced by
Israeli entities in the West Bank, and might expand to companies that
help with occupation, gradually growing to hit more of Israeli society,
but with time for the sanctions to have an impact.
Boycotts are extremely sensitive in Israeli higher education because
British and some American academics have been pushing for boycotts of
Israel academe -- a push that has been widely condemned by American
academics as antithetical to academic freedom. Gordon said the boycott
he supports is institutional, not individual, and that he would not
support an action that cut off ties between individual academics. Gordon
also noted that boycotts are a non-violent way to take a stand.
But he said it was reasonable to ask American and other academics (not
at the first stage of the boycott, but eventually) to at the very least
demand, for example, that conferences in Israel include some
acknowledgment of the moral issues associated with governing
Palestinians against their will.
Many boycott critics say that such actions would hold Israel to a higher
standard than other countries because American academics, for example,
regularly work in countries in the Middle East that deny basic rights to
women, for example. But Gordon said he believes this ignores the ability
of academics to turn down such work. He said he was recently invited to
give a talk at a university in Kazakhstan, with a nice stipend, all
expenses paid -- and he turned it down based on the country's political
and human rights records. "The fact that someone offers you a fat check
doesn't mean you have to go there," he said.
Gordon said he has not heard directly from his university's senior
administrators, but that he has been approached by faculty members who
were urged to persuade him to consider quitting -- which he has no
intention of doing.
Ben-Gurion University has been "a wonderful academic home" for his work,
Gordon said. He has worked there for 10 years and has "wonderful
colleagues and students." In the past, when his critical writings have
come to the attention of donors or government officials, Gordon said
that the response has always been what he would expect: University
leaders said that they disagreed with him, but that Gordon spoke for
himself and had the right to do so.
"The issue is not about whether they disagree with me," he said. "One of
the jobs of the university president is raising money, and she has to
cater to the people that provide the money, so a strong letter of
condemnation of my views would have been fine with me. But there's a
difference between saying you disagree with me, and threatening me."
Until now, Gordon said, he would have said that academic freedom in
Israel was strong (except for Israeli controls on West Bank higher
education), but in his opinion something has changed. "I think the
reaction from my university should be a red flag for people," he said.
The Reaction
It didn't take long for Gordon's piece to attract an audience in the
United States -- particularly of those who are supporters of Israel. The
Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the country's consul-general in
Los Angeles fired off a memo to the university saying: "Since the
article was published, I've been contacted by people who care for
Israel; some of them are benefactors of Ben-Gurion University.... They
were unanimous in threatening to withhold their donations to your
institution. My attempt to explain that one bad apple would affect
hundreds of researchers turned out to be futile."
Israel's education minister, Gideon Sa'ar, called the Gordon article
"repugnant and deplorable."
But amid all the condemnations were also statements from university
leaders suggesting that Gordon should look for another job and might
face sanctions for what wrote. Rivka Carmi, president of the university,
gave a statement to Israeli journalists in which she said: "This vile
and audacious criticism of the state of Israel damages the excellent
academic work being done in Israel and its universities.... Academics
with such feelings about their country are welcome to look for another
home, whether personal or professional."
Amos Drory, vice president for external affairs of the university, sent
out e-mail messages to complaining donors in which he said: "While the
university recognizes the importance of the principle of academic
freedom, it feels that Gordon's call for a boycott will cause direct
harm to BGU -- and all Israeli universities -- and to Israeli society as
a whole. The university is currently exploring the legal options
available to take disciplinary action."
Carmi, in an interview, insisted that the controversy and the
university's response did not endanger professors' rights.
"I have to make it very clear that this is not about academic freedom,"
she said. "The freedom to research, to teach, to debate on issues within
the framework of academia" is protected, she said. But Gordon "created a
new reality" when he published his views, with his university
identification.
"Hundreds and hundreds" of people have sent her e-mails, not only
expressing outrage at Gordon's views, but with many of them saying they
believed his views represented those of the university.
Asked about Gordon's strong reputation as a researcher and teacher,
Carmi said that -- since she is a medical researcher and he is a
political scientist -- she wasn't in a position to judge.
She said that she agreed that the tenure system would make it impossible
to fire Gordon, but said that she didn't view the possibility of
disciplinary action as violating the principles of academic freedom. She
stressed that an academic boycott of Israel universities would hurt
those institutions, and that a broader boycott of the country would
similarly do so.
"This is the first time we are encountering such a situation so we are
looking into something that has never happened before, but this is going
to affect the university," she said.
Repeating her view that this dispute isn't about academic freedom, she
said the real question is: "If somebody damages or hurts the university
in a certain way, what does it mean?"
— Scott Jaschik