Today’s guest blog post is by AAA member, Lisa Rofel. Please direct your questions and/or inquiries to her via email: lrofel@ucsc.edu.
More than 250 anthropologists have signed a statement endorsing the burgeoning movement to boycott Israeli academic institutions in protest of Israel’s systematic human rights violations against the Palestinian people. These violations, in which many Israeli educational institutions are complicit, include denying Palestinians their right to education and academic freedom.
The full statement and signatory list are at http://anthroboycott.wordpress.com As scholars who specialize in how power, oppression, and structural violence affect social life, and as witnesses to the State of Israel’s multiple and egregious violations of international law that constitute an assault on Palestinian culture and society, they pledge to abide by their discipline’s stated commitment to “the promotion and protection of the right of people and people’s everywhere to the full realization of their
humanity.”
These anthropologists have determined that the policies, actions, and programs of Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the occupation and oppression of Palestinians in Israel and in the Occupied Territories in multiple ways. In calling for this institutional boycott, they pledge not to collaborate on projects and events hosted or funded by Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or attend conferences or other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel. They remain open to collaboration with individual scholars based in the Israeli academy.
The signatories of the statement call on their anthropologist colleagues to join them, along with thousands of members of a growing number of US academic associations (including the American Studies Association, the Association for Asian American Studies, and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association), in answering the call from Palestinian civil society as well as from a number of Israeli anthropologists, to cease legitimizing Israeli academic institutions and thereby condoning their role in the continued suppression of the basic rights of the Palestinian people.
Anthropologists interested in signing this statement should visit: http://anthroboycott.wordpress.com, or email their name and affiliation to: anthroboycott@gmail.com
Tragedies like this happen when academics, the very people we expect to examine issues with great depth before taking action, choose to blindly follow a few deeply troubled “leaders.”
No one was boycotting Iran when the Regime systematically destroyed every single piece of Zoroastrian culture and their collective works of mathematical, literary and scientific achievement. The archaeologists are doing nothing with the systematic destruction of indigenous cultures’ space as the cattle, corn and cane industries overtake the region they’ve called home for centuries–including those formerly uncontacted people. So too, archaeologists are saying NOTHING about Central American governments tearing down ancient pyramids to make way for resorts. Israel is doing none of that.
We all know how important the Levant is to archaeology and the context of agroindustrial society’s birth. Several of my former professors (Jewish and not Jewish) have engaged in ground-breaking research there in everything from Neandertal skulls to ancient bee keeping.
Plus, as someone who believes in Peace, the only way to peace is through keeping the channels of open dialogue alive with light and free communication. Just like in the US, Israeli institutions of learning are a bastion of social change and social justice advocacy and silencing that voice on a global scale is a terrible idea.
Most of the people who are our age there NEED those voices to be heard because, ever since the anti-peace branch of the Palestinian community launched the first Intifada in the 1980s, there’s been less and less exposure to each other’s communities. Fear breeds isolationism and academic boycotts are isolationism at their pinnacle of ineptitude.
You have no idea how disappointed this makes me. Anyone who is boycotting is taking a stand against the very dialogue that might salvage the peace process.
Edit: The archaeologists are doing nothing with the systematic destruction of indigenous BRAZILIAN cultures’ space as the cattle, corn and cane industries overtake the region they’ve called home for centuries–including those formerly uncontacted people.
An excellent letter from some Israeli colleagues in support of a free and open discussion about the boycott thoughtfully addresses these points: https://sites.google.com/site/anthropoligstsletter/.
They argue that the image of Israeli universities as lonely islands of dissent is sorely misplaced and point out the irony of attempts to invoke “dialogue” as a pretext to shut down discussion of the boycott.
Also very important: the boycott does not prevent collaboration with allies inside the Israeli academy. Under the boycott, individual Israeli scholars can still be invited to conferences outside Israel, publish in academic journals outside Israel, and the like. The guidelines are flexible: for example, because we do not call on Israelis to boycott their own institutions, an Israeli scholar with state funds can still be invited to a conference abroad. For more information, see the guidelines published by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel: http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1108
Within 48 hours of the public launch of this petition, the number of signatures has grown to over 500: anthroboycott.wordpress.com/signatories/