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Mixed Perspectives
Andris Barblan, Anat Biletzki, Soraya Castro, Ur Shlonsky
Andris Barblan,
Anat Biletzki
Soraya Castro
Ur Shlonsky
Andris Barblan,
Secretary General, Magna Charta Observatory
The AAUP report on academic boycotts is a good defense of academic freedom that keeps the individual at the center—as if freedom were some kind of personal treasure to cultivate along with one’s own talents and desires, a door to be kept open in all circumstances to the many possibilities one can use to move as he or she wishes, be it in physical, social, or ethical terms. Once this individualistic premise is agreed upon, everything follows—even the lack of criteria to consider Hitler as evil or at least unfortunate. The debates on Vietnam in the 1970s or on South Africa in the 1980s become exceptions that are difficult to explain.
Such a stand, at a time of social, physical, and intellectual horrors, can only be sustained if academics enjoy a protective device—the university—that keeps politics away to allow for neutral scientific opinions and safe judgment, or should I say judgment in academic safety. Academia then seems to respond to the world outside rather than to be responsible for the world it is part of. If the AAUP is an organization bringing together individuals, such a position makes sense when it supports the liberty of members to explore the known and the unknown. It makes all the more sense that it is grounded in a long American history of personal dissent vis-à-vis powers of class and privilege.
In 1998, Slobodan Milosevic, then president of Yugoslavia (in fact Serbia and Montenegro), decided to break potential dissent in the university world by requiring an oath of allegiance from all professors and by imposing rectors of his own choice. Since the 1960s, the universities of Yugoslavia had been members of the Association of European Universities (CRE), in which they had played an important role by keeping alive some links between the universities from western and eastern Europe, a role they lost after 1989 and the fall of the Berlin wall. All universities of Serbia and Montenegro were faithful members of the CRE and regular participants in its semiannual meetings. The reaction, however, was immediate in 1998: the Yugoslav universities’ membership was suspended because they had lost their autonomy (in CRE terms), and other members were invited to cut official links with them.
Professors ousted from the classroom for refusing to sign the oath went out to teach their students in the open, on the streets of Belgrade, Nis, or Novi Sad. The police and the army intervened, inducing dismissed teachers to set up the Alternative Academic Education Network (AAEN), a nongovernmental organization that organized clandestine teaching for the next few years. AAEN received support from European partners discreetly encouraged by the CRE, which had established a fund to support democratic activities and to keep open the potential for dialogue between Serbian-speaking universities and the Albanian-speaking institution in Pristina. AAEN still exists today as an important part of Serbian civil society, and an Albanian-speaking university has taken over the old University of Pristina, which was created as a bilingual institution in the 1960s before the Albanian-speaking group was expelled in the 1990s, leaving a Serbianspeaking university thriving next to a semiclandestine Albanian-speaking network of higher education.
Although the term “boycott” was never used, the CRE organized an academic boycott: Serbian university representatives were no longer welcome in European gatherings, dues were no longer collected from Serbian institutions, and other CRE members were invited to forget the cooperation agreements signed in earlier days. Moreover, the CRE encouraged the people fighting against their “authorities.” If the AAUP is an association of individuals, the CRE was an association of universities or collectives. Politically ravaged universities had to be ostracized, but individual staff and students refusing the breach of autonomy could be helped. The club of the universities of Europe felt that excluding the black sheep did not contravene sacred university privileges—rather to the contrary. Can lessons be drawn from this example? Here are some paths for exploring differences between the collective and individualistic approaches to autonomy and academic freedom.
Etymological Detours
The word association (of university professors or of European universities) is built around the Latin term socius, sometimes equated to companion, the prime member of medieval trade guilds. An association is an agreed-upon togetherness, where the consensus on specific aims makes the group more than the sum of its members. The association has an added value going beyond a simple collective. When this added value is forgotten, disparaged, or betrayed by a member, the association usually has ways to exclude the defaulter.
Societies tend to accept variations of behavior, up to a certain point at least, before excluding. In fact, these social relations are relative to the group’s organization and fears (anguish for survival) as well as to earlier models of collective development (the history of the group). Can such a group impose behavior—and on what grounds—or must the person differ at the risk of exclusion when claiming other references than those of the community? When do dissenting values take precedence over those of the community? When is the university the community we want to uphold? When is it wiser to separate oneself from it, especially when universities are called on to bring a diversity of contradictions under an overarching unity that does not suppress variety but gives it common sense? Vaclav Havel, in 1995, challenged European leaders of higher education to live up to the meaning of universitas—when understood as “turning to the one,” in Latin, ad unum vertere—by helping society to make sense of the meaning of its place in the universe and its people to understand the sense of their existence, thus extending their margin of life choices, that is, their freedom and responsibility.
Academic Freedom Versus Institutional Autonomy
When is the assertion of academic freedom a flight from responsibility? Or could one say that academic freedom has not much to do with institutional autonomy, the latter implying some kind of political involvement while the former suggests that teachers as individuals, and persons, should pursue their scientific and intellectual activities the way they want with whom they wish, in and around their institution?
Here the question is the link between the individual teacher and the institution to which he or she belongs. Can the staff be entirely free from its university, and how does the relationship between the institution and its members influence personal responsibility? Going back to the Serbian example of 1998, the people who suffered from the boycott were first the people responsible for the institution as such, the new rector, vice-rectors, and other official iepresentatives. No judgment was being passed on their intellectual capacity as teachers. As academic leaders, however, they contradicted the rules implicit in the university as an international community—if they behaved as requested by the authorities. Their “academic” socialization no longer fitted with the norms usually applied in European institutions of higher education insofar as they would be expected to keep some distance from the powers that be. And in Europe, this distance is often much smaller than in North America, because most continental universities are state institutions whose professors are civil servants expected to deliver a public service to all layers of society. Salaries, curricula, and employment are heavily influenced by ministerial standards. Academic freedom covers mainly the content and the mode of courses (the teacher-student relationship) and the choice of the fields of investigation and scholarship that make up the research activities of the members of staff, even if such fields and scholarship are well framed by specific demands and supported by special funding from the public authorities at the national and the European level.
The tradition of autonomous governance, as reflected by election processes, is all the more important in this rather constrained environment. Perhaps this explains why the reaction was strong when the Yugoslav government interfered heavily in the rectors’ appointment. Anyway, the institutions as such were the target of ostracism, not the individuals—although the latter bore its consequences insofar as they adopted a position of servility that put at risk the quality of the university’s intellectual references. The new academic leaders of Serbia were asking the rest of the academic community, in Europe and beyond, for continued international recognition of and respect for their capacity to be heard as responsible university leaders. The CRE said no to this implicit request. However, as persons interested in ideas and pedagogy, the same individuals, if they shed their political roles, could be helped and supported in the defense and improvement of their teaching abilities, which is after all the core social function of the university.
After the fall of Milosevic, the AAEN, whose members had been excluded, came to power and resocialized the institution according to the shared values and principles of the academic community at large. That is why nobody considered it irrelevant that Sbrjanka Turaljic—a Belgrade professor of informatics who had been ousted from the university for refusing to sign the oath of allegiance and who then took the risk of launching clandestine academic work through AAEN—became the vice minister for higher education. It was she who proposed a new law to modernize the university system in Serbia and Montenegro. Political action like this, on behalf of academia over academics, is no exception in Europe, because it can justify the autonomy of the institution.
However, the role of administrators differs from that of faculty in relation to academic freedom. Indeed, in most cases, administrators put their scholarship aside. The tension between the administrative and scholarly roles should be workable, in theory at least; practically, it proves so difficult that people often have to choose, thus becoming, at least in Anglo-Saxon countries, professional university managers. To bridge such an opposition, the institution, which should be more than the sum of its members, has an identity and a profile of its own, hence a policy that frames its members’ activities: not everything is possible simply because Professor X considers it as part of his or her own prerogatives!
The AAUP Report
The drafters of the AAUP report look at academic boycotts from a different perspective, indeed, as they do not relate institutional autonomy to academic freedom or the political engagement of the university (its capacity for consent), nor to the university’s capacity for innovation (based on dissent, at least in the best circumstances). Do academics, in their daily lives, refer to the values of the “one,” the common goal that justifies their intellectual pursuit? Or do they simply respond to outside requests—in terms of helping to develop wealth, increase security, and foster good neighborhoods, thus respecting the “political” dimension of their institutions? If the latter, why would they consider it impossible to judge in political terms—that is, by taking sides—what others are doing, at least at that level of activities? One could consider that refusal to enter judgment in order to protect academic freedom equals the ostrich hiding its head in the sand to avoid seeing imminent danger; when they do not take responsibility, academics have little weight in the organization of a society—national or international—and do not serve the social prestige of the university they want to defend. This is all the more paradoxical because universities claim a universality of purpose based on the universality of scientific rationality. Why would they then restrict their capacity for reasoning to the apolitical part of reality only?
As the fathers of the U.S. nation said in 1776, or the French Declaration of the Rights of Man noted in 1789, all men are equal, and that equality justifies and founds the freedom and responsibility of people in society, the liberty of one person stopping at the liberty of the other. No freedom is absolute. As long as universities are a part—and one part only—of society, relative freedom will frame their responsibilities. Indeed, no one is asking them to account for everything under the sun, simply for what they are supposed to achieve in society: training people, qualifying them, giving them a sense of the purpose of their living, that is, offering meaning that can be shared by all as well as paths of convergence so that knowledge is one in its multiplicity. And that is an enormous task already, although it is limited. But it is also a political one insofar as it structures the community to which mankind belongs. I am certainly not against “the search for truth and its free expression,” but I fear that this quest is the tree that often hides the forest.
The best path for academics’ freedom of expression is to allow dissent not only to appear, but also to be sustained so that the unknown is further explored. Otherwise, institutions might simply live in consent, that is, do what they are told in the most efficient way. They could then prosper, although at the risk of closing in on themselves, becoming perhaps comfortable havens of insignificance, both in terms of knowledge and society. To nurture a core of dissent is thus a “political” choice—that of openness, be it social, intellectual, or political. Allowing for the unexpected is the test of the game—and also the stand from which judgment can be passed on what others are doing in the wider community of knowledge. And if, by putting values of immediacy and survival over principles of truth that keep the future open, they happen to cut forcefully the “flow of the unexpected,” a process of exclusion of the world community of academic belonging could be envisaged—or so it seems to somebody coming from Europe, where the university is part of the polis, a place of citizenship and a platform for long-term visions of the “one” as a potential for change, a true although rarely recognized service to society.
The university is in and of society. This represents the tension of dissent (in) and consent (of) that needs to be constantly kept if the institution and its members are to move ahead in a polarized world that calls for judgments respecting man and the university as a focus for universality, especially when the institution and its individual members meet their ethical obligation: Ad unum vertere!
The individual papers published in this special section of Academe are reflections on the AAUP report On Academic Boycotts, which appears on pages 39–43. The papers were prepared for a conference on academic boycotts that was to have been held in February 2006 at the Rockefeller Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy. Although the conference was canceled, the AAUP resolved to publish the papers so as to present the viewpoints that would have been debated at the conference. All conference invitees were invited to submit their papers for publication; some chose not to do so, as Joan Wallach Scott explains in the introduction that follows. The publication of this issue of Academe and these papers was supported by the Ford Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Ernst Benjamin and Joan Wallach Scott, both members of the subcommittee of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure that organized the conference, edited the papers. The opinions expressed in the papers are those of the authors and do not represent the views or policies of the AAUP.
Anat Biletzki,
Professor of Philosophy,
Tel Aviv University
I am Israeli. I work in an Israeli university. When the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel’s call for boycott came out, formulated by my friends in Palestine, I was struck by the irony of the fact that they and I, having worked together in the past on bringing an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, were now split on this most central issue—split both in principle and in praxis.
Let me first try to state my position on academic boycotts in particular and on economic sanctions in general. In principle, anything that can be done to promote the demise of evil and to defeat any form of injustice is commendable. Still, the proverbial ends justifying the means is not to be countenanced: whatever is done must, in principle, not propagate more harm or more injustice. Academic freedom, while perhaps not sacrosanct, is high up on the ladder of priorities that must guide us in assessing the harm done by academic boycott. On the other hand, economic sanctions, in general, do not automatically offend our values concerning those harmed by such sanctions (though there is a point to be made about the helpless victims fired from a plant that is closed due to sanctions, not to mention the obviously innocent victims harmed by sanctions against poor countries, such as Iraq or Cuba). However, given Israel’s well-being—in terms of power, economy, international support, and so on—general economic sanctions would, if adopted widely, be a just and effective measure for pressuring it to cease the occupation of Palestine. This does not, however, carry through to the question of academic boycott, which, in turn, would not on its own be either just or effective. Baruch Kimmerling of Hebrew University has said, “I can understand and even support an academic boycott in the framework of a total and global economic, political, and cultural boycott till Israel will withdraw to the 1967 lines.”1 This does not entail support for an academic boycott on its own, and indeed, given the principles expounded in the AAUP report to which I truly ascribe, one might claim that an academic boycott even within a framework of total sanctions is wrong in principle.
In essence and in almost every detail, I can endorse, from my local Israeli perspective, the AAUP report.2 More so, the analogy with South Africa—including the gradation of opinion about academic boycott there—is precisely in tune with the discussion on Israel-Palestine. Let me add, however, that beyond the analytical and principled discussion that emphasizes the parallels between Israel-Palestine and South Africa, there are two differences between these cases. First, notwithstanding the selfcongratulatory claim that the global sanctions on South Africa were the catalyst to the end of apartheid, local activists consistently make the point that those sanctions were pertinent and effective only in connection with other elements of the campaign (such as armed struggle). Second, and most important, the sanctions on South Africa could work because they were realizable as global sanctions. Strategically, rather than tactically, a mode of action is worth considering only if it can be implemented. It is my firm belief that the possibility of recruiting the whole world to sanction or boycott the state of Israel in the manner South Africa was boycotted is nonexistent. The reasons for this impossibility may be unsavory: the automatic charge of anti-Semitism, which is sure to be heard; the power of Jewish lobbies around the world; the mythology of Jewish victimhood; and so on. But the fact that these reasons are distasteful will not make a worldwide movement for sanctions against Israel any more likely.
The AAUP report points to the tactical weakness, even the danger, of academic boycotts. Here, again, in addition to my principled agreement with the report, I also would point to the local boycott of Israeli universities as one harboring a great weakness and an even greater danger. Clearly, there is an obvious injustice in collective punishment and, more specifically, in harming academics who are committed to the Palestinian cause (I always ask my Palestinian friends if they would wish a certain professor to be denied tenure because our American and British friends refuse to provide letters of recommendation). Furthermore, not only is there palpable evidence in Israel today that a boycott against academics—or intellectuals, artists, or other agents of culture—would not be taken to heart by the general populace, there is also a clear indication that the powers that be would use such a boycott to continue their single-minded dismantling of those areas of public life—academic, intellectual, artistic, and cultural—that they perceive as a threat to their agenda of occupation and its corollaries.
The AAUP report is cognizant of the “tension between a principled defense of academic freedom and the practical requirements for action.” But there is another, related tension to address here—that between a principled call for sanctions and the practical detriments of certain actions. This inner tension, which I referred to above as ironic, can best be described by the oft-abused concept of “dialogue.” In these dire times, when dialogue has become a construct that raises easy money (“students for dialogue,” “parents in dialogue,” “teachers by dialogue,” and so on), one can be apprehensive about being manipulated into a dialogue that is not equal or authentic. Worse, such a dialogue can easily be perceived as collaboration with the occupation. The call for an academic boycott seems to be suspicious of all dialogue. It behooves us to insist on academic dialogue as authentic dialogue—always geared toward putting an end to the occupation.
In a tone of apology, and proper disclosure, let me add that I look at the issue of academic boycott “from the ground.” Does “from the ground” belie a principled position? Does it demand a pragmatic stance to take the place of an ethical one? Do I, thereby, adopt a certain realpolitik over ideological consistency? Does this stance favor the political discussion over the one on human rights? Does one, in deciding on such a perspective, find oneself with strange bedfellows? Does a local perspective, voiced from a local ground, compromise the universal aspects of the discussion that I—always ideally—subscribe to? These are the questions that I have tried to relate to. They are questions that put us—as Israeli academics—in a paradoxical situation if we try to consistently fit actions to principles. More concretely, when asked by academic friends abroad if they should come to Israel when invited, I say yes; but lest you be viewed, by your visit, as supporting Israel and its occupation of Palestine, do not forget to make a public statement of your position.
On a positive note, then, we must, as academics, never forget our political agenda: the eradication of evil. And the Israeli occupation of Palestine is the epitome of evil.We must constantly, as academics, identify with Palestinian teachers and students in conditions of severe repression.We must constantly, as academics, criticize the acquiescence of others in Israel to the occupation. And we must constantly, as academics, call for condemnation of the occupation. ¨
Notes
1. Kimmerling’s comment comes from an April 30, 2005, discussion on the Listserv ALEF-Academic Left, http://list.haifa.ac.il/mailman/private/alef/2005-April/003038.html.
2. I was surprised, however, by the words “as a way of protesting against what some see as the Israeli occupation’s denial of rights to Palestinians”; why the qualification “what some see”? There is no denying the Israeli occupation’s denial of rights to Palestinians, though there may be argument as to its reasons or justifications.
The individual papers published in this special section of Academe are reflections on the AAUP report On Academic Boycotts, which appears on pages 39–43. The papers were prepared for a conference on academic boycotts that was to have been held in February 2006 at the Rockefeller Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy. Although the conference was canceled, the AAUP resolved to publish the papers so as to present the viewpoints that would have been debated at the conference. All conference invitees were invited to submit their papers for publication; some chose not to do so, as Joan Wallach Scott explains in the introduction that follows. The publication of this issue of Academe and these papers was supported by the Ford Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Ernst Benjamin and Joan Wallach Scott, both members of the subcommittee of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure that organized the conference, edited the papers. The opinions expressed in the papers are those of the authors and do not represent the views or policies of the AAUP.
Soraya Castro,
Senior Researcher, Center for the Study of the United States,
University of Havana1
“Trenches made of ideas are stronger than trenches made of stone.”
—José Martí
Academic exchange has contributed to the easing of tensions and the resolution of intra- and interstate conflicts. In today’s complex, globalized, conflict-ridden world, it is imperative to recognize the positive contributions of this form of transnational collaboration.
The electoral victory of U.S. president George W. Bush in 2000 and the tragic events of September 11, 2001, marked the onset of increasingly alarming limitations on academic, scientific, and cultural exchange between Cuba and the United States. Well-established and prestigious programs of U.S. academic and cultural institutions encountered new licensing obstacles, while a precipitous decline occurred in U.S. State Department approvals of visas for Cuban academics and intellectuals invited to travel to the United States as part of ongoing exchange programs and activities.
Academic exchanges and scholarly collaboration between Cuba and the United States have been subject constantly to the unpredictable developments that have governed political relations between the two countries. Travel between Cuba and the United States has often been uncertain and almost always cumbersome; research opportunities have frequently been subject to bureaucratic obstacles and political vagaries. The U.S. government’s application of arbitrary visa procedures to Cuban scholars, travel restrictions, and frequent revisions of unilateral sanctions against Cuba have created problems of daunting proportions. In Cuba, the difficulties scholars have faced in obtaining access to research facilities and authorization to conduct field research on the island have at times acted to impede outside initiatives.
Institutional exchanges and scholarly collaboration have endured decades of adversity. That they continue speaks to the resilience of commitments to pursue projects of mutual interest. Collaboration has involved scholars and researchers representing the full breadth of the social sciences and humanities, as well as the natural sciences, medicine, the performing arts, and archival management. It has borne fruit in various forms, including joint publications, joint panels at scholarly meetings, the exchange of resources and research materials, and the general advancement of science in both countries. Most important, scholars from both countries have learned much from each other.
On May 6, 2004, the U.S. Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba presented its report to President Bush. The report was explicit in proclaiming its goal to “help the Cuban people bring about an expeditious end to the Castro dictatorship” through “a more proactive, integrated, and disciplined approach to undermine the survival strategies of the Castro regime and contribute to conditions that will help the Cuban people hasten the dictatorship’s end.”2 Accompanied by increasing difficulties in raising the funds needed to realize the full potential of exchange programs, and culminating in the broad assault on travel recommended by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, Bush administration efforts to eliminate study-abroad programs and other academic, scientific, and cultural exchange have deeply affected relations between Cuban and U.S. institutions and scholars.
The Bush administration has restricted academic exchange in a number of ways.3 Although full-time professionals can still travel under the general authority to conduct research in Cuba, and graduate students can conduct research under a specific license, high-school students are no longer permitted to travel to Cuba. Two year licenses that enabled universities to send students and faculty to Cuba were reduced to one year; specific licenses for study-abroad programs are authorized if programs are ten weeks or longer (shorter programs may be granted a license only if the program promotes the foreign policy interests of the United States); and students who travel must do so with their own university, eliminating consortia-sponsored travel and the work of studyabroad businesses.4 In addition, the regulations explicitly preclude interpreting attendance at a conference in Cuba as research activity. The policy of specifically licensing participation in workshops and clinics was eliminated. Academic exchange has been severely affected. A December 2004 survey by NAFSA: Association of International Educators found that forty-five of the sixty-one institutions that responded had suspended their studyabroad programs in Cuba after August 2004 because they did not meet the minimum ten-week length. Two institutions canceled prospective programs for 2004–05, and three canceled semester programs because they enrolled students from other institutions. Four other responding universities were affected by the new regulations but declined to be identified in the results. Only one university, SUNY Buffalo, reported that its program continued.5 Cuban education administrators have also documented a dramatic decrease in academic exchange programs during the last two years. After increasing steadily since the 1999–2000 academic year to a peak of more than 2,500 in 2002–03, student participation in U.S. study programs in Cuba declined sharply to fewer than 1,000 in 2004–05. Enrollment for the spring semester of 2005 was only 5 percent of that of spring 2004.6 By early 2004, it had also become evident that the Bush administration was restricting visas for Cuban visitors on political grounds. Some delays and denials were due to new security measures. In addition, the Bush administration explicitly resuscitated Presidential Proclamation 5377. Visa denials based on this proclamation fall under section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which authorizes the president to deny entry to “any class of aliens into the United States [that] would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”7 That Section 212(f) was being officially used to deny Cubans entry to the United States was confirmed by the formal letter explaining the denial of visas to Cubans invited to the February 2004 Grammy Awards.8 In fall 2004, the Department of State denied visas to sixty-five Cuban scholars who had been accepted to participate in the International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), scheduled for October 7–9, 2004, in Las Vegas, Nevada.9 The visa requests had been pending since May. The U.S. Interests Section in Havana informed the Cuban authorities of the denials on September 28. The visa denial in 2004 effectively prohibited all Cuban scholars from Cuba from participating in LASA for the first time since 1977.10
In explaining the decision, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher made clear that the visas had been denied “as a group” and on political grounds: “This was a group I think of sixty-seven Cuban officials,” he said, “who were intending to come to a conference . . . . I think sixty-eight is the current number of dissidents that Cuba has thrown in jail and is persecuting in its jails, and we just felt it wasn’t appropriate for this many Cuban government officials, ‘academics,’ to come to a conference to spout the party line.” He continued,“Engagement and dialogue is not an end in itself. Engagement and dialogue is a means to achieve U.S. interest. . . . The primary purpose of denying these visas is . . . to bring the pressure on the Cuban government and on people who are employed by the Cuban government so that they understand that their treatment of people in Cuba has implications.”11
The denial of visas to Cuban academics continued. According to one analysis, “between September 2004 and November 2005, only 53 percent of professors from the University of Havana received State Department authorization to travel to the United States” and “between January 2004 and June 2005, Cuba’s Ministry of Culture reported that only 18 percent of Cuban academics working in the arts and humanities received approval from the U.S. State Department to visit the United States.”12
Again, on February 23, 2006, it was made known officially that of the fifty-nine requests by Cuban academics and intellectuals for visas to attend the LASA congress on March 15–18 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, fifty-four had been denied on the basis of Section 212(f). Eventually, as in 2004, no visas would be granted. One State Department functionary told the New York Times in October 2004 that “Cuban academic institutions are state run, and the Cuban government tightly controls the activities of its academic researchers.” The Cuban scholars invited to attend the meeting received notice from the U.S. government that their visas were denied based on section 212(f) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, meaning that allowing them to attend might have been “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
Although implemented in the context of the global war against terrorism, the policy has not been justified on antiterrorism grounds. Instead, it is part of the United States’ increasingly strict sanctions against Cuba, a policy of the Cold War era that has failed for more than forty-five years to achieve its objective—the overthrow of the Cuban government. Ironically, the new restrictions on academic and educational exchange are being implemented in the name of promoting democracy. These developments raise serious questions about the effects of a foreign policy that would seem to isolate the United States, even as U.S. officials speak of the importance of winning the global “battle of ideas” against those who promote terrorism.
Many have expressed their opposition to Bush administration efforts to restrict and reduce academic and educational exchanges between Cuba and the United States. The recommendations of the U.S. Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, for example, have received criticisms from many fronts, including from Inter-American Dialogue, which brings together leaders from throughout the Americas to address hemispheric problems. In September 2004, the group published An Open Letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell Regarding the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. Similarly, LASA was joined by the AAUP and other professional organizations in decrying the denial of visas for the 2004 LASA Congress. The Latin American Working Group, the Washington Office on Latin America, and the Freedom to Travel campaign organized a “Cuba action” day in April 2005. In April 2006, the Emergency Network of Cuban American Scholars and Artists for Change in U.S.-Cuba Policy was created to help bring about an end to a failed policy that defies all sound principles for conducting foreign affairs and to voice outrage at a policy that is inhumane, unjust, illconceived, hypocritical, and contrary to American ideals.
In addition, an Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel has been created, sponsored by the Center for International Policy and the Institute of Shipboard Education. In June 2006, the coalition sued the U.S. Treasury Department in an effort to force the Bush administration to rescind the rule changes made in 2004 that have choked off most academic travel to Cuba. The lawsuit, which is available at www.edcet.org, is challenging the restrictive rules on educational travel in several ways: it requests judicial review of administrative rule making and includes a Fifth Amendment due-process claim of “impermissible infringement on the right to travel” and a First Amendment challenge based on grounds of academic freedom.
In 2006, LASA declared that to ensure participation of all of its members, it would do everything possible to move its 2007 congress, scheduled for Boston, out of the United States. It subsequently held a referendum, which resulted in the relocation of the congress to Montreal.
It is important that all such voices continue to press U.S. policy makers on behalf of freedom of expression and the right to travel.13 Throughout the years of U.S. unilateral economic sanctions against Cuba, it has been scholars and scientists in the two countries who have sustained intellectual and academic relations. At this critical juncture, the two academic communities should join forces to think creatively about ways to maximize the opportunities that do exist for exchanges and collaborations under the current sanctions regulations. This could mean, for example, restructuring programs to meet the current criteria, increasing attention to long-term research projects, designing new publishing collaborations, or considering ways to triangulate activities through third countries. U.S. colleges and universities are already beginning to develop more semester-long programs in Cuba to meet the ten-week stipulation. What is absolutely fundamental is that academic institutions not give up their commitment to engage Cuba. Academic and educational exchanges between Cuba and the United States should be guided by internationally recognized norms of freedom of thought and expression and due respect for sovereignty, independence, and self-determination. Exchange programs should be conducted on the basis of mutual respect and benefit, and academic relations should not be employed as an instrument of foreign policy nor regulated for political or ideological ends.
Addendum
On July 10, as this paper was being prepared for publication, the U.S. Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba issued a new report claiming the success of measures the U.S. government introduced in 2004 to bring about the end of the Castro regime, including restrictions on academic exchanges. The full report is available at http://www.cafc.gov/documents/organization/68166.pdf. In light of this report, it seems likely that restrictions on educational and academic exchanges between Cuba and the United States will increase. It is therefore necessary to seek alternatives that will allow us to maintain and even expand these interactions. ¨
Notes
1. This is an edited summary that draws from the report of the “Rethinking Academic Exchange(s) between Cuba and the United States” working group project. Funded by the Ford Foundation between 2003 and 2006, the project’s objective was to explore and recommend alternatives that will allow us to maintain the relations between Cuban and U.S. academic communities that have developed over nearly thirty years. The members of the working group are Milagros Martínez, Senior Adviser, International Relations, University of Havana; Soraya Castro, Senior Researcher, Center for the Study of the United States, University of Havana; Carlos Alzugaray, Professor, Higher Institute of International Relations, Havana; Louis A. Pérez, Jr., J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor, History Department, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Kimberly Stanton, Associate Director, Project Counselling Services; and Sheryl L. Lutjens, Professor, Political Science Department, and Director, Women’s Studies Program, Northern Arizona University.
2. Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, “Executive Summary,” Report to the President (Washington, D.C.: U.S. State Department, 2004), 7. The report is available at http://www.state.gov/p/wha/rt/cuba/commission/2004.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid. The specific requirement that shorter programs may be approved if they promote the interests of the United States was eliminated in the final regulations, but nothing has been issued that contravenes the intent expressed in the commission report.
5. NAFSA: Association of International Educators, “Institutions Reporting Cuba Program Cancellations” (the results of a survey sent out to the Listserv SECUSS-L on December 5, 2004),http://www.nafsa.org/public_policy.sec/study_abroad_2/cuba_travel_
restrictions/institutions_reporting.
6. Milagros Martínez Reinosa, Carmen Castillo Herrera, and Mayra Heydrich, “Los programas de semestre de los estudiantes norteamericanos en la Universidad de La Habana” (presentation at the XII Encuentro Mundial de Educación Comparada, Havana, October 2004).
7. On October 4, 1985, U.S. president Ronald Reagan issued Presidential Proclamation 5377, titled Suspension of Entry as Nonimmigrants by Officers or Employees of the Government of Cuba or the Communist Party of Cuba. Since all education and research institutions in Cuba were state entities,the proclamation meant that any scholar or scientist could be denied entry simply by virtue of the fact that his or her employer was the Cuban state. Visa denials based on this provision fall under section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, as amended by 8 U.S.C. 1182(f).
8. Ned Sublette, “The Missing Cuban Musicians” (Albuquerque, N.M.: Cuba Research and Analysis Group, June 24, 2004), 14.
9. With over 5,000 members, LASA is the largest multidisciplinary professional association for individuals and institutions engaged in the study of Latin America. Its mission is to “foster intellectual discussion, research, and teaching on Latin America, the Caribbean, and its people throughout the Americas, promote the interests of its diverse membership, and encourage civic engagement through network building and public debate.” See http://lasa.international.pitt.eduaboutlasa.htm.
10. State Department Daily Press Briefing, Washington, D.C., October 7, 2004, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2004/36917.htm.
11. Ibid.
12. Lorena Barberia, “Harvard’s Cuban Visa Denial Memo,” January 6, 2006. Open letter from Barberia, a program associate at Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Copy available at http://www.cubacentral.com/todaysnewsdetail.cfm? ID=1318.
13. The advocacy agenda should include rescinding U.S. Presidential Proclamation 5377 and recognizing the prerogatives of universities to develop and control their curricula free of political intervention or oversight by government officials. Legislation to lift the ban on travel should be passed again as soon as possible. The politicization of decisions about the entry of Cubans using Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act should end. Until the travel ban can be lifted completely, graduate, undergraduate, and short-term educational exchanges should be authorized by general license.
The individual papers published in this special section of Academe are reflections on the AAUP report On Academic Boycotts, which appears on pages 39–43. The papers were prepared for a conference on academic boycotts that was to have been held in February 2006 at the Rockefeller Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy. Although the conference was canceled, the AAUP resolved to publish the papers so as to present the viewpoints that would have been debated at the conference. All conference invitees were invited to submit their papers for publication; some chose not to do so, as Joan Wallach Scott explains in the introduction that follows. The publication of this issue of Academe and these papers was supported by the Ford Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Ernst Benjamin and Joan Wallach Scott, both members of the subcommittee of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure that organized the conference, edited the papers. The opinions expressed in the papers are those of the authors and do not represent the views or policies of the AAUP.
Ur Shlonsky,
Professor of Linguistics,
University of Geneva
There is no justification, in my judgment, for a boycott singling out or targeting academics. However, I do not see any justification for excluding academics, universities, or research institutes from the scope of a by a large number of Palestinian nongovernmental organizations and advocated by a growing number of movements throughout the world. A generalized boycott of Israel, one that targets Israeli exports, material as well as cultural, and sanctions staterun or state-affiliated institutions is, from a moral point of view, fully justifiable. I think a convincing argument can be made to the effect that boycott, divestment, and sanctions are about the only nonviolent measures that, at this stage, are likely to have an effect on the war that Israel is waging against the Palestinians.
It is sometimes argued—for example, in the AAUP report—that a boycott of Israeli academic institutions harms academic freedom. The argument is based on a distinction that the AAUP report introduces between economic and academic boycotts. The former “seek to bring pressure to bear on the regime responsible for violations of rights. They are not meant to impair the ability of scholars to write, teach, and pursue research.” The latter “strike directly at the free exchange of ideas.”
The only difference I can discern between an “economic” and an “academic” boycott is between the intent and the consequences. An economic boycott would, by definition, include the suspension of international funding and subsidies to Israeli academic institutions, since they are state or public institutions. It might have the consequence of limiting academic exchanges of various sorts but that would not be its primary intent. An economic boycott thus entails the academic one but does not single out academics in any specific sense.
In this framework, the suspension of academic activities, such as participation in international conferences and publication in international journals, would be tantamount to job losses incurred by agricultural workers as a consequence of a drop in sales due to a consumer boycott. Given the arguably higher moral imperative of bringing Israeli actions against Palestinians to a halt, this does not seem to be an unreasonable price. Moreover, some academic activities would be entirely unaffected by such an international boycott, or only indirectly and marginally so. These include local teaching and Web publication. I therefore cannot consider the potential consequences of a boycott of Israel as inherently inimical to the principle of academic freedom.
Finally, I agree with the AAUP report’s characterization of boycotts as tactical weapons in political struggles and not as matters of principle. I beg to differ, however, from the report’s conclusion that “from a tactical standpoint . . . the . . . academic boycott seems a weak . . . tool.” In fact, I think the opposite is true. Given the very wide publicity, and, in certain quarters, the hysteria generated by the boycott initiative, be it the British Association of University Teachers’ April 2005 boycott call, the (much weaker) 2002 call by the Paris VI university administration to halt an Israel-European Union educational cooperation agreement on human rights grounds, the Presbyterian Church’s July 2004 initiation of a selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel, or the December 2005 motion by the Sør-Trøndelag region in Norway to boycott Israeli goods, one can only conclude that boycott is actually a very effective educational tool. It has so far enhanced rather than vitiated public debate on Israel and its policies.
The continuation of the Israeli occupation depends, to a large degree, on the support Israel receives from the international community. The boycott, in its various forms, undermines this support. This is why Israel and the pro-Israeli forces in the West are so energetically opposed to it, a fact that, in turn, argues for the judiciousness of a generalized boycott as a tactical weapon.
The individual papers published in this special section of Academe are reflections on the AAUP report On Academic Boycotts, which appears on pages 39–43. The papers were prepared for a conference on academic boycotts that was to have been held in February 2006 at the Rockefeller Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy. Although the conference was canceled, the AAUP resolved to publish the papers so as to present the viewpoints that would have been debated at the conference. All conference invitees were invited to submit their papers for publication; some chose not to do so, as Joan Wallach Scott explains in the introduction that follows. The publication of this issue of Academe and these papers was supported by the Ford Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Ernst Benjamin and Joan Wallach Scott, both members of the subcommittee of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure that organized the conference, edited the papers. The opinions expressed in the papers are those of the authors and do not represent the views or policies of the AAUP.
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