From the General Secretary: Silence Is Not the Answer
By Roger Bowen
Not long ago, an Israeli colleague and I exchanged a series of e-mail messages about a conference on academic boycotts that was to take place in Bellagio, Italy, earlier this year. (The papers from the conference, which was ultimately canceled, appear elsewhere in this issue of Academe.) About midway in our exchanges, I grew impatient with his eagerness to prejudge the content of the discussion at the conference. He replied, “Bellagio would have been another battle over Israel and not a general academic discussion of academic boycotts and politics.” (The conference was conceived following an unsuccessful call by the British Association for University Teachers for an academic boycott of two Israeli universities. The AAUP issued a statement in May 2005 condemning the proposed boycott.)
I responded, “Tough to find common ground. I must observe that you have been battling so long that even your allies on this issue can be mistaken for being opponents. You see problems; I see opportunities for communication, perhaps even the possibility for greater understanding.” He conceded that “I believe you are a well-intentioned ally. But there are also some important differences between us, and I have seen many well-intentioned initiatives turn into counterproductive failures. . . . You are in the United States, but I live in the middle of this war zone and have seen the horrible results of generations of hatred.”
How to interpret this exchange? The AAUP, my Israeli colleague is saying, is incapable of the sympathetic imagination necessary to play a constructive role. He believes that we Americans are innocents and, as such, should not try to insinuate ourselves into their conflict. Does he not see that the alternative to dialogue is silence? Does he believe that an international community of scholars is merely a quaint or vain ideal? Does he not see that the principle of academic freedom must endure long after the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has been settled?
Following the AAUP’s condemnation of the proposed boycott of the two Israeli universities, I received thank-you notes from Israeli scholars. But in 2006, shortly after we released a list of invitees to the Bellagio conference, these same friends quickly became polite adversaries who questioned the wisdom of the AAUP’s decision to invite Palestinians favoring an academic boycott. Telling the Israelis that we were intellectually and ethically secure enough with the strength of our statement condemning boycotts to subject it to criticism did not mollify our Israeli colleagues. They wanted control over our guest list and opposed the AAUP’s decision to invite people whom they perceived as enemies.
It was as if only the main parties to the conflict had the right to decide who should be permitted to speak about it. And this observation applies no less to the Palestinians who were invited to Bellagio.
Numerous exchanges were required with Palestinian invitees before they were convinced that they were not being “set up” by a pro-Israeli AAUP, which, from their perspective, erred in inviting several virulent anti-Palestinian Israelis to the conference.
Yet our Palestinian colleagues were willing to take a chance and engage in the debate. Why them and not four of our invitees, two of whom are Israeli, who had already submitted papers for the conference but who refused to have them printed in the special section on Bellagio in this issue of Academe? I think the answer lies in the power differential separating them. The Palestinian scholars do not have the same high level of access to an international forum as the Israelis and are therefore eager to have their views aired. The Israelis, on the other hand, balk at the prospect of appearing in the same publication with their Palestinian colleagues, apparently fearing that doing so could be construed as legitimizing their enemies’ standing as credible thinkers.
We believed that this issue of Academe offered an opportunity for an honest intellectual exchange between the disputants that would relieve them of the burden of having to face one another in the same room. It is therefore a pity that some of our invitees chose not to contribute to it. But the Israeli boycott of this issue is no reason to disallow the Palestinians, and the other invitees who take different positions on academic boycotts, from having their arguments presented. Although we sought to offer a “balance” of perspectives, we must settle for promoting public understanding as we reaffirm our commitment to academic freedom. ¨
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