Public Policy Research Academic Boycotts Debate (Nussbaum v Abed)

Can(Israeli) academicboycotts bejustified?

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MarthaNussbaum isErnstFreundDistinguishedServiceProfessorofLawand PhilosophyattheUniversityofChicago. MohammedAbedisattheUniversityofWisconsin-Madison.

DearMohammedAbed, I do not plan to discuss specific facts concerning boycotts of Israeli academic institutions and individuals. There are three reasons for this silence. First, I believe that philosophers should be pursuing philosophical principles – defensible principles that can be applied to a wide range of cases. We cannot easily tell whether our principles are good ones by looking at a single case, without inquiring as to whether the principles we propose could be applied to all similar cases. Second, I am uneasy with the singleminded focus on Israel. It is unseemly for Americans to discuss boycotts of another country on the other side of the world without posing questions about American policies and actions that are not above scrutiny. Nor should we fail to investigate comparable cases concerning other nations. For example, one might consider possible responses to the genocide of Muslim civilians in the Indian state of Gujarat in the year 2002, a pogrom organised by the state government and given aid and comfort by the national government of that time.

I am disturbed by the world’s failure to consider such relevantly similar cases. I have heard nothing about boycotting Indian academic institutions and individuals, nor have I heard anything about the case in favour of an international boycott of US academic institutions and individuals. I would not favour an academic boycott in any of these cases, but I think that they ought to be considered alongside further cases in which governments are doing morally questionable things. One might consider, for example, the Chinese government’s record on human rights; South Korea’s lamentable sexism; the failure of a large number of the world’s nations to take effective action in defence of women’s bodily integrity and human equality; and many other cases. Indeed, gross indifference to the lives and health of women has never been considered as a reason for boycott, a failure of impartiality that struck me even in the days of the South Africa boycott. Eminent thinkers alleged that the case of South Africa was unique because a segment of the population was systematically unequal

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PPRdebate

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Some distinctions When people believe that a serious wrong has been done by some organisation and its agents, there are a number of options open to those who want to express condemnation. Boycotts are not the only option. Several others have been used effectively in comparable cases. 1. Censure. Censure is the public condemnation of an institution, usually by another institution: for example, a professional association might censure an academic institution that violates the rights of scholars. Censure takes various forms, but the usual form is some sort of widely disseminated public statement that the institution in question has engaged in such and such wrongful action. Censure seems appropriate when the professional organisation can reach a consensus about the badness of the actions in question and when it desires to place blame on the institutions, whether academic or governmental, that perpetrated the wrongs, rather than to include all the individuals in those institutions. Censure does nothing to diminish the academic freedom or access of individuals. publicpolicyresearch–December2007-February2008

2. Organised public condemnation. Sometimes organised movements carry out campaigns to alert the public to the wrongful actions of an institution, without targeting its workers. Most of the international consumer protest movement against the clothing industry has taken this form. Thus, movement members will try to circulate documents to customers of the retail outlets where objects made by child labour are being sold, and will try to make customers aware of the behaviour of the corporation in question. The customers themselves can then choose whether to buy from the retail chain or not. This sort of public condemnation is different from a boycott of retail outlets, because it allows individual consumer choice, and does not directly threaten the livelihood of workers.

3. Organised public condemnation of an individual or individuals. When it is believed that certain individuals bear culpability for particular wrongs, then it is possible to work for the condemnation of those individuals. Thus, if Martin Heidegger had been invited to the University of Chicago, I would have been among those conducting a public protest against his appearance, and informing others about his record of Nazi collaboration. 4. Failure to reward. Some modes of interaction are part of the discourse of daily scholarly business; others imply approval of an institution or individual. Without going so far as to censure the institution or individual, people might decide that this individual does not deserve special honours. The failure-to-reward tactic can also be applied to academic institutions. There are institutional types of funding that reward meritorious programmes; one might, in some cases of competition for merit grants, refuse to reward Israel, without endorsing a boycott. 5. Helping the harmed. Usually, when wrong has been done, some people have suffered, and one response would be to focus on helping those harmed. For example, many scholars concerned about the 2002 Gujarat 219

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under the law, a situation that, of course, was, and still is, that of women in a large number of countries. By failing to consider all possible applications of our principles we are failing to deliberate well about the choice of principles. For, a world in which there was a boycott of all US, Indian, and Israeli scholars, and no doubt many others as well, let us say those of China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia (on grounds of sexism), and Pakistan (on the same grounds, though there has been a bit of progress lately) would be quite different from a world in which only scholars from one small nation were being boycotted. The third reason why I shall speak abstractly is that I am not a Middle East expert; above all, I shall be looking for general and defensible principles.

6. Being vigilant on behalf of the truth. Often, people who commit wrongs shade the truth in their public statements; it is extremely important for scholars to combat falsehoods and incomplete truths. Here again, the case of the Hindu right is instructive. It has a quite false view of history, according to which Hindus are always peaceful and Muslims are always villains. When they published this in textbooks for public schools in India, there was a tremendous outpouring of scholarship showing exactly what was and is wrong with it. After the election of 2004, those textbooks were withdrawn. Boycotts We now have six alternatives before us. Let us discuss boycotts, which are blunt instruments. Typically, they target all the members of an institution, as well as the institution itself. They suggest that all members of the institution deserve condemnation.

Itisdifficulttoseewhata symbolicboycottaccomplishes thatcannotbemore effectivelyaccomplishedby alternativessuchascensureor organisedpublicprotest Before we can go further, however, we need to distinguish between two different types of boycott – the economic and the symbolic. Economic boycotts may contain a symbolic element, but their primary purpose is to have a serious economic impact, although an economic boycott is rarely a clear-cut proposition symbolically. The most famous example of the economic boycott is that of South Africa. This 220

boycott clearly had a strong symbolic aspect, especially the part of it devoted to divestiture of university stock holdings. But its primary rationale was economic, and that was how it intended to accomplish the goal of social change – by getting businesses to change their actions. Very different is the purely symbolic boycott. Here, the aim is not to have any tangible effect on people’s lives. Instead, the purpose is to make a public statement about the wrongfulness of what a given institution has done, by encouraging people to shun not only the institution, but its members. The hope is to persuade people of the wrongfulness of what has happened. It is difficult to see what a symbolic boycott accomplishes that cannot be more effectively accomplished by alternatives such as censure or organised public protest. I suspect, in the case of Israel, it would not be easy to find a single account of the reasons behind the boycott that would command the agreement of its participants. Nor is it clear who is doing it: in this case there are journals, professional associations, and individuals, all forming a loosely linked movement. Organised public protest also has superior clarity: each group issues its own public statements, signed by its own officers or representatives: we know who is speaking and what they are saying. The case of Israel The proponents of the movement to boycott Israel hold that serious wrongs have been committed by the Israeli government. What they propose, however, is not to take direct action against the government or its members, but to target academic institutions and the individuals within. The rationale for this targeting is: first, that these are public institutions and, thus, arms of government; and, second, that some of them have engaged in questionable actions themselves. I would say that the first rationale is weak. The fact that a public university receives government funding does not confer complicity for all decisions of the gov-

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genocide in India put aside engagements and went to help the victims find shelter, file complaints, and so on. Others defended scholars who had been threatened with violence by the Hindu right.

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ference to their business. It doesn’t make practical sense to boycott scholars, typically among the most powerless of society’s members, and it also doesn’t make symbolic sense. These scholars have not been forming national policy; most of them would not even get a chance to publish their views on the op-ed page of a major newspaper. In defence of the boycott, people say that scholars in Israel have not condemned the government as fully as they could. As a rationale for harm, this is implausible and repugnant to the core values of academic life. One aspect of being powerless is that one’s voice is not heard in the corridors of power, and I expect that (a) lots of Israeli scholars do have critical views but these views don’t appear in the news, and (b) that many are deterred from trying to write for newspapers for the same reasons that few Americans write for newspapers: that one almost never gets accepted there, and so it is a waste of time. Moreover, being a good chemist or classicist does not entail being a good writer of op-ed articles. Israeli scholars may well just be doing what they are good at doing. I think that we can only debate this question in a philosophically respectable way if we first offer a principled account of the responsibility of scholars to engage in public debate. If we have such an account, we can at least say who is violating it, in a principled and impartial way. But what disturbs me about the proponents of the boycott is that they lack such an account, and certainly do not comment on the actions of scholars in the United States vis-à-vis US foreign policy, or the actions of Indian scholars vis-à-vis HinduMuslim relations in India, or the actions of South Korean or Pakistani scholars vis-à-vis the alarming levels of violence against women in those nations. Yet, lacking an account that they would be prepared to defend and apply impartially, they wish to impose damages on Israeli scholars. An even more ominous suggestion on the part of the proponents of the boycotts is that scholars will be exempted from the boycott if they take public positions that the supporters of the boycotts approve. This is incredibly naïve, because it assumes that all scholars, 221

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ernment. The public universities of India and the United States cannot be held accountable for particular actions of the US and Indian governments. The second rationale is something else. If a group of people believe that some Israeli universities have violated the civil rights of Arab students or engaged in some other questionable form of conduct, then it seems right to protest against that specific wrongdoing. But censure and/or organised public protest would seem the means most appropriate to that goal. I must comment on one alarming rationale that has been offered in this context. In some of the defences of the boycotts, the wrongdoing alleged is failure to dismiss scholars who take positions that the group of boycotters dislikes. Here, the principle of academic freedom becomes urgently relevant. Surely the institutions in question should protect these people, unless they do something that counts as hate speech targeted at individuals, or some other form of criminal conduct. We all know what happened in the McCarthy era, when scholars were fired for positions that a dominant group didn’t like. I believe that, if this principle is breached, it will hurt most those whose positions go most against the dominant currents of governmental power: feminists, advocates of gay rights, whatever. The principled argument is that nobody should be fired for a political position, left or right, short of threats, assault or sexual harassment – the legitimate reasons for faculty dismissal. Now, to turn to the main force of the boycott: the boycotting of individual members of the academic institutions. This seems to me a useless policy. If one has objections to the government of Israel, how could one suppose that it could be swayed in any way by imposing publication disabilities on powerless young scholars? Boycotts are supposed to arm the weak against the powerful, and that is how economic boycotts have their success – by showing the powerful that a large number of people, weak in isolation, can make a dif-

DearMarthaNussbaum, You develop an argument against academic boycotts in general, and boycotts of Israeli academia in particular. The argument pro222

ceeds by first noting that boycotts are but one option open to those who wish to condemn and resist wrongdoing; second, that, in a wide range of cases, boycotts were less effective and morally more troubling than the alternatives presented. From there, on the basis of an analogy to the IsraelPalestine case, you conclude that a boycott of Israeli academia is neither necessary nor likely to succeed, and, therefore, unjustified. I will, however, point to two ways in which your argument goes astray. First, the analogy between Israel-Palestine and the cases you discuss is weak. Although your strategies may work well in other contexts, they are unlikely to have an impact on the situation in Israel-Palestine. Over the years, mobilisations of the kind you favour have consistently failed to yield tangible results. Boycotts are likely to be more effective for two reasons: they are comparatively immune to government interference, and their impact on the oppressive situation is more direct. I discuss these points in the course of presenting the case for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Second, I will show that boycotts are not ‘blunt instruments’ that target institutions and their members. Boycotts can be structured so as to censure and isolate institutions, while preserving the academic freedom of individuals – whatever their views. I sketch a model that shows how this can be done, and explain why a boycott ought to be structured in this way. This shows that what you argue against is not academic boycotts per se, but a specific kind of boycott proposal, so that, even if your argument works, little follows. The term ‘military occupation’ conjures up images of soldiers maintaining law and order in a territory following an armed conflict. This image fails to convey the harm done to Palestinian civilians living under Israeli control in the West Bank and Gaza, where Israel still controls Gaza’s borders, coastline, and airspace, and can intervene militarily at will, thus effectively occupying it, ‘disengagement’ notwithstanding. Since it assumed control of these areas, Israel has made it difficult for the Palestinians to maintain a meaningful con-

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young and old, no matter what their field, could publish something in the press if they tried to, a clearly false assumption. It also violates a core principle of academic freedom, that the positions taken by scholars about political matters are not relevant to their academic employment. There are limits to this, where the individual in question commits some crime – for example, assault or sexual harassment. But for a group to say that journals and academic conferences have a litmus test, namely a particular position on the actions of the government of Israel, is infinitely more threatening than a simple boycott of all Israeli scholars. Scholars who have strong views about the Israeli government would be well- advised, I think, to focus on the tactic of organised, nonviolent, non-disruptive public protest, directed at the government and its key actors. If an academic institution in Israel has committed a specific reprehensible act, then censure is appropriate. If an individual member of an academic institution has committed reprehensible acts, then those acts should be publicised and criticised by anyone who wants to criticise them, and one might also oppose rewarding such an individual with an honorary degree. I have argued that any more negative action, such as firing the individual, should be undertaken only in a narrow range of timehonoured cases, such as criminal acts or sexual harassment. All involved should focus on stating the facts to the general public, and making good arguments about those facts. The academic boycott is a poor choice of strategies, and some of the justifications offered for it are downright alarming. Economic boycotts are occasionally valuable. Symbolic boycotts are rarely valuable in comparison with the alternatives I have mentioned, and the boycott in this case is weakly grounded.

Issuesoffairnessaside,the ‘peaceprocess’isunlikely evertocometoaconclusion intheabsenceofoutside pressure All these measures are enforced with lethal violence, making fear a constant feature of daily life. Israel’s expansion into the West Bank has also resulted in the displacement of enormous numbers of Palestinian civilians, the uprooting of millions of olive trees, and denial of access to natural resources. The separation barrier has only added to these effects. The wall also puts the two largest water aquifers in the West Bank out of reach of the Palestinians and, thereby, places further obstacles in the way of their national existence. Although Israel is not exceptionally wicked for having treated the Palestinians thus, the harms I have described are sufficient to warrant third-party intervention. The rationale for intervention is strengthened by at least three other factors. The first is the sheer length of time that Israel has managed to escape being held to account for its various crimes, including the ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Palestinians. Second, Israel-Palestine contributes to regional and global violence and instability to an extent that other conflicts do not, making it even more urgent that a solution be found. Third, the Western world privileges Israel with unprecedented levels of support in which we, as US citizens and taxpayers, are implicated. It seems only decent to withdraw this support if it facilitates serious wrongdoing; this is, in part, what a boycott calls for.

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But these considerations are not sufficient to show that a civil-society boycott – let alone an academic boycott – is justified. It is often argued that a civil-society boycott is unnecessary because the official ‘peace process’, such as the ‘Road Map’, has yet to run its course. Issues of fairness aside, the ‘peace process’ is unlikely ever to come to a conclusion in the absence of outside pressure. Although the United States will continue to push the Palestinians to uphold the bargain, it has consistently rewarded Israel even in the face of intransigence and criminal behaviour. The European Union has been less supportive of Israel, but has failed to apply the political and economic pressure required to implement the measures on which the ‘peace process’ depends. The UN has neither the resources nor the political will to act without the support of powerful nations. Let us now reconsider your position. You acknowledge the need for international civil-society intervention, but suggest that, instead of boycotting Israeli academia, we might take direct action against the Israeli government on the grounds that it, not academia, is responsible for wrongs committed against the Palestinians. This overlooks ways in which Israel’s academic establishment has long supported government policy toward the Palestinians. Hebrew University and Bar Ilan have bolstered the state’s expropriation of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank by establishing new facilities in these areas. Academics at Haifa University played a crucial role in determining the route of the separation barrier, a measure declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. In the Modi case, concerned academics petitioned the US State Department requesting that he be refused a diplomatic visa, an action that eventually proved successful. The idea is that analogous actions would be equally successful in the case of Israel-Palestine. In making this claim, you underestimate what has been done so far, by academics, by American citizens from other walks of life,

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nection to cultural traditions and inter-generational projects. It has destroyed institutions and prevented civilians from gaining access to the goods these institutions afford. An example of the former is the constant assault on the Palestinian educational sector, of the latter the use of such policies as closure, curfew, and the ‘pass system’ to restrict the movement of individuals.

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demnation lack this coercive aspect. Second, although boycotts aim to restore the academic rights of Israeli-Arab and/or Palestinian academics, they do this by addressing the wider problems faced by their respective communities. A comprehensive strategy of this sort is indispensable to creating the political conditions in which academic rights can be realised. The most that your approach can do is restore these rights temporarily, and in a limited number of cases. In the forms in which you advocate them, it is difficult to see how your strategies count as effective resistance to oppression. Although it is only right to punish or shun individuals responsible for serious wrongdoing, it is, at best, unclear whether this will be sufficient to deter others from similar actions, let alone influence government policy in a positive direction. Piecemeal efforts at censure and organised public condemnation can promote awareness of various wrongs, but they do little to disrupt an institution’s usual pattern of activity. Without disruption of this sort, the institution is unlikely to be pressured into behavioural reform. Because they follow this logic, boycotts are more appropriate to the goal of encouraging positive social change. One often hears the objection that some forms of wrongdoing – such as genocide – are worse than others; that it would be unfair to call for a boycott of Israel while not advocating the use of similar remedies to stem the government-sponsored slaughter of civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan, for example. The response here is that boycotts are an appropriate and effective form of nonviolent resistance in a limited number of cases. This depends on whether or not the perpetrator society is susceptible to outside pressure. The argument on ‘double standards’ will work only if a boycott of Sudanese or Chinese academia enjoys a similar prospect of success as a boycott of their Israeli counterpart. The facts suggest otherwise.

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and by various advocacy and human rights groups employing just about every strategy under the sun. However, these efforts have had comparatively little impact. The US support of Israel creates a different domestic political climate than the one needed to underwrite your analogy. Support for Israel is dictated by US strategic interests in the Middle East, but also by a range of lobby groups that have the resources necessary to influence the political process. Unless this process undergoes democratic reform, strategies that have a greater impact on the oppressive situation will be more effective. I question your suggestion further, by examining cases where stronger forms of organised public condemnation were employed in a political climate less hostile to the Palestinian cause. In recent years, concerned civil-society actors have initiated various attempts to prosecute suspected Israeli war criminals under the principle of universal jurisdiction. In 2006, a district court in New Zealand issued an arrest warrant for former Israeli Defence Force chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, for his role in the 2002 assassination of Salah Shehada, suspected of being the founder of Hamas’s military wing. New Zealand’s attorney general stayed the prosecution permanently. The lawyers acting on behalf of the plaintiffs pointed out that political expediency had triumphed over justice yet again. If this is the case in a relatively neutral country, then surely the odds on this strategy succeeding in the United States are not good. You also suggest that if one wants to protest against specific wrongs committed by Israeli universities, censure and/or organised public condemnation would be more appropriate to that goal than boycotts. There are two senses in which this misconstrues a boycott’s objectives. First, although boycotts have an expressive function, they aim to terminate rather than simply protest against wrongdoing by making a continuation of the status quo costly. In a piecemeal fashion, censure and organised public con-

EuropeanandAmerican academicsareparticularly wellplacedtodosomething aboutIsrael’scrimes Israeli academia attaches greater value, and benefits more, from its relationship with the academic (and political) establishment in the United States and Europe than do academic institutions in countries such as China or Sudan. This makes Israeli academia more susceptible to outside pressure. In Israel’s case, a boycott will be especially disruptive and inconvenient. Because the disapproval it expresses would be of great social significance, a boycott of Israeli academia would also instil a sense of cultural isolation and shame in the group at which it is directed. These facts also show that European and American academics are particularly well placed to do something about Israel’s crimes, which they enable by paying taxes, and have, so far, failed to protest against in a systematic way. When so much is at stake, and a potent remedy available, it would be unseemly not to target Israel, and this would be the case even if Israel was neither exceptionally nor especially cruel toward its subject populations. Moreover, it seems peculiar to think that the Sudanese or Chinese academic establishments can influence the policies of their respective governments as effectively as institutions in Israel. Israel is a relatively free and open democratic society that protects the rights of the majority of its citizens, something that can hardly be said of China – or most of the Arab states, for that matter. The idea that academics in Israel are a publicpolicyresearch–December2007-February2008

politically impotent bunch is belied by the history of their collaboration with the government. What matters most is that most Israeli academics are Jewish citizens of Israel and – unlike citizens of China – they can protest and actively resist government policy without fear of serious retribution. Thus, it makes better sense to apply outside pressure to the academic establishment in Israel than it does to pressure its counterparts in countries such as China. We agree about the practical difficulties involved in boycotting individual academics, although I am less convinced that the minor harms suffered by individuals are unjustified, given the good consequences that would follow an end to Israel’s occupation. Nevertheless, a boycott will be a more potent measure if it ostracises institutions while simultaneously maximising opportunities for interaction between their members and those individuals responsible for implementing the boycott. In circumstances where it is difficult to precisely assign responsibility, a blanket boycott will lead many individuals to feel unfairly targeted. This is unlikely to persuade them to reform either their institutions or their government’s policies. Here, I note that Israeli academics are influential in two important respects. First, they are the individuals best placed to pressure academic institutions into taking an official stand against the government’s appalling treatment of the Palestinians. Were they to act collectively, these institutions would, no doubt, have a significant impact on their government’s conduct. Second, academics are well-respected members of society and, thus, in a good position to influence public opinion on important issues. A boycott structured in this way might include your strategy of not rewarding institutions engaged in wrongdoing. American and European academics could refuse to implement various state-level academic agreements that provide scholarships, facilitate co-operation, and provide funding for joint projects. Co-opera225

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There is no inconsistency in maintaining that something ought to be done about all these cases, while insisting that immediate action be taken against Israel on strategic grounds. To claim otherwise would result in an intractable debate about whether one country is ‘worse’ than another; from there, a state of moral paralysis would quickly follow.

Aboycottneednotshowan absenceofacademic hospitality,lackclarity,or failtosupportIsraeli-led resistancetothestatusquo Academics in these countries might also build momentum behind international efforts to overturn restrictions on foreign passport holders living and working in the Palestinian areas, by engaging in work at Palestinian institutions. This would be a powerful and constructive form of organised public condemnation, because it would add to the isolation of academic institutions in Israel, confront and draw attention to the government’s draconian policies, and put Israeli, European, and American academics faceto-face with each other and with the appalling conditions in which Palestinians are forced to live. Lastly, European and American academics could act by reforming their own institutions if they are invested in corporations that support or benefit from Israel’s regime in the West Bank and Gaza. The effort to divest from these corporations would send a clear message of rebuke to the Israeli government, help ease the suffering of Palestinian civilians, and communicate a posture of non-compliance with current US foreign policy. None of the practical or moral prob226

lems that you identify arise in connection with my boycott model. Boycotts are not ‘blunt instruments’. They can be designed so as to avoid minor cases of injustice to individual academics and still be effective. Because a boycott can be directed solely at institutions, the issue of how to specify criteria for the exemption of individuals doesn’t even arise. Institutions are to be exempt if their conduct is deemed consistent with widely held standards, and if they cease to aid and abet their government’s treatment of the Palestinians. A boycott need not show an absence of academic hospitality, lack clarity, or fail to support Israeli-led resistance to the status quo. In the particular form in which you advocate them, your strategies fall short of boycotts. They will only be effective as part of a systematic campaign to ostracise and express disapproval of institutions engaged in harmful practices. You can ensure the success of your approach only by endorsing a boycott structured in the way I have suggested.

DearMohammed, As before, I shall not debate specific facts concerning Israel and Palestine. As my article went to press, however, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) in Britain voted to boycott Israeli universities and academics. I shall discuss this case, because it illustrates several points in my argument. Your proposal has two parts: first, that American and European academics might refuse to take part in academic activities inside Israel; second, and most centrally, that they should work together on creating dialogue by engaging with Palestinian universities in ways that ‘put Israeli, European, and American academics faceto-face with each other and with the appalling conditions in which Palestinians are forced to live’. I find the latter proposal a wonderful idea, and I hope to join you in organising

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tion would resume once Israeli policy became consistent with international law. This would censure the Israeli academic establishment, targeting the state in at least a symbolic way, while providing individuals with incentives to challenge the policies of their government. American and European academics could also decline to take part in academic activities inside Israel and refuse to deal with Israeli institutions by not participating in joint research, conferences, or other official collaborative activity.

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Because you agree with me that boycotts should not target vulnerable, powerless individual academics, and because you believe that what the region needs is more dialogue and understanding, I am puzzled that you support an academic boycott at all. If a given university has engaged in wrongful practices, it is possible for a group to censure that university or any culpable individuals involved and/or to organise non-violent public protest against their activities. To boycott the institution as a whole will sweep those individuals whom we agree we do not want to harm into the condemnation. Many versions of such a boycott also violate a key principle of academic freedom, making normal academic relations with an individual conditional on that individual’s political position. I believe you reject such conditions. Your argument appears strategic: we have tried these other measures, you say, and they have not worked. Isolating all the individual scholars and students might work. I find this distasteful. Because targeting the real wrongdoers has not worked, should one really target people whose involvement in the alleged wrongs is simply the involvement of any citizen of a nation? I can’t imagine that such boycotts will work either, given the powerlessness of academics. I worry that important moral principles are being violated for instrumental reasons. Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr, were correct: one should persist with the strategy that is morally appropriate, even if it does not appear to work for a time. Sooner or later, it may yet work; and, even if it does not, one’s choice of morally appropriate tactics will inspire respect for one’s cause and its people. Your response to my ‘double standards’ argument is, again, strategic: it will do no good to boycott Sudanese or Chinese universities and scholars, but it might do some good in the case of Israel, which is sensitive to the world community in a way that those nations are not. This argument seems to me to tell in favour of the tactics I recommend: censure and public protest 227

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such a conference. However, the goal of increasing understanding will be reached only if Israeli academics are included; so it would appear that you do not favour the ostracism of individual academics that the British boycott proposes. You later confirm this reading, when you speak of crafting any boycott so as to avoid ‘minor cases of injustice to individual academics’. I do not believe that refusing to publish people’s articles, refusing to referee their materials for tenure, refusing to write letters of recommendation, and refusing to invite them to conferences are at all ‘minor’, particularly for younger academics. We can agree, however, that such measures would not contribute to the type of understanding that you seek, and I am glad you oppose them. I call on you to denounce the British resolution as inappropriate. As far as I can see, your proposal amounts to a boycott only in the sense that it asks foreign academics not to give lectures or hold conferences inside Israel. At the last American Philosophical Association conference, you proposed that those invited to such conferences ask that they be relocated to a Palestinian venue. This is often a good idea, but not always. A conference on social justice could usefully be relocated, and all involved would likely profit from the experience of meeting in East Jerusalem or on the West Bank. By contrast, a lecture I plan to give at Hebrew University this December, in memory of a scholar who dedicated his career to rabbinical education, could not plausibly be relocated, since rabbinical education is not a topic on which Palestinian academics focus; to lecture on that topic on the West Bank would be utterly bizarre. But to refuse to give such a lecture on the grounds that it cannot usefully be relocated would impose the type of isolation on individuals that we agree to be inappropriate. I don’t think it’s wise to relocate all conferences that might be relocated, because an important goal of dialogue is to address members of the broader Israeli public, who need to hear from scholars such as you.

Martha Nussbaum wishes to thank Ruba Batniji and Steven Salaita for their helpful comments and feedback on this essay. A version of Martha Nussbaum’s essay appeared in Dissent Magazine, Summer 2007, and Mohammed Abed’s response in the Fall 2007 issue. www.dissentmagazine.org

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directed at institutions, rather than in favour of isolating individuals whose capacity for bringing pressure to bear on their government is surely slight. In short, we should applaud and follow your positive proposal to foster dialogue, but steer clear of your espousal of the flawed boycott idea.

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