A call for anti-Israel academic boycotters to boycott themselves
Intellectual honestly and consistency are difficult things for BDS academic boycotters
The American Studies Association academic boycott of Israel is premised on complying with a call from Palestinian civil society:
It is resolved that the American Studies Association (ASA) endorses and will honor the call of Palestinian civil society for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
In justifying the academic boycott of Israel, the faculty boycotters frequently cite the fact that they are responding to a request. Some even go so far as to suggest they would boycott U.S. universities if requested to do so.
Okay, I call on the anti-Israel academic boycotters to boycott themselves.
Using their own narratives of colonial domination, indigenous peoples’ rights, and complicity of their universities in the military-industrial state, intellectual honesty and consistency compels them to boycott themselves.
It’s all explained in the talk I gave earlier this week at Cornell against the academic boycott. A Cornell Daily Sun article about the talk focused on one aspect of the talk, Professor: Academic Boycott of Israel Would ‘Hurt’ Students (slow link, but works).
The full video is here.
Here is a clip where I talk about the arrogance of faculty and call upon the academic boycotters to boycott themselves:
Of course, I don’t expect them to walk the walk.
As Henry Richman, chair of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure at the American Association of University Professors wrote in opposition to the academic boycott, we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for the academic boycotters to boycott themselves:
In 2006 the ASA adopted a resolution condemning the U.S. invasion of Iraq, noting among other things that the invasion “threaten[ed] academic freedom” (whether in Iraq, the U.S., or both is unclear). Were I an ASA member I would surely have supported that resolution. Yet the ASA did not even consider an academic boycott of American universities in response to the American occupation of Iraq as they do now in response to the less murderous Israeli occupation of Palestine. Well, some might say, they can’t really advocate a boycott of themselves, can they?
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Comments
Intellectual consistency from the delusional Collective?
Yeah, no. A lot of these people have whipped themselves into full-blown haters. They are irrational.
defund the boycotters. That is the only message that they understand
The lady(?) on the far end of the line in the first photo needs either spell checker or a copy of the Old Testament.
When you are too stupid to correctly spell the name of the nation you’re boycotting, you are probably too stupid to be out in public without a keeper or a radio tracking collar.
My last four comments on this thread and another one have been eliminated. I am now gone from here, including my subscription. Sorry Prof Jacobson, your site no longer is open and free. Sad really.
BDS gene: The ‘popularized’ but vapid radical prof Noam Chomsky uses the “human rights & colonialism” clubs to bash, in particular, Western democracies. He promotes the thinking that the U.S. and Israel are the worst abusers of human rights in the world!
Specifically, Chomsky who publicly defended the horrific Cambodian dictator Pol Pot against charges of genocide stated that civil rights attorney Alan Dershowitz was “a passionate opponent of civil liberties” because of Dershowitz’s efforts on behalf of Israel.
According to Dershowitz’s recent bio “Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law” the UN is almost full time anti-Semitic. Whereas real tragedies are occurring in the world the UN spends most of its time and money (U.S. money, mostly) to denigrate Israel and to make unjust demands of the Israeli nation. This, while the rest of the world goes on with their atrocities.
Unless more Daniel Patrick Moynihans step up, it is time to remove the UN from our country. It is time to stop all payments funding it. A respectful conversation that embraces Israeli statehood is not heard there, only hostile, excluding, anti-Semitic voices echo in that dark cave.
Read George Gilder’s “Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World”
He has some good things to say about Israeli technology.
http://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Power-Information-Capitalism-Revolutionizing-ebook/dp/B00APDG0PG
OT…sort of…but I think this is first time I had a chance to listen to you speak.
seems to me you do a really good job Prof, bet your students really learn from you.
anyways just thought I would mention that.
I have no idea what Richman is on about. There is no ‘Israeli occupation of Palestine’, because there is no such entity as ‘Palestine’.
Unless you were a Roman.
It amazes me that when “Palestine” was part of Eqypt and Jordan, those nations didn’t give two sh*ts about “Free Palestine”.
Hell, when the Palestinians fled into Jordan after the 1967 war, their presence and infighting destabilized the Hashemite Kingdom so badly that King Hussein turned his Arab Legion loose on them. That elite force actually set out to exterminate them in September of 1970, whereupon the went to Lebanon and began that nation’s slide into sh*t-holedom. In fact, Arafat’s Black September was named to commemorate the events of that month! Where are those cries for “justice”? Jordanians have killed a lot more Palestinians than the Israelis.