A Call for Academic Freedom
BY MEYTAL CHERNOFF
Over winter break the students of Washington University received an email from Chancellor Wrighton declaring our university’s refusal to participate in the American Studies Association’s (ASA) academic boycott of Israel. The ASA is one of many medium sized academic associations, but its actions are indicative of a larger trend. This January, the Modern Language Association’s (MLA) Delegate Assembly voted to send its own version of an academic boycott of Israel on to a general vote.
The MLA is a large organization devoted to the study and teaching of language, and while the decision to support a potential boycott should be taken seriously, it brings them into a strange political realm. The MLA’s Resolution 2014-1 passed in a vote of 60 to 53 and urges the State Department to “contest Israel’s denial of entry to the West Bank by US academics” and to support the boycott of Israel. This two pronged approach would both prevent any contact between MLA members and Israeli universities and academics, while lobbying the United States government to institute a more general boycott of all Israeli goods and products. The rationale behind the boycott is to pressure Israel to stop making it difficult for visiting academics to travel to and lecture at Palestinian universities in the West Bank. The MLA is a powerful academic institution with a membership of over 30,000. It represents both a potentially powerful lobbying body as well as a powerful influence within the American academic community.
In his email Chancellor Wrighton wrote that “a boycott of academic institutions directly violates academic freedom.” The term “academic freedom” is defined as the right of teachers and students to teach, express their ideas, and discuss knowledge without religious, political, or institutional restriction. When faced with this definition it is clear that the boycott of Israeli academic institutions violates this right to teach and discuss knowledge by placing a political and institutional restriction on academia from a particular region. Telling students and researchers from American universities that they cannot communicate with colleagues at Hebrew University or other Israeli institutions infringes upon this right to discuss knowledge.
What makes this situation more unfortunate is the false foundation upon which the resolution and boycott are built – the belief that Israel limits foreign scholars’ access to Palestinian universities. Israel places no unique restrictions on academics working within Israel. Security concerns do, however, make travel problematic for all people. The security fence and checkpoints, for example, lengthen many individuals’ daily commute, but have also reduced terrorist attacks in Israel by over 80 percent since their creation. They may be inconvenient, but the right to live free from the threat of violence makes these security measures necessary. Thus, the MLA’s accusations, and the entire logic for its boycott, center on blaming Israeli academic institutions for a crime that they did not commit.
While the boycott is morally flawed, it also fails on a practical level. American institutions stand to lose a lot of crucial research ties should these movements gain power. Additionally, Israeli universities remain on the forefront of research in numerous fields, such as medicine, technology, nano-science, and agriculture, to name just a few. To cut students off from this knowledge would be a grave scientific loss as well as a violation of academic freedom. By restricting access to Israeli universities, the MLA and ASA hurt the many Palestinian students who attend these universities. The boycott claims to fight for the rights of the Palestinian people, and yet their actions accomplish the opposite. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has spoken out against the boycott of Israel saying that “we have relations with Israel, we have mutual recognition of Israel.”
An integral part of academia at the university level is the ability to share ideas, debate different opinions, and hear sides of an argument that you may have never considered. As paragons of academia, one would hope that the MLA and ASA would see the beauty of open discussion and encourage it, rather than seek to silence voices from one particular country. Students should be able to look to their academic institutions to hear the many facets of a story, and to be able to engage in thoughtful debate. The university years should be spent in open discourse and honest discussion, and to have that opportunity removed threatens each student’s right to academic freedom and the acquisition of knowledge.