academic boycott

University of California must allow faculty to boycott Israel in academia

From the Daily Cal:

On Dec. 13, the 10 UC chancellors took the unusual step of signing a collective statement that opposed the “academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions and/or individual scholars” as being a “direct and serious” threat to academic freedom. When some faculty members expressed concerns that such a high-level collective statement would have a chilling effect on campus speech and discourage faculty members from taking public positions on an issue that is well within the purview of their academic freedom, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ responded by defending her own academic freedom to speak out on important issues. We would not want to deny her that right, but we do have some unanswered questions about the collective statement:
How does Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS — the movement to boycott, divest and sanction the Israeli state for its occupation of Palestine — pose a “direct and serious threat to academic freedom”? Like the South African anti-apartheid boycott and divestment movement of the 1980s, BDS targets state-funded Israeli institutions and Israeli commercial activities. It does not try to prevent anyone from saying anything or attempt to sanction or thwart individuals for their political positions.

Why did the 10 chancellors make a statement against BDS and BDS alone? Why no mention of the attacks on students and professors by such organizations as the Canary Mission and the David Horowitz Freedom Center? These organizations have targeted and continue to target and often defame UC scholars and students for advocating for justice in Palestine or offering courses that submit Israeli policy to critical analysis. These blacklists, in effect, thwart academic careers, not only academic speech. According to one report, in the last year, there were 289 known incidents of suppression of U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy.

Moreover, if the chancellors are worried about threats to academic freedom in this policy domain, why no mention in the statement of the Israeli state’s routine violation of the academic freedom of Palestinian students and faculty members on the West Bank?

If the chancellor does not believe that the joint declaration would “have a chilling effect on the debate and discourse … on this campus,” then how to explain The Daily Californian soliciting and then shutting down a BDS perspective on the chancellors’ statement? A chancellor’s personal statement of views is very different from a joint statement by the 10 UC chancellors — the latter veers closer to a UC position than personal opinion. Is such a position, unexplained or defended, an effective way of promoting discussion on a complex political issue worthy of protected and open debate?

How and why did the chancellors come to make a joint statement on this particular issue? Was there direct or indirect pressure on the chancellors to make this statement? Soon after the collective statement was issued, 101 organizations of the Academic Engagement Network defending Israeli policy wrote a thank-you letter to the 10 chancellors. Perhaps these organizations never asked the UC chancellors for such a statement; perhaps the motivation for the statement was spontaneous and autonomous. But the possibility of external pressure looms larger as the university relies more heavily on private donors. In any case, the lack of transparency in the reasons for this unusual joint statement calls into question the invocation of academic freedom. As Christ knows well from having to deal with invasions by right-wing provocateurs wearing its mantle, academic freedom is already being twisted for too many other inappropriate purposes in our time.

Finally, we know a number of faculty members who support this very letter but feared to put their name to it. What does that say about the already existing chilled climate for speech that the chancellors’ letter has exacerbated?

Michael Burawoy is a Sociology professor, Paul Fine is an Integrative Biology associate professor, Gillian Hart professor emerita and professor of Geography, Lyn Hejinian is an English professor, Celeste Langan is an English, Christine Rosen is a Business professor, Leslie Salzinger is a Gender and Women’s Studies professor and James Vernon is a History professor at UC Berkeley.

UC GRADUATE STUDENT-WORKER UNION BECOMES FIRST MAJOR U.S. LABOR UNION TO SUPPORT BDS

From the UAW 2865 BDS page:

For Immediate Release – December 10th, 2014

HISTORIC: UAW 2865, UC STUDENT-WORKER UNION, BECOMES FIRST MAJOR U.S. LABOR UNION TO SUPPORT DIVESTMENT FROM ISRAEL BY MEMBERSHIP VOTE

IN SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINIAN WORKERS AND STUDENTS.

65% of VOTING MEMBERS APPROVE CALL FOR DIVESTMENT;

52% pledged to support academic boycott

“This is a decisive victory for justice for Palestinians. After months of campaigning, we are inspired that so many members participated in this vote and made their voices heard. This is a testament to our membership’s engagement with matters of social justice. This vote was a first step in our commitment to solidarity with Palestinians under occupation and facing discriminatory laws, and we will continue to take steps to make that solidarity concrete as part of our involvement in anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles broadly.” –Kumars Salehi, member

“We are committed to linking student and labor movements in the United States to student and labor movements in other parts of the world, including Palestine. As student-workers fighting the attacks on education here in California as well as the decades-long crackdown on labor in the U.S. generally, we know that international labor solidarity makes us stronger and we support Palestinian students, workers and broader society in their decades-long struggle against dispossession, occupation and apartheid.” –Loubna Qutami, member

UAW 2865, a labor union representing over 13,000 teaching assistants, tutors, and other student-workers at the University of California, has become the first major U.S. labor union to hold a membership vote responding to the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli occupation and in solidarity with Palestinian self-determination. The vote passed, with 65% (almost 2/3) of voting members in support. Over 2100 members voted, a testament to union democracy.

The measure calls on

  1. the University of California to divest from companies involved in Israeli occupation and apartheid;
  2. the UAW International to divest from these same entities;
  3. the US government to end military aid to Israel.
  4. 52 % of voting members also pledged not to “take part in any research, conferences, events, exchange programs, or other activities that are sponsored by Israeli universities complicit in the occupation of Palestine and the settler-colonial policies of the state of Israel” until such time as these universities take steps to end complicity with dispossession, occupation, and apartheid.

1136 members pledged to observe the academic boycott, a reflection of the ways student laborers are taking concrete actions to practice solidarity.

In July, the union’s Joint Council, comprised of 83 elected officers across nine UC campuses, published an open letter outlining support for the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) “against public institutions and corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid and occupation of Palestinians.” This open letter announced it would seek a membership vote on the matter in the coming academic year. The UAW 2865 Joint Council took these steps in response to a call for solidarity from all major Palestinian trade unions, including the Palestinian University Teachers’ Association, The Joint Council’s open letter was followed by four months of internal debate prior to the election and deep engagement by members statewide.

The goal of the non-violent global BDS strategy is that Israel will end land confiscation and human rights violations against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, recognize rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel as over 50 Israeli laws currently discriminate against them, and respect the right under international law of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.

UAW 2865 joins several labor unions in the United Kingdom and Ireland, UNITE New Zealand, CUPE in Canada, COSATU in South Africa and many dockworker unions around the world. It also joins growing grassroots voices in the U.S. labor movement including rank and file members of the International Longshore Workers’ Union Local 10 that supported community pickets and successfully blocked Israeli ships from unloading goods similar to their historic involvement in the anti-South African apartheid movement, and hundreds of labor organizers who signed onto the Labor for Palestine statement. Within the UAW itself, Local 2865 follows the precedent of Arab-American auto workers in Detroit in 1973 who protested the union’s purchase of Israeli bonds financing the seizure of Palestinian lands. Just as black workers at Polaroid in the U.S. launched a boycott of their company for helping make apartheid passbooks for South Africans, we support workers in other UAW-unionized industries in pressuring their employers to commit to socially responsible business practices so that the illegal occupation of Palestinians comes to an end.

The mostly graduate student worker union joins the undergraduate student governments of UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UC Riverside, UC Irvine, and UCLA which have passed resolutions in support of divestment.

We are immensely grateful for the tremendous support from numerous individuals and organizations, including letters of support from over 700 supporters from Jewish communities, feminist and queer workers linking the campaign to repression against Palestinian-American feminist activist Rasmea Odeh, among letters from many other groups which were posted on a Facebook page in support of the measure.

For more information, please visit uaw2865.org.

UC Berkeley rejects bill condemning boycotts of Israeli academic institutions

[caption id="attachment_175009390" align="aligncenter" width="563"]From the Daily Cal, Photo by Arielle Hayat From the Daily Cal, Photo by Arielle Hayat[/caption]

From the Daily Cal: More than 100 students, professors, UC alumni and other community members gathered in Anna Head Alumnae Hall to voice their opinions on Senate Bill 11, titled “A Bill in Support of the Free Flow of Ideas and International Academic Collaboration,” which was sponsored by Student Action Senator Ori Herschmann.

The bill called for the ASUC to endorse “academic freedom” and to support academic exchanges such as those between UC Berkeley and Israeli academic institutions.

In particular, the bill called for the ASUC to reject academic boycotts against Israeli academic institutions, such as those by the American Studies Association and the Association for Asian American Studies. The American Studies Association voted to boycott Israeli academic institutions on the grounds that these institutions are subject to state policies that allegedly violate human rights.

The bill also called for the ASUC to denounce a student-organized event scheduled for next week that, among other points, advocates an academic boycott of Israel. The International Day of Action on College Campuses for Palestine, scheduled for Tuesday, calls for no “academic complicity” with the Israeli government, according to the event’s Facebook page — including no study abroad programs in Israel and no joint research or conferences with Israeli institutions.

Such academic boycotts, the bill asserts, are violations of academic freedom.

When the committee floor opened for public comment, many opponents of the bill brought up the institutional academic roadblocks for Palestinian students under Israeli law.

Viveka Jagadeesan, a campus junior and member of Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Berkeley, opposed the bill, saying its language was problematic. She said it failed to clarify that the academic boycott applies only to Israeli institutions with “discriminatory policies,” not to individual Israeli academics.

Additionally, she said the contents of the bill contradicted its claim to support free speech.

“When I read the bill, I was quite struck that the bill claimed to support the free flow of ideas when one of its calls to action was to condemn a student-organized event on campus,” Jagadeesan said.

Resources:

Kumars Salehi in the Daily Cal: Anti-BDS bill would have stifled free speech on campus

Letter from prominent academics against the bill