It doesn’t take a professor to see academic boycott of Israel = dumb

It doesn’t take a professor to see academic boycott of Israel is just plain dumb

In the aftermath of the American Studies Association’s boycott of Israeli academic institutions, the academic community across the U.S. has begun to respond critically toward the boycott. Good for them – though it doesn’t take a professor to understand that this boycott was particularly hare-brained.

What I’d like to ask geniuses like Curtis Marez, an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego, who conceived of this boycott is, are any of you feminists? Atheists? Believers that, when it comes to belief, there are many paths? Are any of you gay or supportive of gay marriage?”

If you answered yes to any of the above, how do you think your ideas would be received were you to exercise your academic freedom and share them in the public square of a place like Gaza? In contrast, how do you think you’d do in Tel Aviv?

Having been to Ramallah in the West Bank, home to the most comparatively moderate individuals in Palestinian society, I can say that there is no free speech there. Although I went to profile an individual rather than discuss politics, at one point I asked a young man about education of children and whether Palestinian kids are exposed to the idea of peaceful co-existence with Israelis. The Palestinians who were hosting me appeared to become very uncomfortable and it was made very clear to me that, for my own safety and that of the group I was with, I should stop asking “these types of questions.”

As brave individuals like filmmaker Brooke Goldstein have documented, the Palestinian territories are fertile ideological ground for brainwashing, including the brainwashing of children, into terrorism and suicide bombing. Brainwashing and incitement works best in atmospheres of repression, in which people are not exposed to a marketplace of competing ideas.

By engaging in an “academic” boycott of Israel in favor of Palestine, the ASA is actually strengthening the forces of extremism and working against whatever slim chance exists that peace could take hold in the region. Boycotts like this only help bolster a Palestinian leadership which, with the blessing of the international community, has kept its people for decades in an ideological ghetto, effectively ensuring that, despite political awakening that the Arab Spring has brought, and brought to light, in some quarters, the Palestinians stay mired in old and self-destructive as well as murderous hatred.

These brave academics ought to go to Gaza and to exercise their academic freedom on any subject the Palestinian “leadership” disagrees with. They’ll be lucky to get out with their brains and bodies intact.

This entry was written by Heather Robinson and posted on December 29, 2013 at 10:41 pm and filed under Blog. permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Keywords: . Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. */?>