Professors take sides on BDS conference
Some professors participated in the discourse of the BDS movement
· February 5, 2012, 10:08 pm
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions conference held this weekend exposed a wide gulf of disagreement among Penn professors on opposite sides of the issue.
“I feel the need to speak when I see something wrong,” said Psychiatry professor Ruben Gur, who expressed disapproval of Penn professors who supported the goals of the conference. “I think this is despicable,” he said.
Gur, who has secondary appointments in the Departments of Neurology and Radiology, also condemned the conference in a Feb. 1 guest column in The Daily Pennsylvanian. At one point, he compared the BDS movement to a campaign “organized by the Nazis in the 1930’s.” He also likened Jews who participated in the movement to “the Capos in the extermination camps.”
Gur’s rhetoric disturbed English professor Ania Loomba, who wrote a letter to the editor with English professors Amy Kaplan and Heather Love criticizing his choice of words.
“All the professors I know at Penn who are pro-BDS are respectful in their language,” said Loomba, who supports the conference. “We have heard a lot of invective on the other side.”
Loomba said the strong condemnation of BDS on Penn’s campus is scaring people into silence, especially when comparisons are made to Nazism.
“Those of us who are now invested in BDS have also been invested in exposing anti-Semitism,” she said.
Loomba likened telling people they are “perpetuating the legacy of Nazism” to censorship. “A lot of people are scared to support [BDS],” she said, noting that most professors who express support for the conference are tenured. “If you’re a young professor, you’re going to be scared to come out.”
Gur countered that the analogy to Nazism is more accurate than the “inappropriate analogy” that BDS supporters have been using — the comparison of Israel’s actions to apartheid in South Africa.
The organizers of PennBDS were also offended by Gur’s column. They wrote a letter to Penn President Amy Gutmann, published on the news site Mondoweiss, claiming that Gur’s tenure should not allow him to “to incite hostility and aggression against students” and asked her to publicly condemn it.
The University responded with a letter from Vice President for University Communications Stephen MacCarthy, which stated that Penn could not be “the referee of individuals’ comments, regardless of how overheated or ill-advised they may be” and would not intervene in these debates.
“Much of Dr. Gutmann’s academic career has been devoted to the importance of civil discourse to a democratic society,” MacCarthy wrote. “It is always unfortunate when people make personal or ad hominem attacks against others in the course of that discourse. This kind of attack is counter to her personal values and the goal of civility on campus.”
Gutmann has previously declared the University’s disapproval of the goals of the BDS movement.
“It is important that you all know that we have been unambiguous in repudiating the positions that are espoused by those sponsoring that conference,” she wrote in a letter read aloud before a talk by Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz last week. “They run counter to our principles, our ideals and importantly, our actions.”
Loomba said she was dismayed by Gutmann’s dismissal of the movement. “Amy Gutmann made it sound like it’s some loony, fringe thing,” Loomba said, adding that the BDS movement is “widely supported” all over the world.
“Every political issue has to be debated,” Loomba said. “If you just out of hand dismiss it, that’s also shutting down the debate.”
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Comments (3)
The bloggers at mondo
February 5, 2012, 10:53 pm
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Are rejoicing after being referred to as a news source… They themselves write “This blog is co-edited by Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz. Weiss is 55 and lives in New York state. Horowitz is 38 and lives in New York City.” So thats a mistake.
And theoretically wasn’t Gur once a young professor who would have had to mind his ps and qs? Clearly, fear of offending or intimidating others is not an issue if BDS is doing it. Yet their supporters want everyone else to take the slow train of silence
From the outside
February 6, 2012, 7:17 am
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As someone with no religious, ethnic, or nationalist stake in this dispute, I must say that the BDS people look more civil and thoughtful than their opponents. BDS provides reasons and evidence to support their position. Their opponents respond with name-calling, inflammatory language, and demands that the group be censored.
It would be helpful to hear actual reasons, evidence and counterarguments from the anti-BDS group. What solution are the opponents of BDS presenting to end the conflict? How are non-violent methods proposed by BDS construed as objectionable? It seems as if the opponents merely wish to preserve the status quo, and to drive the opponents away through inflammatory language and intimidation rather than thoughtful, problem-solving discussion. Surely a group of well-educated, privileged people, who are not in the midst of battle, should be able to articulate reasons and evidence to support Israel’s actions.
Civil discourse depends on both parties finding common ground. When one of the two parties seems incapable of doing so, it casts doubt on their credibility and thus their position. Perhaps the BDS opponents need to examine their position more carefully to insure that they are indeed being reasonable, rather than caught up in their emotions.
For those of us who are attempting to make a good faith, reasoned, rather than personal and emotional, decision it would be helpful to hear reasons and evidence to support Israel’s actions toward the Palestinians. I was hoping to learn from this convening of opposing positions on the neutral ground of a university.
Those who live in Israel and Palestine are suffering and it is justifiable for them to and act out of anguish, but not us. We are here, safe and privileged, and owe them the benefits of our far more fortunate situation: to be able to step back and attempt to solve, rather than inflame, this terrible state of affairs. I hope that you will consider having a civil discussion for those whom, it is very clear, both sides wish to help. The one thing I do not sense from either side of this dispute is bad faith.
Asaf Romirowsky
February 6, 2012, 10:28 pm
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A Message to the University of Pennsylvania Community from Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) [1]
To: All University of Pennsylvania Alumni, Faculty, Students and Parents
[ This year’s National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Conference set to take place at the University of Pennsylvania between February 3-5, 2012. Consequently, SPME respectfully asks that those who endorse the statement below please indicate their full names, academic status/title (faculty, student…etc) and institutional affiliation or signature may be voided. Thank you for your cooperation. ]
This weekend there will be a gathering on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania by advocates of selective punishment of Israel for the absence of a comprehensive settlement of its conflict with Palestinian Arabs and the larger Arab world. The preliminary program lists 21 speakers, almost exclusively individuals not affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania.
While the conference planners obtained meeting space on the campus of one of America’s great universities, the venue selected should not confuse anyone that there is bona fide academic merit to this gathering. Most of the speakers are not faculty anywhere, and among those few that are faculty, some are in disciplines unrelated to the study of the complex nature of the search for peace and justice in the Middle East3.
SPME, a virtual international community of scholars committed to peaceful resolution of all of the Middle East’s many conflicts, recognizes that the BDSmovement is both intellectually flawed and contrary to the very real needs of the people of that region. We are committed to a genuine, just and enduring peace.
The BDS movement is mistaken in its focus on a single party, Israel, as the impediment to peace. Israel has repeatedly expressed its willingness to live peacefully alongside a Palestinian state. Since the rebirth of a Jewish state in 1948, Israel’s democratic governments from across the political spectrum have repeatedly demonstrated an intent to make painful compromises in the interest of a peaceful resolution of this conflict, including recognition of a Palestinian Arab homeland for those descended from Arabs displaced during prior conflicts.
Reciprocal recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jews has yet to occur. Many Jewish Israelis, like their Arab neighbors, are descended from families native to the Middle East, but displaced by conflict.4 Prior to Israel’s independence, the area’s Jews were often considered to be “Palestinians”.5
BDS is contrary to the search for peace since it represents a form of misguided economic warfare. It is directly contrary to decades of agreements between Israeli and Arab Palestinians, in which both sides pledged to negotiate a peaceful settlement and committed to a two state solution.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) lists well over a hundred border disputes between nations.6Israel’s dispute with the Arabs over eventual boundaries is not unique, nor is this conflict the most violent. Focusing on Israel for punitive action is unjustified and counterproductive.
SPME urges those committed to peace and justice for the people of a region which has had too much war and violence to join with us in rejecting the politics of hatred that the BDS movement represents.
[1]Academically affiliated readers are invited to contact SPME to learn how they can join us in the search for Middle East peace at http://spme.net/
[2]John R. Cohn, M.D., is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania, who is on the board of SPME and of Hillel of Greater Philadelphia. He is a professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University. He can be reached at john.r.cohn@gmail.com
[6]https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2070.html
For Further Information Contact:
Judith S. Jacobson, Columbia University
Co-President Pro Tem, Vice President, Internal Relations, SPME
Stanley Dubinsky, University of South Carolina
Co-President Pro Tem, Vice President, External Relations, SPME
Asaf Romirowsky, Acting Executive Director, SPME
Sincerely,
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