Choosing Sides?

In the classroom I have generally preferred to draw a strict line between my own personal views and what I teach my students. But as a Jewish scholar-blogger who works on the Middle East, and particularly on Israel/Palestine, it is getting harder and harder to maintain that wall. Mostly that’s because a series of external developments combined with an intensifying rhetorical war between those who call themselves “pro-Israel” and “pro-Palestine” have forced one to either “choose” a “side,” or face mockery, insult, and disparagement across the new and the old media. As Steven Cook has confessed regarding the study of Turkey, it just makes studying the region “no longer fun.”

I think that applies to more and more Jewish academics who study the region these days. The question now is what to do about it: embrace the blurring of the lines, or continue the fight to keep them? I think it’s time to blur the lines and take a firmer position on the issues.

It’s not a suddenly-new problem. Debates over academic freedom and what it means in practice are as old as academia. Middle East studies, specifically, has been wrestling with how to balance personal preferences and opinions, external pressure, and scholarly objectivity for quite some time.

But contemporary developments in academia, in public policy, and in the world are merging academic responsibility and ethical responsibility. The growing profile of the BDS movement, the peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and the new and urgent appearance of workshops, conferences, and debates on Israel/Palestine taking place directly in academia mean that short of simply retreating into the ivory tower, I’m not sure there’s much we can do to stop it.

At the same time, the American Jewish community in particular is undergoing big changes, particularly when it comes to questions about the position of Israel in our communal identity and the appropriate vehicle for advocacy on it. Whether one identifies with the Zionist right, the Zionist left, the anti-Zionist right, or the anti-Zionist left, the combination of all these developments have meant that demands for the public expression of our views are growing.

Embracing an ethical-activist position might be the best response. As an IR scholar, I can also say this fits well with the history and nature of IR itself. Silly arguments that political scientists aren’t doing enough to influence policy notwithstanding, IR has long been about making the world a better place. The debate between the idealists and realists that characterized the emergence of the field wasn’t just about explaining world politics; it was also about what we should do regarding contemporary conditions of world politics. Constructivist, critical, Marxist, and gendered approaches are all also about the role of scholars in improving the human condition.

Using our scholarly knowledge to explain and to prescribe to policymakers and the public is one critical facet of our work. But at least when it comes to studying Israel/Palestine, the very issues at stake (human dignity, human rights, security and safety, national identity, self-determination, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Arab bigotry) seem to behoove us to take something like a more activist position on the issues.

For some of us that means signing petitions; for others, it means joining organizations that promote one side over the other or dialogue between them; and so on. Doing any of this will, of course, earn the opprobrium of those opposed to our actions. But that will be inevitable anyway. Why not start doing some good anyway?

The Normative Implications of Academic Boycotts

I haven’t said much about the ASA boycott of Israeli academic institutions, though I do oppose it. There are plenty of arguments out there both for and against; most of them are tendentious and clearly designed to further an ideological or political agenda. At +972 Dahlia Scheindlin takes stock of the main ones on both sides, and her post is well worth reading.

One of the arguments put forward by pro-boycotters, though, strikes me as a bit naïve or disingenuous, or perhaps just very tactical: that the boycott isn’t against Israeli individuals, but rather only against academic institutions. Thus, one can target institutions of the state (since the state is complicit in and an active promoter of, for instance, the settlement enterprise) without targeting individuals. In this way, accusations of anti-Semitism or of attacking individuals on the basis of their national identity can be avoided.

Dahlia concludes that this is a fair point. I’m not so sure. Boycotts have normative effects. They impose on members of a group, who might otherwise not share their community’s official support for a boycott, pressure to conform. They establish expectations, attitudes, and unfriendly atmospheres.

Individual ASA professors, departments with ASA professors, and student organizations with ties to ASA professors are more likely to think about the boycott—it’s a good thing to think about the issues that led to the boycott—but they are also more likely to be concerned about backlashes from peers, their departments and programs, and so on. How, for example, will leaders of an American student group react when they tell their professor they want to bring an Israeli scholar in for a public lecture and that professor warns the students she supports a boycott of Israeli academic institutions?

In addition, we should think about how Israeli academics will react. Will they feel uncomfortable attending workshops run by ASA professors? Will they self-censure when thinking about which journals to send papers to or which conferences to send proposals to? 

We don’t have enough evidence to indicate either outcome is likely to follow from the ASA boycott. But we do have several anecdotes that suggest such an outcome is at least plausible in some cases. It’s enough, I think, that the issue shouldn’t be ignored. Actions have consequences.

More Case Studies for Understanding the Pro-Israel Lobby

While the debate over the role and influence of the Jewish pro-Israel lobby in the United States remains as heated as ever, so, too, has the evidence presented been the same old case studies. But the last several years have seen a number of new developments that can and should be mined to expand on our understanding of the role of ethnic groups in the policy-making process.

For example, the establishment and successes of J Street might tell us about how intra-communal struggles and politics influence a community's ability to present a strong position toward political targets. The Emergency Committee for Israel has been less successful, but its uncompromising stridency can tell us about the role and consequences of language and discourse in advocacy processes.

We also have a number of new political battles in which pro-Israel Jewish groups have participated in the last couple years alone: the nomination process of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, AIPAC's agreement to lobby on behalf of the Obama Administration for strikes on Syria; and the continuing struggle over the Geneva deal on Iran's nuclear program. 

Lots to chew on. To that end, Dov Waxman and I are working on a paper that explores some of these processes, which will (hopefully) update our understanding of American Jewish advocacy on Israel. Look for it at your nearest academic conference!

Israel and the US: Still Going Strong

At Foreign Affairs, I argue that many American commentators who write on Israel fail to account for processes of change within its domestic politics, leading to incomplete analyses on how Israel reacts to the Iran deal. A close examination of shifts within Israel’s security establishment yields a more complete picture:

Most depictions of how Israel sees the recent nuclear accord with Iran are consistently shallow. When explaining what the deal means for Israel, Western analysts and journalists tend to focus on the differences between close political allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who denounced it as a “historic mistake,” and the Israeli security establishment (that is, serving and retired officials from the military and intelligence agencies), which is generally more tolerant of the deal. But it is misleading to think of Israeli policymaking just as a tug of war between those two camps, because disagreements between civilian and security leaders are normal, and because the public rhetoric on which such assumptions rest doesn’t allow for a consideration of wider trends and changes. Such a view leads to needlessly alarmist predictions about a coming split between Israel and the United States.

Follow the link for the full piece.