ENGAGE - ARCHIVE

Good morning everybody. As I understand yesterday’s speeches, they articulate three positions, three propositions. The first is that boycotts overall are bad, the second is that there are exceptions to this rule, and the third is that Israel is not one of these exceptions. That seems to be the consensus, the position of us all.

I would like to address three topics of my own – but only very briefly, because other speakers have interesting points to make. First, I will rehearse some arguments that I used when I was acting for the Hebrew University and for Haifa University during the AUT boycott affair. Second, I will suggest why it is, in very general terms, that we value freedom of expression. Last, I will speculate about some of the motives of the boycotters.

The AUT boycott

The first argument was that the boycott resolutions were defamatory of the universities. These resolutions were not couched in general terms. They purported to justify a boycott by reference to specific allegations. It was said against Haifa that it was discriminating against Dr. Pappe. Rather more consequentially, it was said that the Hebrew University was stealing Arab land in order to expand – a kind of metonym of State expansionism. So I argued defamation, which had serious consequences for the union because were a defamation action against the AUT to succeed, it would lead to a damages award.

The next argument I advanced was of procedural and substantive irregularity. I said that the resolutions were passed in circumstances that were procedurally irregular. The debate was held late on Erev Pesach, and no opponents to the resolution were allowed to speak. The vote was rushed through. Further, the resolutions were ultra vires – that is, were beyond the ability of the AUT to adopt. Unions, like all non-human legal entities, are defined by reference to their rules, their constitution. I argued that it was simply not within the objects of the union to boycott foreign universities. This argument also had financial consequences, because it meant that everything that the union purported to do, pursuant to the boycott resolutions, was in fact being done illegally by its officers. They could be personally liable for expending union funds implementing the resolutions. So if the first argument exposed the union to a financial liability, the second argument exposed the officers of the union to a financial liability.

These arguments were pursued on behalf of the Israeli universities. There was a further argument, however, and this one was advanced on behalf of AUT members. They feared that they would be discriminated against if the boycott remained in place. They were engaged in academic projects that would be impeded or even entirely frustrated by an academic boycott. So if the first two arguments were essentially financial in thrust, the third argument had a kind of ideological edge to it - because it was an attack on the trade union for doing exactly what trade unions are not supposed to do. Trade unions are supposed to facilitate the working life and practices of their members, not frustrate or destroy them.

Now I make no particular claims to the extent to which those arguments contributed to the reversal of the resolutions. I am politically old-fashioned enough to believe that it was the mobilization of the membership, the calling of the special resolution, and all the rest of it, that actually led to the resolutions being overturned. But in any event, I thought it would be interesting to outline how the legal side of the resistance to the boycott played out. That’s all I have to say about that aspect of the affair.

Freedom of speech

If we reflect upon the three terms in the title of this section of today’s proceedings, “political engagement, academic integrity, and freedom of expression,” there is a temptation I think, to regard freedom of expression as, so to speak, the instrumental item of the three. "Academic integrity" is plainly an object, an end in itself, and so is "political engagement." But freedom of expression seems merely to be the means by which we might practice our academic integrity, or the way in which we might practice our political engagement.

There is some truth in thinking about freedom of expression in this way, but it seems to me that to do so creates the risk that we simply, so to speak, leave it at that, and we don’t go on to recognize that freedom of expression has its own substantive value. This would be a grievous error, because freedom of expression is indeed an end in itself. It has its telos, as it were. And this is the case, it seems to me, for two reasons.

The first reason is that by speaking or writing, we discover who we are. (It is a common experience for people who write that it’s only when we write down what we think, that we discover what it is that we think). Expression is a principal form of self-realization. To limit or deny self-expression is thus an attack at the root of what it is to be human.

The second reason is that freedom of expression must incorporate freedom of address. Freedom of expression for an individual on a desert island is hopeless, destructive, pointless, except for the most narcissistic of souls. It is not sufficient for my freedom of expression for me simply to be free to speak. What matters to me is that people should be free to listen. I should have a sense of dialogue, or at least the possibility of dialogue. Boycotts exist in order to put a barrier in front of the speaker. He can speak but he cannot address. He cannot communicate. And this is a form of exclusion, isolation, it is a kind of casting out. And to speak in this language, of course, is to approach the question of anti-Semitism.

The boycotters

I’m going to make two assumptions. The first is that the boycotters did not have a good reason for doing what they were doing. We dealt with reasons yesterday. There were no good reasons for the boycott. The resolutions were predicated on false statements about universities, and were part of a project of deligitimization of Israel, which in itself is objectionable and without justification.

The second assumption is that the absence of a good reason entitles me to look at the boycotters' motives. Attributing the motive to anti-Semitism is too quick a move, however. "Anti-Semitism" has to be, so to speak, the explanation of last resort. It doesn’t mean that we don’t get there, but I think that we have to examine all the other possible motives first. These motives seem to me to consist of the following.

(a) There are the pleasures of political activism. There is a simple pleasure in saying I belong, I am not alone, I have joined this party, it has given meaning to my life. I have comrades, we are working together, we have a goal – what is more, it is a disinterested goal. The boycotters comprise, if not a movement, then a coterie. The boycott campaign has brought many of them back into politics, and the pleasure with which they speak about that is an indication that for a while they have felt reduced to political passivity. The boycott campaign marks a return to Leftist, or pseudo-Leftist, politics after the confusions of 1989 and the decade that followed. It is as if the boycotters were declaring: we have reconstituted ourselves, and we have identified the enemy as the Zionists. The anti-Israel movement then becomes the most recent in a series of practical projects of the 20th century Left starting with Spain in the 1930s, then Fascism Germany, then the campaign for nuclear disarmament, then Vietnam, then Chile, then South Africa. And now – Israel.

(b) There are also the pleasures of political stigmatizing. This is the flipside of the first motive. It is the pleasure we derive from marking out other people for adverse judgment, for condemnation, even for persecution, and being able to feel good about doing so. The boycotters were able to discharge their negative affect in the direction of Israel, the “Zionist entity,” in a way that didn’t encourage them to question the nature of their motives, the nature of their hostility. They could, so to speak, be virtuous in their hatred. They could be moral in their antagonism towards Israel, and towards supporters of Israel. And the opportunity, so to speak, to kick virtuously is not one that many people are willing to pass up.

(c) It has given specific meaning to the lives of alienated Jews - Jews who were born Jewish but who have not found a way of identifying themselves as Jewish. And it is a mistake to simply dismiss them as self-hating Jews. It allows them to be proud to be ashamed that they are Jewish. The boycott movement has given them, so to speak, their heart.

There is much more to say, but no time left in which to say it.

Anthony Julius