This is a short account from memory and notes of Judith Butler’s important contribution to the ‘Fear of the Other’ conference in London on the 24th September. We hope to be able to direct readers to a full version of Butler’s paper when it is available online.

Judith Butler addressed two debates on academic freedom: the first, the opposition to the AUT boycott on the grounds of academic freedom, articulated particularly by the AAUP and, second, the new ‘academic bill of rights,’ proposed in the US, which called for ‘balancing points of view’ always to be represented in US lecture halls and seminar rooms.

She also addressed the argument presented by Omar Barghouti,in favour of the AUT boycott, to the effect that academic freedom of Israeli academics was trumped by, and defeated by, the more basic and fundamental human rights that were abrogated by the occupation of the West Bank (and Gaza).

This argument aims to show that academic freedom in Israel ought to be infringed in the service of the more basic rights of Palestinian students (and academics) in the occupied territories.

In particular, Butler highlighted the conception of freedom that was infringed by the ‘ideological litmus test’ involved in the AUT boycott. She argued that proposals to exempt Israeli academics that opposed the ‘racist and colonialist’ policies of Israel were problematic. She commented that nobody in the boycott campaign was clear about how a list of politically clean Israeli academics would be drawn up, and that some boycotters insisted that there were only two Israeli academics who were suitable for contact with the outside world: Ilan Pappe and Tanya Reinhardt. Butler aimed both to critique, and extend the notion of academic freedom. She considered the nature of academic freedom in the occupied territories, which was foreclosed by the conditions of occupation.

She argued that abstract rights ought to be reconsidered as material rights: the material conception of freedom involves the claim that exercises of freedom exist in no other metaphysical sphere than those in which it is acted. For this reason, the debates about the boycott make a mistake because the preventions of academic freedom involved when checkpoints are in place are placed outside the rights discourse presented by the AAUP and others. The argument that she addressed and criticised goes like this: academic freedom is generally conceived of as the freedom to research, to express, to publish, to travel to conferences, to partake in international intellectual exchange.

But, Butler argued, this is not a separate right, epiphenomenal (my word, not JB’s) upon ordinary and material human rights to travel freely, to get to lectures, and so on. It is part of those rights, and an instantiation of them. So, liberal opponents of the boycott, who raise the abstract liberal right, cannot be silent about the ‘geopolitical conditions of the exercise of academic freedom.’ Equally, those who support the boycott on the basis that the liberal right to academic freedom is trumped by more basic human rights, make the same mistake, by buying into the notion of academic freedom as secondary, abstract, right and able to be trumped by more basic considerations.

A material conception of academic freedom would extend the notion to include the freedom to be taught, the freedom to turn up to class, the freedom of academics to organise their course, and all of this is infringed by the occupation, the checkpoints, and the closures of universities on the West Bank. In particular, Butler highlighted the restriction of, and infrastructural damage to Bir Zeit, the Palestinian Polytechnic, and Hebron University. The material conception of rights that Butler outlined, entails rejecting the argument that rights to academic freedom in the occupied territories are not actually infringed – they are not asserted and restrained, rather, they are abrogated from the start.

She drew attention to further real infringements of the right to education in the occupied territories and in particular to Sari Nussebeih’s call to protest against the prevention of teachers returning to Arab schools in East Jerusalem. (Engage publicised this appeal here , and presented it to representatives of the Israeli government here ).

Butler also drew attention to the threats to academic freedom faced by US academics and calls for ‘balance’ in the seminar room. Does this mean, she asked, that evolutionary biologist ought also to teach creationism? That theorists of gender and sexuality must also give equal time to homophobic accounts? This suggestion of balance amounted to brining in a ‘CNN model’ into the seminar room, and reinforces the ideological power of those who make the decisions about what constitutes balance. In that way, it infringes the freedom of academics.

Butler argued that academic freedom ought to be rethought, to include the freedom to teach, to learn and the geopolitical conditions that make the realisation of those freedoms possible.

Comment (Jon Pike)

1) Butler’s argument about the nature of academic freedom seems to me to be compelling. In particular, the notion that proponents of academic freedom ought not to exclude the material conditions of that freedom, because the material conditions are part of that freedom, is a good argument. Formal rights make no sense - and have no substance - in the absence of the material conditions necessary to exercise them. For good or ill, the argument picks up on Marx’s criticism of ‘bourgeois’ or liberal conception of rights in (the in some ways problematic) ‘On the Jewish Question.’(On this see – with due apologies for self reference – Pike: ‘Marx’s early critique of Liberalism’ pp.279-286 in Reading Political Philosophy Routledge, 2000). For a compelling account of the way in which rights are material, practical, not abstract, see Jerry Cohen’s piece ‘Poverty as Lack of Freedom’ (G.A.Cohen: ‘Poverty as lack of Freedom’ pp.222-224 in Political Thought OUP1999).

2) The politics are – in a way – missing. Butler said that she was not interested ‘in engaging in the political debate on the boycott.’ But the conclusions seem (to me) clear: a political movement against the boycott on the basis that it infringes academic freedom is both justified and necessary. But that movement – or argument - must have an extended and critical conception of academic freedom – it must also oppose the occupation and the extensive, repeated, serious, infringements of the freedom to teach and be taught, to go to lectures and to give them, to travel, to turn up to class, to have your university open, to have in place the geo-political conditions that make that freedom realisable. These rights violations are going on now. We should protest against them now.
Butler’s paper – it seems to me – clarifies the need for an argument – a movement - for academic freedom in its fullest sense. In relation to Israel-Palestine, that entails both opposition to the boycott, and opposition to the occupation and the manifold ways in which it violates the academic freedom of Palestinian academics and students.

3) I don’t want to get Butler’s argument wrong, or misrepresent it in order to derive political capital. I hope people (perhaps including JB herself) will comment on this piece, and take this important debate forward. And we’ll direct you to the paper, as soon as we can.

Jon Pike
Open university