The difference is, of course, that you can't be racist against Jews because Jews are white, are not oppressed and are not excluded from employment or other spheres of society.  Jews are part of the ruling class, not the working class; Jews are pro imperialist, not anti-imperialist; Jews support the Zionists, not the Palestinians.

At one time racism against Jews was possible, but not now.  It is conceivable in theory that at some point in the future, racism against Jews will again be possible, but it is not possible now.

I misread the ambiguous title as "Jon Pike to sue Blackwell". Oh well.

LOVE the headline! Presumably Pike is being represented by Mishcon de Reya...

Very nicely delivered!  This should be required reading for the for Birmingham's next offering of "That's Different Studies 101: Do What I Say, Not As I Do" taught by (who else?) the Department of Compartmentalization.  We can even make Blackwell the program chair.  
 

It's important to understand the perspective from which there's something suspect about Jon's (and, more generally, Engage's) self-understanding as Leftists:  there is a perspective on part of the Left that sees reason as colonialism's tool and that gauges the rightness of responses to injustice and other moral issues in terms of intensity of rage.  It would be bad enough if there weren't also a bias built in to that perspective, re. the determination of what does and doesn't constitute injustice.  That bias means a smaller set than is right/fair make the cut.  But even within that small set, having rage as one's guide is unlikely to lead to the best solutions.

What does this mean?  It means that the fact that a boycott can be judged anti-Semitic in effect doesn't matter to the people with the perspective I'm talking about, because "anti-Semitic in effect" simply isn't a category they acknowledge exists.  It also means that calling the boycott an illogical, irrational, counter-productive means is in one sense beside the point (though I've done my share of calling it that myself),  because for radicals, political engagement is about smashing things, logic not least among those things.  Here is how someone with passionate intensity (see Yeats' poem, The Second Coming) might answer Jon:

'We need to create a new logic, you see, free of the tethers to all those vile subordinating purposes to which logic was put in the past.  "Consistency," you say?  How dare you?!  Every culture--scratch that: every _individual_--will determine what consistency means under the new, liberated dispensation.  Until then "consistency" is just something that the powerful have invented to promote their own interests.  How do you not see that?!'

Would I lose big, do you think, if bet on Sue Blackwell's  answering Jon more or less to that effect?  I don't think I would.

But of course Chaim's argument, as far as those as yet uncommitted are concerned, assumes that the uncommitted accept the new, post-modernity politics and sensibility of relativity: that every opinion, state of mind, attitude is equally valid. Thus the exchange that Nick Cohen reported (at the Isaiah Berlin lecture commented on elsewhere) between Blair and the Today interviewer. According to Cohen, Blair presented a view of democracy that many would accept: essentially liberal (parliamentary) democracy as we know it. Thus, free elections, freedom for anyone to stand, secret ballot, etc. He disagreed when it was suggested to him (Blair) that Iran had a democracy by their lights. No, he said, 60% of potential candidates were debarred, there were limitations on voting and so forth. Clearly, a view that we can only define as comig from the canons of modernity.

What price that Blackwell et al would take the relativist view: if the ayatollahs see their system as democratic, then democratic it is. All is relative, all viewpoints are equally valid.

As ever, Jon is probably not aiming at Blackwell and her ilk - they will react as Chaim suggests, but at those who haven't adopted this relativist stance. We have to believe that the majority still believe that there _are_ (I hesitate to call them absolute) standards out there that are not dependent on the values of the believer, they are not "relative". Thus, anti-racism and anti-discrimination measures include Jews as well as Mosl;ems, Hindus, women, gays, etc, and are not dependent on the state of the moon, one's stars or the people one last spoke to, let alone dubious allies desperate to find any stick to beat something they have dubbed "imperialism", globalisation or anything else.

60 years ago European (then Arab) Jews were blacker than black, hence most ended up in Palestine/Israel.

Now they are there, they are whiter than white, hence are aliens there too, in the eyes of Justice Crusaders like Blackwell et al.

There's no use telling them both designations are intended to alienate Jews from where they are NOW. It is an argument impervious to reason.

"60 years ago European (then Arab) Jews were blacker than black, hence most ended up in Palestine/Israel."
Actually, most ended up dead.
Today is very different and not like then at all

"Jon is probably not aiming at Blackwell and her ilk - they will react as Chaim suggests, but at those who haven't adopted this relativist stance."

That's true. I don't like the idea of ever debating a committed rabidly dishonest person unless it's done to expose that dishonesty.

“'We need to create a new logic, you see, free of the tethers to all those vile subordinating purposes to which logic was put in the past.”

Oh that’s been done already, and in spades! I’d have to dig for this but I even remember a piece this year or last year “showcasing” (in a GOOD way!) someone who explicitly said she was using approaches 180 to logic (!) and Scientific Method (!!!!) to prove her case. To make matters worse, and darkly relent here, her central idea (can you call it a thesis?), was that Jews had no ties to the current state of Israel or Jerusalem. (And something tells me that she might have been tenured.)

"Suppose Michael Sterling responded to the CRE by saying 'I'm sacking these people just because I'm closing the courses. The fact that this falls disproportionately on black and ethnic minority lecturers isn't my problem. To raise the question of racism here is a vicious smear.' We would all reject his response as beside the point."

Does it matter here that (unless I'm misunderstanding the context) it's contingent that the lecturers are black and/or ethnic minority?   For instance Richard Dawkins wanted at one time to have the department of theology at Oxford closed down (perhaps he still does).   If he had his way he'd be closing it down because of the nature of theology and theologians - there might or might not be financial spin-offs that would please the accountants, but it would be beside the point, Dawkins' point.

I hesitate to argue with a philosopher, and maybe I'm being obtuse here, but I'm not persuaded about Birmingham in this case.  The authorities are presumably acting as a result of the usual financial constraints and although I would feel very sorry about the people who'd lost their jobs, would that be any different from the way the Chemistry department at a university was closed not long ago?

I'm currently doing a music course at the OU and there's much anxiety and not a little anger amongst students about a perceived threat to the music department there - indeed a music department at Surrey closed not long ago.

Perhaps I'm the wrong sort of leftie, or not union-orientated enough, but I do think - IN THIS CASE - that it does make a difference why Michael Sterling has done what he's done.   If he were to close down, say, the Yiddish Theatre department of a School of Dramatic Art because he objected to Jewish culture the way Dawkins objects to theology, then it would of course be totally different.

Aren't we all at times the victims of impersonal economic imperatives?   I would at once change my mind about this if it were shown that a series of departmental closures fell disproportionately on those run by ethnic minority staff, or if it were the case that the courses in community, play and youth work had been closed even though a much better case had been made, but ignored, for some different departments to have closed.

For some time I've wondered if anyone has written a fictionalised  form of this argument concerning intent versus consequences, the 'antisemitic-in-effect' argument.  Is there a short story, or a short dramatic piece somewhere illustrating how, in relation to the various forms of proposed boycott, this works out?

Help here gratefully acknowledged in advance.

Jon Pike, you know very well that while I am certainly an
outspoken supporter of the campaign to boycott Israeli
institutions, I have NEVER campaigned to "exclude Israeli
academics from UK campuses". Considering that such an action
would be illegal (discrimination on the grounds of nationality)
and that you are thereby accusing me of advocating a course
of action which would be in breach of the law, I consider your
remark defamatory.  I'm happy to have a debate about race
discrimination once you stop attributing things to me which
I have never said or advocated.

Please retract it at once, and publish a correction, otherwise
I will be compelled to resort to legal action, which is really
not my style.

Best wishes,

Sue Blackwell

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=839

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=231.

Sue Blackwell, ( http://www.sue.be/pal/FAQs.html ):

# Q: What do you think about Mona Baker's action in removing two Israeli academics from editorial board positions on journals?

A: The version of the academic boycott which I have signed says: "I can no longer in good conscience continue to cooperate with official Israeli institutions, including universities. I will attend no scientific conferences in Israel, and I will not participate as referee in hiring or promotion decisions by Israeli universities, or in the decisions of Israeli funding agencies. I will continue to collaborate with, and host, Israeli scientific colleagues on an individual basis." See http://www.pjpo.org for the full text.

Therefore, I try to draw a distinction between institutions and individuals: the target is the Israeli government, not ordinary citizens. Of course it's a slippery distinction, as Mona Baker herself points out: in fact it's impossible to boycott an institution without in some way affecting the individuals who work for it. I take her point, but nonetheless I try not to target individuals as far as possible. So I draw the line in a different place from Mona; all the same I respect her right to draw her own line where her conscience tells her to, and I think the witch-hunt against her is disgusting.

# Q: But isn't she discriminating against people on the grounds of religion and/or nationality, and thereby breaking the law? If so UMIST is right to investigate her.

A: I absolutely oppose all forms of discrimination on any grounds whatsoever (including those which are not yet illegal such as age discrimination). But, as I understand it, Mona has done no such thing. She is not boycotting all Israeli academics, let alone all Jewish academics; she is boycotting people who are employed by Israeli institutions, whatever their nationality, ethnicity or religion. She is not boycotting, for instance, a Jewish Israeli national who is currently employed in Canada, while she is boycotting an American gentile who is employed by an Israeli university. See her Editorial Statement in The Translator.

Jon Pike eloquently makes the case for a boycott of Israeli Universities.

He says "if an institution were to engage in policies which had the effect of driving out some members from one particular ethnic group, or endorsed practices that excluded members of that community from normal professional relations, or generated a perceived climate of hostility towards members of that same community, well, that would be bad. It ought to be subject to an impact assessment."

Let's see an impact assessment of Israeli University policies and practices on Israeli Arabs, palestinians and Mizrahi Jews.

As Jon says it is not about the intent of individuals but the effect of Institutional culture and ethos and provides an unarguable case for an institutional as opposed to an individual boycott.

Mike Cushman writes:

"As Jon says it is not about the intent of individuals but the effect of Institutional culture and ethos and provides an unarguable case for an institutional as opposed to an individual boycott. "

What a bizarre inference!  First, _even_ about the policy in the UK that Jon agrees has a bad effect, Jon (rightly) does not say that that bad effect warrants a boycott of the UK institution practicing it.  

Then there is the empirical question of whether there are policies and practices at Israeli Universities comparable in their effects to the bad UK policy that was mentioned.  Again: even if there were, that would not straightforwardly be grounds for a boycott.  ..But anyway it's simply false--and wilfully obtuse, I imagine--that there are.  There are affirmative action programs, there are massive efforts made to foster a more integrated society, and one has to have a particular chip on one's shoulder about Israel in order to be blind to all of that.

An "unarguable case for an institutional boycott?" No, that is a reading from Mars both of the implications of what Jon says and of the actual state of affairs at Israeli universities and in Israeli society writ large.

I quite agree with Mike Cushman that Israeli universities should take the fight against racism even more seriously than they do, and that this would include things like thinking through unintended consequences of policy.  

I think that this would be good advice for any university.

Cushman illustrates the huge gap in logic of the boycott campaign however.  He jumps straight from (1) there is a problem of institutional racism in Israeli universities to (2) therefore we should single out academics with affiliations to israeli institutions, from all academics in the world, and exclude them from our campuses.

Thank you for that Michael.

Now perhaps you should make the case for a boycott - which you have never done.  Your argument is kids stuff.  (1) things are bad, therefore (2) boycott.  But you never make the case as to why (2) follows from (1).

Also, while you're here, perhaps you could explain your use of a nasty little antisemitic stereotype at UCU conference - when you said:  "Universities are to Israel what the springboks were to South Africa: the symbol of their national identity."  

Another reply to Sue Blackwell:

Dear Sue,

> 2.  Jon, of course racial discrimination is often indirect, as
>     in this particular case.  But the example you have in mind -    academic boycott of Israeli institutions - is an INSTITUTIONAL boycott not one of individuals.

But isn't that just what Birmingham management would say? That they're closing courses, not targetting individuals? It's what indirect discrimination _is_ : measures taken, often without any discriminatory intent, that have a disproportionate effect on a particular group.

>     We are not talking about putting anyone out of a job for instance.  

No. What we're talking about is refusing to work with people because of the country in which they work -- excluding Israeli academics from our journals, our conferences, our campuses.

>     It may be that
>     academic boycott of London Met is targetting an institution
>     with a disproportionate number of BEM staff but because it
>     is the University that is the focus, stuff like impact
>     assessment does not apply. (If you think it does then perhaps you should write to the CRE about it!).

But there's a difference, though, isn't there? In the case of London Met, the boycott is called for by our comrades working at the institution, against their management. Without that call from the people we will be boycotting, it becomes very difficult to tell the difference between an institutional boycott and a boycott of all individuals who happen to work at an institution.

Josh

Sue is of course no stranger to public controversy and her website indicates that:

a) in 2002-3 she engaged in an epic public spat with the SWP and its Birmingham Organiser Ger Francis - in the course of which accusations were exchanged which in normal circumstances would be regarded as extremely damaging to the reputations of the individuals and organisations involved - but at least from the evidence presented by Blackwell I can't see any evidence of her involving the bourgeois courts in that dispute.

b) Following the 2005 AUT motion she received many highly abusive letters and e-mails (and even according to one report in IIRC Socialist Worker actual death threats) - did she involve the courts back then?

c) She had another spot of public bother when she was accused of using her Birmingham University-hosted website to link to openly anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi websites and had to take the political section of it down - again numerous nasty and damaging things must have been said about her at this time - but did she involve the courts?

I would interpret her comment on legal action 'really not being her style' as confirmation that in none of these cases did she ever see fit to invoke the full majesty of the law to protect her reputation.

So what makes Jon's interpretation of her position on the boycott so much more defamatory and actionable than all the unpleasant, threatening and untrue things that must have been said to and about her over the past few years?

I suspect that, having been forced to remove parts of her website by Gilad Atzmon's lawyers, she is trying the same trick on Jon Pike.

Some people out there are threatening to sue Atzmon.

Oh, see how the oppressed have become the oppressors ect ect ect

http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2007/06/28/everybody_threatens_to_sue_everybody.php

Sue Blackwell,

far more than Israeli Jews, your boycott would affect British Jews, who are bound by all kinds of ties with the Jewish state: family, work, economic, cultural, religious and, yes, academic. Jewish and Hebrew studies, religious and traditional, have all kinds of Israeli links which, if these had to be severed, would damage an entire academic field, and adversely affect the studies of hundreds, if not thousands, of people.

Jon Pike is not making any libellous assertions, merely asserting a principle: if closing, or adversely affecting to the extent of closing, or damaging, certain areas of tertiary (and secondary, since university and college Hebrew and Jewish studies are intimately connected by, for a start, the teachers), affects adversely one particulary ethnic group, it is tantamount to discrimination.

The fact that you would resort to legal action against such a (mere) assertion is also discrimination, of the most fantastically willful, and obtuse, kind.

I am very interested in this from Sue's website: "Of course it's a slippery distinction, as Mona Baker herself points out: in fact it's impossible to boycott an institution without in some way affecting the individuals who work for it. I take her point, but nonetheless I try not to target individuals as far as possible. So I draw the line in a different place from Mona; all the same I respect her right to draw her own line where her conscience tells her to, and I think the witch-hunt against her is disgusting."

At one time Sue and I exchanged several emails (during the time when I was wavering between supporting and opposing the academic boycott) - in fact we linked to each other's websites, when I had an active website.  This was during the months either side of the Hirsh-Pappe debate in Birmingham.  But when it became clearer that the arguments against it were carrying much more weight with me, and as I was commenting more often on Engage, she wrote me an email, which luckily I no longer have (due to a computer crash some months ago) - I say luckily because otherwise I might be tempted to quote it - more on this later.

In this email she told me very clearly that if I was moving over to the Engage camp, she could have nothing further to do with me because, "I'm sorry but for me, the personal IS political" (emphasis mine, and it may have been "the political is personal" but the words were all there).  She was actually quite cross with me, and it did feel quite personal I have to say.   She added in this email (which had more than I can now quote accurately) that "if her email ended up on Engage, so be it" (or words to that effect).  But of course I had no intention of forwarding her private email to me, which is why I'm so glad I'm not now tempted by its existence, at least as far as any hardware in my possession is concerned.

We did recently and very briefly resume a somewhat uneasy e-correspondence, and I had to correct her (and in a reply she accepted the correction) that it had not been I, but she, who had broken off communications before.

So the political is personal, or the personal political, and she could have nothing to do with me if I did not support the boycott, or maybe it was simply if I had anything to do with Engage, or both, I'm not now sure.  I guess it felt rather like a boycott.

Amazing, isn't it, that everybody on this blog believes they know how I think better than I do myself.  For the record:

1.  Abusive letters and death threats tend to be anonymous by their very nature (I had one
   death threat with a name and address on it - I didn't take it seriously and neither did
   the police).  If the police could identify the senders of any of the serious ones they would,
   they inform me, prosecute the offenders for racially-aggravated harassment among other
   things.   ("Why racially-aggravated?" I hear you ask.  You should see the things some of
   them have written about goyim in general and Arabs in particular.)

2.  Ger Francis condemned himself by his own words (by the way, he was subsequently removed
   from his position as SWP full-timer and I understand that he was recently even expelled
   from the party, so I was 100% vindicated).  He had no basis for taking legal action against
   me as all I did was reproduce what he had said.  And why should *I* need to take legal
   action against *him*?  I simply wanted to put on the record why I and Rumy Hasan had
   resigned.

3.  I did not change one word that I had written about Gilad Atzmon, I simply moved my comments
   to a different page.  You guys are not paying enough attention.  Take a look at the pages
   in question - I've made some more changes recently.

4.  I am a trade unionist and a socialist.  I do not generally try to get things resolved
   through the courts because they are not organisations which are generally friendly to
   people with my kind of politics.  I believe in collective action from the grass roots to
   get things changed.  Nonetheless, there are exceptions.

5.  David Hirsh, thank you for quoting extensively from my FAQ page explaining exactly where
   I stand on the boycott.  I wrote that some time ago now but it's still a good reflection
   of my position.  So you really have no excuse for keeping Pike's untrue and defamatory
   comments on your web page.  Pike was adddressing himself explicitly to me, but now he
   is not replying.  Why is is delegating his correspondence to you?

6.  Some of my best friends are lawyers.  See http://web.bham.ac.uk/sue_blackwell/forensic.

"Some of my best friends are lawyers."

I'd have thought that remark unworthy of Sue Blackwell.

how times change?

if, say 20-30 years ago, you had said that some "socialists" would be defending their reputation(s) using the libel laws or threatening to, you would have been laughed at?

and yet nowadays?

times, they are a changing, for the worse

Extraordinary,

now Blackwell wants to discriminate against Jon Pike's right to protect Jews against de facto discrimination.

What an unfortunate lady.

Or she going to threaten to sue me too?

I think David should make a copy of the post, which we then all sign, and send to Sue Blackwell. Preferably well publicized.

Adding something about the adverse affect the boycott will have on the academic and other lives of British Jews. I think we need to make a list of all the Jewish and religious and other studies departments that will be affected, and how it will affect current and future generations of British Jews in tertiary education.

What do you think, guys and gals?

Sue Blackwell writes:

"I am a trade unionist and a socialist.  I do not generally try to get things resolved through the courts because they are not organisations which are generally friendly to people with my kind of politics."

I doubt it's the politics.  I mean: if bad reasoning on the part of people with Sue's kind of politics could be ruled out as a factor influencing the outcome, then maybe.  

But,well...bad reasoning _can't_ be ruled out.

And since there's nothing about being a trade unionist or a socialist that _requires_ one to reason badly...

Well, you see my point.  The case that it's socialism or trade unionism as such that the courts frown upon, as distinct from  badly reasoned variants of socialism or trade unionism, is difficult to make.  ..Anyway, Sue Blackwell's not in a position to make that case especially convincingly.  

"some of my best friends are lawyers"

But obviously not defamation specialists though.

Presumably courts are hotbeds of 'Zionists'.

I have posted the complete web pages of this exchange and hope that Sue Blackwell will attempt to SUE me too.

http://modernityblog.wordpress.com/so-sue-me/

I have just been directed to this site by Sue Blackwell's email on the activists list.

What a fantstic site!  I thought that I was alone in thinking that Sue and Sean and Stephen were completely weird - but here is a whole website saying why.  Thank you Jon Pike.