Colleagues
I completed my PhD at UCL Anthropology last year and am now working as a
postdoctoral fellow at the University of Haifa in Israel. I hesitated, but
eventually signed the petition AGAINST the boycott for five main reasons.
First, academic boycott is a logical absurdity that collapses into itself
because it works to marginalize and silence those voices that support, in
general terms, the cause for which the boycott had been set up in the first
place. Beyond this internal contradiction, by which you actually end up
boycotting yourself, the method is just as intolerant and discriminatory as
those policies of occupation and colonization you vehemently reject. By
resorting to these methods - consequently radicalizing the violence - you
will be serving the interest of those who seek the prolongation of this
atrocious conflict.
Second, boycotting institutions will almost inevitably entail the
boycotting of individuals. Are you seriously saying you will approve
research funding for PhD students working with the theories of Carl Schmitt
and Martin Heidegger, for example, but boycott Yaron Ezrahi and Lev
Greenberg?! And what about the many Palestinian scholars tenured in Israeli
academic institutions? And committed peace activists, whose research funds
come from the Israeli government but their knowledge production is aimed at
enforcing change? And so on. Would the boycott exclude these professionals
due to their personal biographies or 'correct' political views? If so, it
would certainly lose its ethical credibility and universal appeal.
Third, the War Machine is primarily sustained by pretty powerful
corporations, the media, and extra-academic governmental institutions.
These might have links with research power centers in Israeli and global
universities, but there is no way to enforce them to comply with academic
ethical conventions. Consequently, such corporations as the NATO
MBDA-Systems, UK Raytheon, Brazilian Vale, you name it, will not be obliged
to follow any boycott policies whatsoever. And it is them who run the
business, not anthropology departments. Surely a boycott on Israeli
academia, let alone on Israeli humanities and social sciences, is unable to
drain the occupation from its sources of funding.
Fourth, as flagrant neo-liberalism, wild capitalism and colonial
exploitation still emanate from the major political and economic powers in
the Global North, certain supporters of the boycott in some American,
British, and French academic institutions should take a second look at who
is paying their own salaries. Not to mention guilt by association, as with
renowned British universities receiving money from the Army, on the one
hand, and from 'legitimate' war-lords on the other (see the Gaddafi case).
Fifth, many Israeli scholars are overwhelmingly sympathetic to the
Palestinian cause. Some are not. By grouping them all into the category of
perpetrators the bureaucratic logic of boycott emits the end of
*vita-activa*, creativity, dialogue, negotiation and freedom of speech.
This is not an appeal to differentiate intellectual and political debates
on the basis of some kind of an anachronistic and positivistic claim for
the 'objectivity' of science, but, rather the contrary, to take
anthropology's special interest in alterity and its powerful message in
enhancing complexity to full use, by making informed decisions about how to
struggle in the grey-zone, and recognize it for being grey, through
constructive cooperation, rather than always-already resort to
black-and-white territories of discord and animosity.
Hence, I oppose the boycott.
Matan Shapiro
Dr. Matan Shapiro
Honorary Research Associate
Department of Anthropology
University College London (UCL)
14 Taviton Street
London
WC1H 0BW
U.K.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Anthropology Department
Haifa University
Mount Carmel
Israel
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