Israeli academics who oppose the current Israeli policy support the boycott. They are attacked, threatened, silenced, and ignored. The situation of Palestinian academics is even worse. Gazing students with scholarships are trapped by the Israeli blockade, unable to take advantage of scholarships and study opportunities abroad. So if one is against BDS, one must also oppose the effective boycott that is already in place against Palestinians and their defenders.
Sent from my iPhone
> On Nov 12, 2014, at 8:59 AM, Ruddock M.W. <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Funny email, 'Boycott Ethnography from the Margins'.
>
> None of your reasoning seemed to consider the Palestinian demand, from across civil society, for an international boycott.
>
> Also you offered no alternative other than to sympathise and maintain the status quo.
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: The Anthropology-Matters forum mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Matan Shapiro
> Sent: 12 November 2014 12:33
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Boycott Ethnography from the Margins
>
> 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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