Pitzer College and the Israel Boycott

Earlier this month, the faculty at Pitzer College voted in favor of suspending the school's study abroad program at Haifa University in Israel. The next step in the process will be a vote in January by the College Council, which, uniquely among American colleges and universities, comprises faculty, students, and staff. It appears to be unclear whether the administration can overrule the council on matters concerning academic programs. The main sponsor of the boycott resolution believes that the council vote will be "binding." 

In an argument worthy of a Lewis Carroll story, proponents of the boycott have cited the Lara Alqasem case as proof that Israel study programs are not equally available to all students. It is true that Alqasem's visa to study at Hebrew University was initially revoked at Ben Gurion Airport, where she was detained for over a week pending her appeal. But in fact, the Israel Supreme Court ultimately granted her petition and ordered the government to issue the visa. Every university in Israel supported Alqasem's petition, and she currently enrolled in her program at Hebrew University. It is simply bizarre for the Pitzer faculty to deny their students the same opportunity that Alqasem, backed by Haifa University, fought so hard to obtain. 

Fortunately, Pitzer's president Melvin Oliver has issued a powerful and moving statement in opposition to the boycott, invoking the college's long and admirable history of academic freedom and pluralism. I urge everyone to read it after the jump.

November 29, 2018

President Melvin L. Oliver’s comments read at the Pitzer College Council,

I want to speak to the College Council as President of Pitzer College and to reflect on the motion advanced by the FEC and affirmatively voted upon by the faculty to suspend the direct-enroll program at Haifa University in Israel. 

In Pitzer’s Faculty, Staff and Student Governance Bylaws, “1.5(a):  All matters relating to the educational policies of the College are subject to review by the faculty...” In the wisdom of the early founders of the College, it was recognized that the Faculty have the subject matter expertise and educational background to review curriculum and policy decisions that promote the educational objectives of the institution, advance our educational mission, and promote the well-being of our students. 

I have listened to the arguments and observations made in support of this motion and frankly, I find that they show little or no consideration for our educational objectives and mission; in fact, I find the outcome of the discussion to be a repudiation of our educational mission. To deny Pitzer students who want to study at Haifa University the opportunity to study abroad and to enter into dialogue and promote intercultural understanding at the altar of political considerations is anathema to Pitzer’s core values.  If the suspension of the Haifa University program becomes a reality, this will be paltry support for the cause of Palestinian rights and a major blow to the reputation and reality of Pitzer College as a scholarly institution committed to its stated values of intercultural understanding and the ability of students to pursue their vision of educational engagement. This is inconsistent with Pitzer’s core values and certainly not consistent with what a Pitzer education is all about.

Much was made of the supposed legal restrictions on “critics of Israeli policy” and “proponents of BDS” in being able to access study abroad opportunities in Israel. While the faculty was deliberating this motion, the case of the American graduate student Lara Alqasem who was detained and not allowed entry to pursue her program of study at Hebrew University was ongoing. However, the Israeli Supreme Court made a decision that decisively stated that her “political viewpoints” could not be used to deny her entry to the country and enrollment in Hebrew University. As the court said:

“Since the appellant's actions do not raise satisfactory cause to bar her entry to Israel, the inevitable impression is that invalidating the visa given to her was due to the political opinions she holds...If this is truly the case, then we are talking about an extreme and dangerous step, which could lead to the crumbling of the pillars upon which democracy in Israel stands.”

This statement of support for individual political beliefs and the right to enter into Israeli society is in sharp relief to the US court’s explicit support for denial of entry of Muslims from various countries around the world to the US. Are we ready to have other colleges and universities ban their students from attending Pitzer College because of our national immigration laws?

Pitzer College, along with every college in the country, promotes exchanges and study abroad in countries with significant human right’s abuses. China, for example, has killed, tortured, and imprisoned up to one million people in Tibet and utterly obliterated the Tibetan nation. Additionally, China currently has one million Muslims imprisoned in re-education camps. Why would we not suspend our program with China? Or take our longest standing program in Nepal where the Pitzer in Nepal program has been run for over 40 years. During that time they have had a bloody civil war that killed 19,000 people. Why Israel?

The faculty's action has already caused Pitzer College substantial and unnecessary damage by creating the impression that Pitzer is an illiberal place where its supposed core value of intercultural understanding is sacrificed on the altar of narrow and selectively applied political interests. If the motion is enacted, the damage will be much worse still. We will foolishly alienate a large percentage of our Jewish and non-Jewish constituents who see this very polarizing issue differently from the stance expressed in the faculty motion. Who are these constituents? Current and prospective students and their families; current, former, and prospective faculty and staff; alumni; trustees; and friends of the College. We do not have the luxury of isolating ourselves and alienating our friends. No one does. This decision has consequences; consequences that will over time limit our reach, adversely affect our ability to implement our academic goals such as research funding and innovative academic programming, and create a misleading impression of our campus community and alumni.

There is a tradition that Pitzer College needs to honor and to treasure. It is of the Pitzer that came into being at a time that Jewish faculty were few and far between at the Claremont Colleges. Many of Pitzer College’s founding faculty were Jewish. Among them were Werner Warmbrunn and Lucian Marquis, both German Jews who fled Nazi Germany. Lucian’s own father was arrested and imprisoned by the Nazis in Germany. As founding faculty, they were instrumental in forging a vision of Pitzer that attracted me, and I presume, many of you to Pitzer.  I came here because the core values resonated with my beliefs and how I live my life. And I want Pitzer College to continue to be known for its appreciation of diverse political and social views. An institution where we attempt to understand social, economic, and political problems through the lens of intercultural understanding and where we engage with different communities, not superficially, but with depth and real critical appreciation. To do that we need to reject this restriction and double down on our engagement with communities we disagree with, whose political systems we decry, and where discrimination and bias are endemic. We have much to give as both individuals and a community and, equally, much to learn, and that is the educational mission that we need to preserve and protect.

Melvin L. Oliver
President

Comments

[The Law Offcies of Kavanaugh Thomas, LLC, PC, LTD, Chartered, AV Rated]

More like Pischer College.

[Dana Lubet, DDS]

Evil exists when good people are silent, right? Speak out against bigotry and racism in all its forms. Resist the boycott.

[Prof. Kevin Heller]

Sure, the Israeli government detained a student for a week for absolutely no reason -- other than as part of its ongoing efforts to exclude from the country anyone who does not parrot the Israeli right's views on Palestine. But hey, the Israeli Supreme Court (unexpectedly) ordered the government to let her attend HUJ. So no harm, no foul.

[Guest]

The biggest problem with BDS (and not the only one) is it is intellectually dishonest. Many US academic institutions have campuses in Qatar and Saudi whose record on freedom and rights is abysmal. Why does Northwestern Law have a program with HBKU Law in Doha when in fact no one from Isreal can even visit let alone be employed at HBKU? Do they employ US Jewish professors? Huge discrmintory conduct. Yet only Isreal is singled out.

[Steve L.]

Prof. Heller: Like many other nations, including the US and the UK, Israel has some unfair and discriminatory immigration laws. Fortunately, Israel also has an independent judiciary that keeps in check some of the worst attributes of the Netanyahu government. Your apparent disdain for the Supreme Court ruling is hard to understand.

In any case, boycotting Haifa University over Israel's immigration law makes no more sense than boycotting Oxford and Cambridge over the UK's treatment of the "Windrush" generation and other discriminatory citizenship policies. Or boycotting Pitzer College itself over President Trump's Muslim ban.

Israel's universities have consistently stood up for civil liberties and academic freedom, in what has increasingly become a hostile political environment. Liberal academics should be supporting that effort, not boycotting it.

The Supreme Court ruling in favor of Lara Alqasem does not mean "no harm, no foul," but it requires irrational hostility to want to take it out on Haifa University.

[anymouse]

Well, leftist anti-semites gotta anti-semite.

[Anonymous 2]

As Guest observes, the seeming inconsistency between boycotts of Israel and the non-boycotts of many worse offenders will raise for many the issue of whether the motivation is anti-Semitism or if Israel a soft target. I can understand no one bothering to boycott North Korea because nothing happens there to boycott. But why no action against Russia, which invades other countries, violates chemical weapons treaties, assassinates reporters? Or against China, which likewise does kidnappings and apparently is imprisoning millions of an ethnic minority for "re-education"? Or Saudi Arabia, engaged in other invasions killing tens of thousands of children?

[r]

Pitzer College study abroad programs include China, Cuba, and Bhutan. The Chinese discrimination and oppression of the Uigher Muslims is finally getting the publicity it deserves, and China is well-known for many other on-going human rights abuses, as is Cuba. Bhutan's oppression of its Nepalese minority has resulted in a refugee situation that has been categorised by Amnesty International as "one of the most protracted and neglected refugee crises in the world." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Bhutan.

But Israel is the one program that the Pitzer students chose to suspend. I don't like throwing anti-semitism lightly - I think many in the BDS movement have good (although misguided) intentions. But I really struggle to understand any rationale, other than anti-semitism, for stigmatizing Israel while giving China a free pass.

[Steve L.]

r: It was the Pitzer faculty that voted to end the Haifa University program. The students actually seem to have objected to the proposed suspension. As I understand it, the college council (comprising faculty, students, and staff) will vote next month.

[Jack]

I do not support the BDS movement against Israel. However, a non-anti-Semitic rationale for a distinction between Israel and other countries which are, undeniably, more severe human rights violators, is that Israel's commitment to human rights and democracy makes it responsive to international pressure in a way that dictatorships and monarchies are not.

[r]

Steve L.: Thank you for the clarification - I wrote too quickly. Looking into this further, it appears that the student government has passed a resolution to show that it does not support suspending the Haifa University program.

Jack: The argument that Israel is a soft target that is amenable to international pressure is often used to distinguish Israel from much worse offenders. As Anonymous 2 states above, a boycott against North Korea is not going to have much effect. This rationale could be applied to Cuba and Bhutan. However, a large-scale boycott against China could certainly have a real impact - China's economy is very dependent on exports and foreign investment.

Being generous and assuming a non-biased rationale, I suppose you could argue that a China boycott is not being attempted because boycotting Chinese products, investments, and study abroad opportunities is just too difficult. Much easier to boycott a small country that doesn't manufacture so many of the shoes and phones that we can't stop buying. Maybe the BDS proponents are only willing to sacrifice so much, and certainly not their iPhones.

[Guest]

Lets look at Northwestern and its relationship with Qatar. Northwestern Law developed a JD program with HBKU Law in Doha, Qatar. Northwestern and HBKU are partners. HBKU is a Govt funded University (Qatar Foundation). HBKU is a state-owned Qatari academic institution.

https://dailynorthwestern.com/2015/02/23/campus/northwestern-law-partners-with-hamad-bin-khalifa-university-to-create-new-law-school-in-qatar/

The first Dean was Professor Clinton Francis from Northwestern Law.
So I took a look at the HBKU faculty - maybe I cant tell from names but doesnt look like any jews need apply. Certainly no Isrealis would be welcome. So Northwestern is partnering with an academic institution that boycotts Isreali academics and american jewish ones as well.

Hmmm...

[Prof. Kevin Heller]

Prof Lubet: to be clear, I have always opposed -- vocally, even when I held the chair in criminal law at SOAS -- academic BDS. So I am not attacking Haifa or any other university. (With the exception of Ariel, which is built in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. It deserves any criticism it gets.) My problem with your posts on this subject is that you consistently downplay, if not ignore, the Israeli government's unremitting attacks on the academic freedom of (1) Palestinians, and (2) Jews both in Israel and outside of it who do not parrot the ultra-right line on Palestine. My "no harm, no foul" comment was responding to your failure to even offer a word of criticism for a government that thinks it's fine to detain a Jewish student on the basis of her political beliefs until the Supreme Court order it to release her.

The Israeli government's horrific treatment of Alqasem is not the universities' fault, and Israeli universities have consistently and admirably defended academic freedom. But non-Israeli academics cannot simply bury their heads in the sand and pretend that the Israeli government is not a bitter enemy of academic freedom, one that is committed to creating a situation in which entire categories of students are discriminated against in university education. That is why I found your posts on the letter of recommendation issue so problematic. Just as I would hope an American academic would not have written a letter of recommendation for a white student to attend a South African university during apartheid, given that none of her black students would ever have been permitted to attend the same university, I find it difficult to fathom how an American academic could be ethically obligated to write a letter of recommendation for a Jewish student that the Israeli government approves of (ie, have the "correct" political views), if she has other students -- Palestinian or pro-Palestinian Jewish -- whom the Israeli government would almost certainly prevent from entering the country if accepted. In other words: it is possible to be an anti-academic BDS and not pretend that the Israeli government's hostility to academic freedom doesn't matter.

PS for Prof Lubet's readers: no, I am not saying Israel is an apartheid state.

Guest: try getting out more. You might read about, say, the massive academic response in the UK and Europe to the UAE's recent conviction of a Durham university PhD student for "espionage." The entire Birmingham faculty voted not to work at the campus the university is currently building in Doha. Or you could educate yourself about the Yale faculty's bitter opposition to the university's campus in Singapore because of that county's hostility to academic freedom. The list is a long one. So implying that academics only care about academic freedom when it's being denied by Israel says far more about your own limited knowledge than about the academics you abhor.

All: not that the trolls on this website care, but I'm Jewish. Both sides. I even wrote a long book about US war-crimes prosecutions after WW II that focused on the Holocaust -- an event in which large numbers of my family, from Krakow and Minsk, were murdered. Amazingly, it is possible to Jewish and critical of Israel at the same time. In fact, I think we Jewish academics are ethically obligated to raise our voices in protest of the Israeli government's unconscionable treatment of Palestinians. And every time Netanyahu claims to speak for "the Jews," that ethical obligation only grows. He certainly doesn't speak for me.

[Leon]

There was a recent letter sent to DOE Office For Civil Right:

https://rightsanddissent.org/news/free-speech-rights-under-fire-on-campus-from-marc-lamont-hill-to-the-department-of-education/

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/548748b1e4b083fc03ebf70e/t/5c056bcf0ebbe837494405c0/1543859152314/Civil+Rights+Coalition+Letter+to+Marcus+11-30-18.pdf

[Leon]

https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-israel-lobby-groups-behind-the-political-lynching-of-marc-lamont-hill/252534/

Last Friday, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article in which it noted that one of the people pushing for Hill to be fired from Temple University was Leonard Barrack, who was described as a “Temple trustee and major donor to the university.” Barrack, who is also a Temple alumnus and former finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), was quoted as saying that “He [Hill] called for the destruction of the State of Israel in code words. I am very upset about it. I think it was anti-Semitic.”

CNN fires Marc Lamont Hill for speech on Palestine Mint Press News_editedHowever, the article fails to note that Leonard Barrack is also former president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, which regularly hosts events in Philadelphia with American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), arguably the most influential Israel lobby group in the U.S., and StandWithUs, an Israel lobby group whose activities on U.S. college campuses were exposed in a recently leaked documentary.