Wesleyan University’s Alumni Protest Roth’s Statement Against the American Studies Association

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Wesleyan University’s Alumni Protest Roth’s Statement Against the American Studies Association

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following press release and open letter were originally published by a group of alumni of Wesleyan University.]

For Immediate Release 

Friday, Jan. 31, 2014 

Contact: thisiswhywespeakup@gmail.com

Wesleyan University’s Alumni Protest Roth’s Statement Against the American Studies Association

As the semester at Wesleyan University begins, the Alumni of “Diversity University” are taking action in opposition to President Michael Roth, for his recent OpEd in the LA Times, which condemned the American Studies Association (ASA) resolution to support the international Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement. President Roth’s statement, misrepresents the boycott and its mission in “an ill-informed, grossly contorted polemic” according to noted scholar Robin D.G. Kelley (Wesleyan Parent ‘12). 

An Open Letter to President Roth written by Wesleyan Alumni has garnered over 140 signatories from around the world, in academia and beyond, ranging in graduating years of 1989 - 2013.  Wesleyan Alumnus Tavia Nyong’o ‘95, professor at New York University and an ASA member said, “I am concerned about the chilling effect on academic freedom that President Michael Roth`s denunciation of the ASA vote could have. In New York State, where I teach, the State Senate has already passed S.6438, an anti-boycott bill that clearly infringes on freedom of speech and would face constitutional challenges should it become law. Boycotts are protected speech and are part of the American political tradition, from the Montgomery bus boycott to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa."

The Open Letter points out Roth’s omissions of the academic freedoms denied by Israeli institutions, such as the routine infringements on the rights and access granted to Palestinian students, as well as the intimidation American academics face when talking about Palestine. The Open Letter also reminds Roth that although he seems to be against boycott on this particular issue, while he was a Wesleyan student in 1978 Roth occupied the then-President Cambell’s office in support of University divestment from South Africa. Lily Haskell alumnus of ’04 says, “It`s shameful that the president of an institution with a stated interest in social justice would turn his back on these values. As a signatory, I`m standing up for Palestinian human rights, including access to education - Roth does not speak for me”.

This Open Letter comes in the aftermath of the groundbreaking decision by the ASA to support the academic boycott of Israeli institutions. This act, called upon by Palestinian civil society as a form of nonviolent protest against Israeli academic institution’s support of the occupation of Palestine, is supported by many prominent American scholars. 

One current Wesleyan student said, “Roth’s remarks shocked me because they seemed to come from the kind of uncritical thought that we learn to denounce at Wes. I feel like his comment would be laughed at if it was said in a classroom setting, it was so clearly inaccurate…it is like he hadn’t done the proper reading.” 

 

Since the ASA resolution, a McCarthy-like backlash has taken place against these scholars on both the private and state level, and Wesleyan Alumni, known for their activism, want to make sure that President Roth knows that this type of misinformation is not lost on them, and they will not stand for it in their name.
 

January 31st, 2014

To President Michael Roth,

As proud alumnae/i of Wesleyan University, and as advocates of Wesleyan’s progressive tradition, we the undersigned declare that President Michael S. Roth’s recent op-ed in the LA Times does not speak in our names.

Writing “as president of Wesleyan, and as a historian,” Roth denounced a recent resolution in support of the boycott of Israeli academic institutions by the American Studies Association (ASA), calling it “phony progressivism” and calling on academics to reject it as an “irresponsible attack on academic freedom.” Carolyn Karcher, professor emerita of English at Temple University, published a response to Roth’s editorial.

We, the undersigned — while we hold different individual views on the boycott, divestment and sanctions (or BDS) movement — reject President Roth’s understanding of progressivism and academic freedom. Among other omissions, his editorial did not address the academic freedom of Palestinian scholars and students, who are routinely denied access to teaching, travel, and free speech. It also did not address the academic freedom of American scholars who work with Palestinians, or who speak and write in support of BDS, although that freedom is now under threat in New York State and beyond. We fear a chilling environment akin to McCarthyism if respectful open dialogue is not permitted on this urgent issue facing universities worldwide.

As a historian, President Roth is surely aware of the important role of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions in the progressive struggle to end the apartheid state in South Africa. Indeed, while he was himself a Wesleyan student in 1978, Roth occupied the office of then-President Campbell in support of university divestment from South Africa. Roth belongs to the tradition of international solidarity campaigns against the human rights violations of specific nations, even though he now ridicules and rejects a campaign in that tradition.

President Roth does not speak in our names when he calls on academics to reject the boycott without first informing themselves of the issues and familiarizing themselves with the intellectually rigorous and democratically accountable manner in which the ASA, together with a growing number of academic organizations, reached their decision.

Signed,

Wesleyan Alumni

 

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412