Letter Concerning Suspension of Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University

[CAF logo. Image from MESA website.] [CAF logo. Image from MESA website.]

Letter Concerning Suspension of Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University

By : Committee on Academic Freedom (MESA)

[The following letter was written by the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA).]

Minister of Education Gideon Sa’ar
Ministry of Education
Government of Israel
Sent via email gsaar@knesset.gov.il

Dear Minister Sa’ar,

It is with great consternation that I write to you, on behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF) of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), regarding the recommendation (dated September 4, 2012) of the Subcommittee for Quality Assessment of Israel’s Council for Higher Education that the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University not be allowed to accept students for the 2013-14 academic year. You may recall that in a letter to you, dated January 13, 2012, addressing the evaluation of that same academic department, we expressed our alarm about the punitive suggestion that the department be closed down should it not implement the recommendations embodied in the international evaluation committee’s report, submitted to the Council of Higher Education.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. It is the preeminent organization in the field. The Association publishes the International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly three thousand members worldwide. Its membership includes numerous Israeli scholars, as well as scores of scholars from all over the world whose research focuses on Israel. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression, both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and elsewhere.

What we find most distressing about this situation is that even though the recommendations of the international evaluation committee for changes to the faculty and curriculum of the department were followed, the Subcommittee for Quality Assessment has nonetheless decided to recommend the suspension of student registration to that department for the 2013-14 academic year. In fact, the department, in conjunction with the university administration, acted upon the committee’s recommendations swiftly and resolutely, achieving much of what was asked of them. To better represent the fields within Political Science, three new faculty members were recruited in comparative politics, quantitative methods, and political theory, and plans have been outlined for a fourth hire next year; at the same time, the department made changes to its curriculum.

The above changes elicited a positive response, in a note of congratulations – dated July 8, 2012 – from two members of the international evaluation committee who had been asked to oversee the department’s implementation of the report’s recommendations. The note goes on to encourage the department to provide “time, resources, and mentoring” to the new faculty members so that they may be able to both advance their academic careers and contribute effectively to building a “pluralistic” curriculum. In closing, the two international members recommend continued attention to diversity in future faculty hires with respect to methodological and theoretical orientations. 

That the Council of Higher Education’s subcommittee has recommended closing the department, despite the positive response from its two appointed international members to the significant changes that have already been made and the plans for future changes, suggests, in no uncertain terms, that the recommendation has little to do with academic matters. That the department is not given the opportunity to continue the process of hiring diverse voices, nor even to support the new faculty members, hints at a separate agenda directed at that particular department. As we wrote in our January letter, we remain concerned that political motivations lie behind the negative attention being accorded the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University. As such, this represents a gross and abusive infringement upon academic freedom and independence. 

We appeal to you, as Minister of Education and chairman of the Council for Higher Education, to reject the most recent, and very dangerous recommendation of the Subcommittee for Quality Assessment. Beyond the department at Ben Gurion University, the recommendation represents a profound threat to academic freedom, to the Israeli academic community, and to the international reputation of Israeli universities. Instead, we urge you, along with your colleagues, to recognize and applaud the good will and concerted efforts of Ben Gurion University and the Department of Politics and Government. To live up to your mission and your avowed ideals, we urge you, as well, to truly embrace the core of academic freedom by welcoming voices that enrich thought and knowledge by broadening the landscape of ideas. 

Sincerely,

Fred M. Donner
MESA President
Professor of Near Eastern History, University of Chicago 

cc: Members of the Council of Higher Education

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