Letter to the UAE Minister of the Interior Concerning Denial of Entry to the UAE of NYU Professor Andrew Ross

Letter to the UAE Minister of the Interior Concerning Denial of Entry to the UAE of NYU Professor Andrew Ross

Letter to the UAE Minister of the Interior Concerning Denial of Entry to the UAE of NYU Professor Andrew Ross

By : Committee on Academic Freedom (MESA)

[The following letter was issued by the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association on 25 March 2015]

His Excellency Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan
Minister of the Interior, United Arab Emirates
via fax 971-2-4022762 and 971-2-4415780

His Excellency Yussef Al Otaiba
Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United States
202-243-2432 

Dr. John Sexton
President of New York University
john.sexton@nyu.edu

Dr. Al Bloom
Vice-Chancellor of NYU-Abu Dhabi
nyuad@nyu.edu

Your Excellencies Minister Al Nahyan and Ambassador Al Otaiba, President Sexton, Vice-Chancellor Bloom: 

I write to you on behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) in order to express our grave concern about the decision of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities to deny entry to Professor Andrew Ross, a member of the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University (NYU). Professor Ross, a prominent scholar and president of the NYU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, was denied entry to the UAE when seeking to board an Etihad Airways flight to Abu Dhabi on March 16, 2015. Refusal to allow Professor Ross to enter the UAE for unspecified “security reasons” is a clear violation of the principles of academic freedom. We call on you to take immediate action in order to secure the reversal of this arbitrary and unjustified decision and to ensure that such incidents do not recur.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, MESA publishes theInternational Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 3,000 members worldwide. 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.

Professor Ross has conducted valuable research on the treatment of migrant workers in the UAE, and there is good reason to suspect that it was this research, and his vocal criticism of certain UAE policies and practices with regard to migrant labor, that led to the decision to prevent his entry. We note that the abuse and exploitation of migrant workers in the UAE – including some of those involved in the construction of the NYU-Abu Dhabi campus – have been thoroughly documented not only by Professor Ross but also by journalists and by nongovernmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch.

The decision on the part of the UAE authorities to deny entry to a prominent academic on the basis of his past research constitutes a clear violation both of academic freedom and of the fundamental right to movement and mobility guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It also raises troubling questions about NYU’s commitment to the implementation of fair labor standards for workers involved in the construction and operation of its Abu Dhabi campus. Without independent investigation and monitoring, including research in the UAE by NYU faculty like Professor Ross, it is impossible to determine whether NYU is actually living up to its repeated public commitments with regard to labor standards. 

At the same time, the denial of entry to Professor Ross puts into question NYU’s ability, and perhaps willingness, to protect the academic freedom rights of its faculty and students at various components of what NYU calls the “Global Network University,” and of visiting NYU faculty in the countries in which it operates. In this connection we note the statement issued by NYU spokesman John Beckman in response to the denial of entry to Professor Ross. Mr. Beckman stated that while NYU “supports the free movement of people and ideas…it is the government that controls visa and immigration policy, and not the university.” We find this assertion both disingenuous and alarming because NYU has long insisted that faculty and students at NYU-Abu Dhabi and its other global sites would enjoy the same academic freedom rights they would enjoy in New York. The denial of entry to Professor Ross undermines this claim. 

We call on the UAE authorities to promptly reverse their decision and permit Professor Ross to enter the UAE in order to pursue his research. We also call on President Sexton and Vice-Chancellor Bloom to protest the decision of the UAE authorities to deny entry to Professor Ross, to reaffirm their commitment to academic freedom, and to do all they can to ensure that scholars and students, whether or not affiliated with NYU, can fulfill their scholarly and educational missions without harassment, in the UAE and wherever else NYU operates. 

We look forward to your timely response.

Yours sincerely, 
 
Nathan J. Brown
President, Middle East Studies Association and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University

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