Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association Statement on Defunding of Stanford University Press

 Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association Statement on Defunding of Stanford University Press

Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association Statement on Defunding of Stanford University Press

By : Jadaliyya Reports

The Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association (OTSA) learned with dismay of the recent decision by Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Provost Persis Drell to eliminate the annual subsidy that the university is accustomed to granting to Stanford University Press (SUP). We view this decision as antithetical to the basic goals of a research university, particularly one as outstanding and well-endowed as Stanford.

OTSA is a private, non-profit, non-political organization of persons interested in Ottoman and Turkish studies. Among our objectives is the promotion of high standards of scholarship and instruction. Ottoman and Turkish studies are the purview of hundreds of scholars from around the world in numerous and overlapping disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, and include research covering some 700 years, a contemporary geography of more than thirty countries, the birthplaces and holiest sites of the three monotheistic faiths, and over two dozen ethnicities. Ottoman and Turkish studies are key to the understanding of global history, movements and trends stretching over almost a millennium.

What is the contribution of Stanford University Press to this field? In the past decade, SUP has become one of the premier academic presses in Ottoman and Turkish Studies, as part of its accession to a leading role in publishing scholarship on the Middle East and the Islamic world. A search on “Ottoman” on the SUP website yields seventeen titles published over the last ten years, with nine book awards among them and “Turkey, Turkish” yields thirteen titles with six awards over thirteen years. SUP has attracted rising stars and established scholars who write innovatively at the intersections of fields and disciplines on topics such as revolution, imperial citizenship, transitions from empire to nation-state, gender and war. SUP has a reputation in our fields as being one of the most selective presses and probably the one that works most professionally and successfully with its authors to produce excellent books. This is an achievement to celebrate and boast about, because books remain a uniquely valuable format for the dissemination of knowledge and the results of scholarly inquiry.

Given the reputation of SUP for the professional production of outstanding scholarship, it is already positioned as a leader in the world of academic publishing. Stanford, so justifiably proud of its reputation among the premier universities of the globe, might have seen this as an opportunity to shine a spotlight on its starring role in yet another aspect of the intellectual endeavor. On the other hand, should Stanford University continue on its current course to judge the press by its profitability instead of by its contribution to expanding scholarship and knowledge, it may happen that other, far less-well-endowed universities take their cue from Stanford and reassess their commitments to their own presses.

At present, the publication of printed books in university presses is a sine qua non for advancement in the humanities and social sciences in almost every university around the world. If the culture of publication is destined to change -- and change it will -- this change should continue to be generated from within the disciplines and as a result of the dynamic interplay between forms of knowledge creation and changing possibilities for dissemination. Presses are experimenting successfully with multiple formats of book publication, including ebooks and companion websites, but actual printed books continue to be the essential medium for the presentation of a completed research project.

Fiscal pressures are one component and yet only one of the factors driving these changes. Such pressures should not be given a leading role without the most careful consideration, most especially in a university that has the capacity and intellectual depth to make decisions based on well-informed and considered judgments by a representative group of its own scholars. Those scholars are committed to fostering excellence in all the areas of university activity, and it is with that commitment that decisions about the future of SUP must be taken.

OTSA submits that it is only after diligent deliberation and taking into account its intellectual mission to promote “learning, discovery, innovation, expression and discourse” that Stanford University will be in a position to formulate a sustainable decision regarding its role with respect to the press that shares its name.
 

Dr. Amy Singer
President of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association
Tel Aviv University / All Souls College, Oxford
May 10, 2019

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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