[R-G] UCLA professor helps launch boycott of Israel

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/2009/feb/23/ucla-professor-helps-launch-boycott-israel/

UCLA professor helps launch boycott of Israel
Nearly 200 US professors follow suit; others cite need for pressure on  
Palestine, too

     * Anna Andersen (Contact)
     * Published: Monday, February 23, 2009

Sondra Hale, a UCLA professor in the anthropology and women’s studies  
departments, is an organizing committee member of the recently  
launched U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Eleven of the 15 organizing committee members represent California  
universities, and four of them are from the University of California.  
Nearly 200 faculty members from universities across the nation are  
endorsing the boycott.

The committee was formed in response to a call for support by  
Palestinian civil society and follows the guidelines drafted by the  
Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel,  
which was launched in 2004, according to its Web site.

The call is “inspired by the struggle of South Africans against  
apartheid and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral  
consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression,” according to  
its mission statement.

Although there have been local efforts to boycott and divest from  
Israeli companies in the past, this is the first attempt in the United  
States to organize an academic and cultural boycott on a national  
level, Hale said.

The U.S. boycott was largely provoked by the recent attack on Gaza, in  
which hundreds of children were killed, Hale said.

“The bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza was an important  
impetus,” she added. “That made us think Israeli academics should take  
a stand and put pressure on their universities, which are highly  
implicated in the developing of weapons through scientific research,  
not unlike other universities.”

However, the boycott is institutional and is not aimed at individual  
academics and cultural figures, Hale said.

It means that foreign exchange and cooperative programs with Israel  
would cease, but it doesn’t mean that Israeli academics would stop  
being invited to speak at UCLA or that their work would cease to be  
published, Hale added.

The academic and cultural boycott of Israel is part of a global  
boycott, divestments and sanctions movement supporting Palestine.

On Feb. 7, Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., became the first  
college in the United States to divest from Israel due to its  
occupation of Palestine.

It was also the first college or university to divest from South  
Africa during the apartheid struggle.

However, for various reasons, not all professors support the boycott.

Since Hampshire College divested, Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law  
professor, has put pressure on the college to rescind its statement,  
Hale said.

Marc Trachtenberg, a UCLA professor in the political science  
department is also against the boycott.

“The main reason I’m against the boycott is because it is very one- 
sided,” Trachtenberg said.

“The key to a settlement is to put pressure on both sides. The more  
one side is castigated, the more power the other side feels and the  
less pressure they feel to act,” he said. “It’s counterproductive. The  
trick to policy is to structure incentives.”

Trachtenberg said he would feel the same way about extreme action  
taken by the other side as well.

Still, the U.S. Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel campaign  
believes it is time to take a stance, “especially in light of the  
censorship and silencing of the Palestine question in U.S.  
universities, as well as U.S. society at large,” according to the  
campaign’s mission statement.

Hale, who is also the chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee of the  
Center for Near Eastern Studies and the co-chair for Islamic Studies,  
said she feels this pressure at UCLA in the form of internal and  
external complaints.

“After the Center for Near Eastern Studies held the Jan. 21 ‘Human  
Rights and Gaza’ panel, we received an enormous amount of pressure  
from administrators complaining that our panel was not balanced  
enough,” Hale said.

“It has a chilling effect,” Hale added.

She said would like to be able to discuss this controversial subject  
with clarity and respect for both sides on the UCLA campus.

Chancellor Gene Block was not immediately available for comment, but  
his office recently released a statement in early February regarding  
academic freedom at UCLA.

In his statement, Chancellor Block discussed the controversy  
surrounding the conflict in the Middle East and specifically in Gaza.

In response to complaints about the “Human Rights and Gaza” panel, he  
wrote about the importance of protecting freedom of expression and  
maintaining scholarly balance.

“We have a responsibility to protect the freedom of expression. We  
also all have a responsibility to listen and engage, respectfully,  
even as we must understand that not every campus forum on a  
controversial topic will satisfy passionate and concerned members of  
the campus and broader communities,” he said in his statement.