Join MLA Members for Justice in Palestine, Sign Open Letter in Support of Academic Boycott

Below is a letter drafted by MLA Members for Justice in Palestine and signed by scholars of literature and languages.   

Please visit mlaboycott.wordpress.com for more information about the movement of MLA members in support of the boycott of Israeli academic Institutions.

If you wish to sign the open letter, please visit the new website  (https://mlaboycott.wordpress.com/sign-the-open-letter/.)

If you are an MLA member and want to be more involved in advocating for an academic boycott of Israel, please join the MLA Commons Group (MLA Members for Justice in Palestine).  MLA Members for Justice in Palestine also has a facebook page that is open to all students and scholars interested in following this movement.
 

The Open Letter

As members of the Modern Language Association and scholars of literature and language, we express our dismay at the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding on a daily basis in the territories controlled by Israel. Given the long-term failure of diplomacy alone to resolve the deteriorating situation, we feel compelled to identify the injustices, speak out against them, and support the Palestinian appeal for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) of Israel. The BDS movement is the largest non-violent grassroots movement in the world seeking significant redress for Palestinians in what is, for them, a situation that continues to deteriorate by the day. It has been endorsed by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations and in the past dozen years has increasingly gained the support of global individuals and organizations concerned with justice and human rights. In the face of Israel’s ongoing violations of international law and of the basic human and political rights of the Palestinian people, we feel compelled to add our voices to this growing movement for justice.

The pervasive and ongoing flouting of international law by the Israeli government includes :

• Occupation and confiscation of Palestinian lands in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and dispossession of other Palestinians in the Naqab (Negev);
• Illegal settlement building;
• Blockade and siege of Gaza;
• Detentions without trial, torture and war crimes, and use of deadly force by the Israeli military against non-violent protesters;
• Construction of walls and fences around Palestinian population centers;
• Curtailment of freedom of movement and education for Palestinians in the occupied territories;
• Israeli denial of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return since 1948; 
• Punitive house demolitions that constitute acts of collective punishment.

As academics, we are also specifically distressed by the ongoing repression of Palestinian academics and educational institutions. Al Quds University near Jerusalem, the Arab American University in Jenin, Birzeit University near Ramallah, and the Islamic University in Gaza have all recently been subjected to Israeli military incursions. We also note Israeli state discrimination against Palestinian students and faculty members in the form of restrictions on movement, restrictions of freedom of speech and assembly, confiscations of archives, and destruction of research centers.

We are no less concerned about the complicity of Israeli academic institutions in the occupation and oppression of Palestinians. Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Bar Ilan University, Haifa University, the Technion University, and Ben Gurion University have all been extensively involved in research and development of weapons and surveillance technology that is used to enforce Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and its discriminatory policies against Palestinians. For example, the Technion University has developed a remote-controlled ‘D9’ bulldozer used to demolish Palestinian homes. Bar Ilan University has participated in joint research with the Israeli army to develop artificial intelligence for unmanned combat vehicles deployed in Israel’s various assaults against the Gaza Strip, and private weapons technology firms, such as Elbit, are involved in co-advising Israeli PhD students studying in science and engineering. Tel Aviv University is directly implicated, through its Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), in developing the Dahiya Doctrine, adopted by the Israeli military in its assaults on Lebanon in 2006 and on Gaza today, which advocates extensive destruction of civilian infrastructure and “intense suffering” among civilians as an “effective” deterrence.

(All factual claims in this statement are extensively documented in the Statement of Evidence submitted to MLA’s Delegate Assembly, which can be consulted on the MLA Commons site of MLA Members for Justice in Palestine: http://commons.mla.org/groups/mla-members-for-justice-in-palestine/documents/)

We stand in solidarity with those Israeli academics who have protested against their government’s policies and as a result face disciplinary measures from their own universities. We moreover support the Palestinian call, endorsed by the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE), to boycott Israeli academic institutions. This call responds to the long-standing appeal from Palestinian civil society organizations for the comprehensive implementation of boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) of Israel. As the published guidelines make explicit, the boycott is directed toward Israeli institutions and not toward academics as individuals. 

Decades of interaction, cooperation and collaboration with Israeli institutions have not resulted in mutual understanding or stopped the military occupation and its violations. In the light of the recent Israeli elections, the prospect of any alteration of present conditions from within Israel itself is bleak, and the need for external pressure from the international community is urgent. American academics should be particularly concerned, as it is US tax dollars and diplomatic power that have been vital to sustain and advance Israeli state policies. We believe therefore that this reasonable and non-violent stance has become necessary.  As the boycott of South Africa proved, such gestures of international disapprobation have a more than merely symbolic impact. Our endorsement of this boycott conveys our conviction that Israel must be brought to act to promote a just peace as stipulated by international law.

Specifically, we call on the State of Israel to:

• End the siege and blockade of Gaza, end the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967, and dismantle the illegal settlements and the walls;
• Recognize the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel and the Naqab (Negev) Bedouins to full equality; and
• Honor the right of Palestinian refugees to return as has been stipulated numerous times since UN Resolution 194.

We call upon our colleagues in the MLA and other scholars of literature and languages to join us in endorsing the academic and cultural boycott of Israeli  institutions.

Signed:

1. Hosam Aboul-Ela (University of Houston)
2. Gil Anidjar (Columbia University)
3. Emily Apter (NYU)
4. Margot Backus (University of Houston)
5. Amit R. Baishya (University of Oklahoma)
6. Ian Balfour (York University)
7. Lauren Berlant (University of Chicago)
8. Jody Blanco (University of California, San Diego)
9. Purnima Bose (Indiana University)
10. Paul Bové (University of Pittsburgh)
11. Tim Brennan (University of Minnesota) 
12. Nathan Brown (Concordia University, Montreal)
13. Judith Butler (University of California, Berkeley)
14. Eduardo Cadava (Princeton University)
15. Eric Cheyfitz (Cornell University)
16. David Clark (McMaster University)
17. Joshua Clover (University of California, Davis)
18. Rebecca Comay (University of Toronto)
19. Thomas S. Davis (The Ohio State University)
20. Colin Dayan (Vanderbilt University)
21. Peter de Bolla (Cambridge University)
22. Ivonne del Valle (UC Berkeley)
23. Simon During (University of Queensland)
24. Hanan Elsayed (Occidental College)
25. David Eng (University of Pennsylvania)
26. Carol Fadda-Conrey (Syracuse University)
27. Margaret Ferguson (University of California, Davis)
28. Roderick Ferguson (University of Illinois, Chicago)
29. Barbara Foley (Rutgers University)
30. Cynthia Franklin (University of Hawai‘i)
31. Elaine Freedgood (NYU)
32. Stathis Gourgouris (Columbia University)
33. Sneja Gunew (University of British Columbia)
34. Richard Halpern (NYU)
35. Gillian Harkins (University of Washington)
36. Barbara Harlow (University of Texas, Austin)
37. Michelle Hartman (McGill University)
38. Salah D. Hassan (Michigan State University)
39. Neil Hertz (Cornell University)
40. Maimuna Islam (The College of Idaho)
41. Pranav Jani (Ohio State University) 
42. David Kazanjian (University of Pennsylvania)
43. Manori Neelika Jayawardane (State University of New York-Oswego)
44. Djelal Kadir (Pennsylvania State University)
45. Katie Kane (University of Montana)
46. Suvir Kaul (University of Pennsylvania)
47. Andrew Kincaid (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
48. Mariam Lam (University of California, Riverside)
49. Jacques Lezra (NYU)
50. David Lloyd (University of California, Riverside)
51. Ania Loomba (University of Pennsylvania)
52. Lisa Lowe (Tufts University)
53. Alex Lubin (University of New Mexico)
54. Auritro Majumder (University of Houston) 
55. Cristina Malcolmson (Bates College)
56. Curtis Marez (University of California, San Diego)
57. Kate McCullough (Cornell University)
58. Sarah McKibben (University of Notre Dame)
59. Jodi Melamed (Marquette University)
60. Hassan Melehy (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
61. Louis Mendoza (Arizona State University)
62. Alyce Miller (Indiana University)
63. Koritha Mitchell (Ohio State University)
64. Adam Miyashiro (Stockton University)
65. Aamir Mufti (UCLA)  
66. Bill Mullen (Purdue University)
67. David Palumbo-Liu (Stanford University)
68. Andrew Parker (Rutgers University)
69. Sonali Perara (Hunter College, CUNY)
70. Basem L. Ra'ad (Al-Quds University, Palestine)
71. R. Radhakrishnan (University of California, Irvine)
72. Nimanthi Rajasingham, Colgate University
73. Kamran Rastegar (Tufts University)
74. Chandan Reddy (University of Washington)
75. Marc Redfield (Brown University)
76. John Rieder (University of Hawai‘i)
77. Bruce Robbins (Columbia University)
78. Andrew Ross (NYU)
79. Jeffrey Sacks (University of California, Riverside)
80. Steven Salaita (independent scholar)
81. Rosaura Sanchez (University of California, San Diego)
82. Paul Sawyer (Cornell University)
83. Ken Seigneurie (Simon Fraser University)
84. Azade Seyhan (Bryn Mawr College)
85. S. Shankar (University of Hawai'i)
86. Christina Sharpe (Tufts University)
87. David Simpson (University of California, Davis)
88. Juliana Spahr (Mills College)
89. Gayatri Spivak (Columbia University)
90. Rajini Srikanth (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
91. Shelley Streeby (University of California, San Diego)
92. Kenneth Surin (Duke University)
93. Rei Terada (University of California, Irvine)
94. Dorothy Wang (Williams College)
95. Valerie Wayne (University of Hawaii)
96. Jennifer Wicke (University of Virginia)
97. Dagmawi Woubshet (Cornell University)
98. Nadia Yaqub (University of North Carolina)