THE HOYA editorial board’s defense of University President John J. DeGioia’s endorsement of an advertisement in the New York Times criticizing the proposed boycott of Israeli universities is a little more than absurd. Terming it a heroic attempt to “preserve and promote a robust intellectual discourse on campus” and to “[f]ree, untrammeled debate that respects all parties” (“DeGioia Sticks to Principles,” THE HOYA, Oct. 12, 2007, A2) is even more so.
The editorial board portrays DeGioia’s endorsement as a “principled opposition to boycotts of academic institutions for stifling intellectual discourse”, and further claims that “the purpose of the advertisement [.] was not to take a political stance,” adding that DeGioia was joined in this action by “the heads of such leading institutions as Princeton and Cornell”, as though to suggest that where there is power, there is the ability to exercise potentially moral authority.
I would submit that the intellectual freedom and respect for all parties which DeGioia and the editorial board of THE HOYA have seemingly pledged to defend, are grossly absent in regard to issues of Israel and Palestine, both at Georgetown and beyond it. I think it hardly controversial to claim that much of the scholarship at Georgetown – at least, most of that which I encountered during my time there – is decidedly restricted, and hardly accommodating to all parties. I found such scholarship to be eminently wedded to Statist, neo-liberal interpretations of world politics and largely dismissive of alternative models.
There is a very clear bias and inequity in terms of economic resources, power and information regarding Israel and Palestine. I have found very few Americans courageous enough to resist the often-brutal policies of the Israeli state against those who find themselves subjects to its military occupation. I have also encountered disconcertingly little opposition to the dominant perceptions of the relationship between Israel and Palestine. These perceptions always distort the extent of human tragedy in both Israel and Palestine in very specific ways – which, conveniently, valorize both U.S. government’s nearly unconditional support for Israeli policies and the American public’s skewed perception of the situation.
It is within this context that I fault DeGioia, and THE HOYA’s editorial board with him, for presenting his support of the New York Times advertisement denouncing the boycott of Israeli universities as stifling free expression and exchange. I believe that there cannot be free expression and exchange within an intellectual environment dominated by interests that seek to reaffirm illegitimate modes of social organization – in this case, a long history of systematic oppression that in many ways mirrors that of apartheid in South Africa. For the president of a world-renowned university that prides itself on its purported commitment to social justice not to call this state of affairs into question, and instead lend credence to such an unjust situation is condemnable. To present the perpetuation of such a reality as promoting intellectual freedom and respect for all parties, as the HOYA’s editorial board has done, is outrageous.
The editorial board concluded its article by proffering that “[f]ree, untrammeled debate that respects all parties is the lifeblood of a university” and that, “without it, any hope that we are truly cultivating a wiser generation to take control of the future will wither and die.”
If the board’s syllogism here is a correct one, I would posit that any such hope is, within the current state of affairs, a mere delusion. Not that it is impossible to imagine changing the current state of affairs. It is, however, to suggest that the cultivation of a wiser generation – and the hope for a better reality – is certainly not to be found within a structure that supports the oppressor against the oppressed and then has the audacity to claim such action as worthy of merit.
Javier Sethness is a 2007 graduate of the School of Foreign Service.
