This post begins narrowly and broadens out. By narrowly I only mean in point of time and circumstance. On Saturday I took part in a debate on the proposed, though now defeated, boycott of Israeli academics by the AUT. You can find a schematic account of the occasion - by Bill Martin who was in the audience - here.
The discussion was civil, though not without the occasional sharp note. I don't think the boycott's supporters came up with any new or good arguments and that's because I don't think they have any good arguments. But to his credit, one of the two speakers for the boycott, Bob Brecher, did at least see the need for a principled argument as to why academic boycott activity should be focused, as it has been by the AUT boycotters, specifically on Israel. As anyone who has followed the debate will know, this is a crucial matter for securing the boycotters' case since if they have no sound argument for that exclusive focus, they are open to the charge of being - as they in fact are - prejudicially selective towards Israel, and not - as they claim to be - simply concerned about human rights in general. This is why it's to Bob Brecher's credit that he sees the need for a principled argument here. The argument he offered, however, doesn't do what it needs to do if it is to show that Israel is an exceptional case, alone meriting the AUT's attention - or at least meriting it first or more urgently.
Briefly stated, here is Bob's argument as I heard it, and set out as faithfully as I can from memory and a few scribbled notes. (I indent it to forestall possible misunderstandings as to what I think as opposed to what he thinks.)
Academics are concerned about truth, and this concern has both theoretical and practical dimensions: we must do what we can properly to inform ourselves; in certain circumstances we have a duty to act over what we find. This is especially the case where what we find lies beyond some threshold of moral gravity, where a great evil is in train. Racism is such an evil: as Bob himself put it at one point 'a particular and peculiar form of moral crime'. On the analogy of the anti-apartheid boycott, Israel, which is a racist state and society, is an appropriate target for boycott, and Israeli academics (unless they articulate their opposition to the racist policies of their government) are complicit and, therefore, legitimate objects of an academic boycott.I do not accept the analogy with apartheid South Africa for reasons I've already stated. But even if one doesn't question the analogy, Bob Brecher's argument fails to deliver what it purports to deliver, for the following simple reason - something I stated in the discussion on Saturday. That racism is a peculiar form of moral crime, which it is, and that its being so puts it on the side of that threshold of moral gravity that should activate the concern and the action of everyone who aims for a more just world, doesn't establish that racism is the only moral crime which falls into this category. Otherwise, one would have to say that, for example, a policy of systematically 'disappearing' people and of torture by some government, or that the massacre of political opponents, or that the Cambodian genocide which wasn't motivated by racial or ethnic selection, in short that other grave crimes against humanity, do not lie across the relevant threshold of moral gravity and merit concern and action on the part of the just. This is not something any morally mature and serious person could plausibly maintain.
In the discussion Bob conceded the force of the above criticism and acknowledged that he needed a reply to it. He also assured the assembled company that he had such a reply, but with the addendum (which I have not before encountered in public discussion) that he didn't have time to state it. Still, he intimated what direction it would lie in: the direction, namely, that a person's race or ethnicity is permanent, being unchosen, rather than changeable, because chosen.
Even so, this doesn't meet the point. It doesn't meet the point that other moral crimes than racism are serious enough to merit our concern and action, so that if we should be boycotting the complicit academics of countries whose governments pursue racist policies, because racism is a serious moral crime, we should also be boycotting the complicit academics of countries whose governments are responsible for other serious moral crimes. And Bob's argument is still more problematic than I stated in the discussion on Saturday or than I've so far stated here.
For, first, if the permanence of identity is the key to the peculiarity of racism as a moral crime, then as peculiar as it is, it isn't unique. Discrimination on grounds of gender also now ambles into the debating chamber. The AUT blacklisters would need to explain why we should not be blacklisting all the complicit academics of all the countries whose governments enforce policies and protect structures holding women in subordinate positions to men. Iran, today, happens to be topical. As everyone knows, it isn't the only relevant country.
Second, racism is a foul, potentially murderous and often actually murderous thing. But not only is it not the only thing falling under this description; one has, further, to recognize that there are non-racist forms of murderousness which, within certain specific comparisons, call for a more urgent response than certain milder forms of racism would. Otherwise we'd be obliged to say that we have to give quicker and more prompt remedial attention to the telling of a racist joke by someone than to a politically induced famine threatening to kill tens of thousands of people.
I end with a seeming digression. Correction - two seeming digressions. (D1) In a recent conversation with someone on a medical matter, he said something like this to me: 'If three doctors give you three vague answers to a precise question, it's likely that they don't really know the answer'. (D2) Twenty years or so ago there was a debate, to which I contributed, as to whether Marx thought capitalism was unjust. Those of us who answered 'yes' to this question pointed to a bucketload of evidence showing that, well, Marx thought capitalism was unjust. The writers who denied this set themselves to explaining why this bucketload of evidence wasn't really evidence, and between them they came up with many different explanations. In fact, none of these explanations, separately, was any good. They were all feeble. But what was interesting was the very plurality of them. If there had been a single compelling reason showing why the apparent textual evidence wasn't really evidence, the commentators might have been expected to converge on it. But there wasn't a compelling reason and so they didn't converge on it because they couldn't. They floundered and came up, variously, with this, that and the other.
De te fabula narratur, boycotters and blacklisters. The latter all assure us that this isn't about blank prejudice. It's about human rights, racism and what have you, and Israel just happens to be the privileged exemplar. But when you ask for a principled reason which picks out Israel, and Israel exclusively, not only can the boycotters and blacklisters not give one satisfactory reason, they don't even converge on a common reason. Now it's supposedly because they were called upon by Palestinian organizations. Now it's because no one has yet brought a resolution to the AUT on China, or Sudan, or Chechnya, or Iran, or Zimbabwe, or Iraq (in Saddam's day), or the US (since then). Or else Israel isn't a special case, but it is a case [thus Saladin Meckled-Garcia in effect on Saturday, speaking for the boycott]; and it's good enough if it's a case; and this just happens to be the case we're focusing on. Or it's because of illegal occupation, or because of UN resolutions. Or it's because of racism, like with apartheid (or, sotto voce, and sometimes not so sotto voce, like with Nazi Germany).
Each of these would-be reasons is defeasible and has been more than adequately seen off in argument during recent weeks. But for want of decent reasons, the boycotters have something unfortunately as powerful; and this is a fixed hostility towards the State of Israel, sometimes coupled with a wider prejudice against the Jewish people, sometimes not - a prejudice that has lately crawled back out of the cultural and political sewers to which it was long confined after the Second World War. Their case is not based on good reasons, it is part of the campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state.