Quick ISA BDS Update

ISA is pretty busy so I cannot blog much for now.  The key news from the Governing Council yesterday, besides the idea that Paul Diehl should always run these meetings (great job!), is that the BDS item was not added to the agenda.

It lost 27-18.  It will probably come back and there is no guarantee that the votes will not change.  I think a particular problem with this proposal was how deceptive it was: saying that they just wanted to talk about it but including a deadline for a decision.  That and saying that the APSA was considering it when it was not.

An effort to get a non-discrimination clause added to ISA failed and was sent to committee as the BDS folks didn't want language about not discriminating against institutions and they found enough support from those who thought the non-discrimination language needed to be better.  Apparently, ISA does not have any non-discrimination clauses except as applied to where to hold the conventions. 

So, the battle at the committee and then next year will be focused in part on whether to add citizenship to the protected classes (race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, national origin [ethnicity is not included but will be, I am sure]) and whether institutions will be included.  Oh, and the BDS fans will bring it back.

I do love the shifting arguments: Israel is apartheid and we sanctioned apartheid -> oops, ISA didn't sanction South African educational institutions but they should have.  And on and on.

As I said, Israel cannot be democratic and Jewish as things are going; and if people want to boycott Israel, they can.  But ISA as an academic entity seeking to facilitate discussion and research should not be in the business of excluding academics and their institutions [possible exception would be academics and institutions that commit specific crimes--Doctor Mengele and his medical would be excluded...]. 

But I will not be involved next year as I will not be on the Governing Council.  Good luck to next year's crew.

BDS and the ISA

There is a proposal to discuss the Boycott/Divest/Sanction effort against Israel at the International Studies Association meeting.  I am not thrilled.  Why?  Despite being critical of how Israel has handled the Palestinians and despite being very critical of its current political leadership, I am opposed to this effort because who is supposed to do the targeting, of who it targets, the questionable effort at the moment, and my desire not to be embroiled in an endless contentious meeting.  I think one can be a critic of Israel without being anti-semitic, by the way, although one can be both or neither.

To be clear, the proposal is here, and the key text is:


Working backwards, the Governing Council of the ISA meets for about 6 hours the day before the conference really kicks off to discuss a variety of matters including examining the finances, approving the next slate of committee representations, considering how the organization is organized, approving of new sections and caucuses (I am on the GC this year since my proposal for a new Online Media Caucus survived the approval process last year, unlike two other would-be sections), and on and on.

This long meeting has been moderately contentious each year I have been on or near it (the last two years) because of representation problems--two years ago, it was about the apparent segregation of men and women in the more respected, more visible committee spots and the less respected, less visible. Last year, it was about the new Sapphire series that seemed mighty white and male.  I was guessing that this year the representation fight would be over the slate of officers that were nominated--mighty white.  These representation issues are always taken seriously because the organization does not want to be either deliberately or accidentally excluding people.  Well, BDS is aimed at exclusion, and has already started creating much tension and contention, so I can only guess that a BDS discussion at the ISA GC would be pretty damned contentious.  And I would rather not have this long meeting be longer still due to the competing sides arguing about how best to exclude Israeli academics.

The effort is questionable, in my mind, since the item that is being pushed on the agenda is simply to discuss BDS.  Uh huh.  Sure, the proponent just wants us to talk about it because we academics like to talk about stuff.  No, it is clearly trying to get a proposal to have the ISA boycott/sanction (pretty sure ISA does not have much in the way of stocks invested in Israeli companies) Israel.  Under the guise of just wanting to foster discussion, the proponent wants to have ISA BDS Israel.  I would say that is not kosher, but well anyway.  This is not the only deceptive tactic used here as the proposal also says this stuff is being considered by the American Political Science Association, which it is not, if one means the official organization.  Oh, and, just because other organizations do something, does not make it good or right in general or good/right for the ISA.

• If the concern is about academic freedom for those who advocate BDS, the organization already supports academic freedom so this proposal is unnecessary.
• If the concern is that people want to discuss BDS during meetings of the ISA, such as having panels or roundtables on the topic, there is no policy or prohibition stopping people from organizing such stuff.
• But the key is the line "foster careful consideration of an appropriate position for ISA to assume."  This is what these folks desire and they have a deadline--a year long discussion where I guess they want a referendum of some kind at the end.  Interesting tactic, but why a year?  Why not two years?  How about we talk about it until we figure it out, no matter how long it takes? 

Who would it ultimately target?  Well, since the ISA is an academic institution, this BDS effort would be aimed at Israeli universities and those who work there (the BDS movement has evolved from directly targeting individuals but clearly individuals would be affected.  To say otherwise is, alas, problematic).  Are the professors at these institutions universally supportive of the government and its policies towards the Palestinians?  Probably not.  More importantly, these folks are not the government of Israel or businesses propping up the government.  One could argue that they are part of the military-industrial-academic complex, but that is a stretch.  If people want to boycott Israeli businesses or not play in the equivalent of Sun City, that is on them.  But blocking academic interchange with Israel's academics?  No, I cannot support that.  While I am not a fan of slippery slope arguments, it is not clear why Israel is targeted and not heaps of other places where there is significant repression: Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Trump's America, etc.

Finally, the ISA is an association aimed at facilitating exchanges of ideas among those who study international stuff.  It is not primarily a business nor is it a lobbying group (the APSA is a lobby for the interests of political scientists in the US).  Unless we want to start picking and choosing who can participate, which is pretty much antithetical to the essence of the organization, BDS is really not something that the ISA should be doing.

Obviously, people disagree quite a bit on this, but this is my take, and this is why I don't want to see the item placed on the agenda.  It does not belong on the ISA's agenda.  There are plenty of organizations out there to push for the Palestinian cause(s). ISA is not one of them. 

One last note: as a scholar, the more I learn about the BDS movement, the more I learn about how activists evolve and organize.  Impressive stuff.  This is not just one person's idea to talk about stuff, but part of a larger effort to create either a real broad based movement or the appearance of one. 

Carleton Plays Dodgeball

There has been some controversy at Carleton University about how the Board of Governors operates, as there are two profs on the board and one has been most critical and has blogged about it.  The storm arose when there was an attempt to get a lifetime confidentiality agreement imposed upon this prof and the rest.  The new stance was sent out today:

To all Members of the Carleton Community,

 Please see the statement released by the Board today below.

CARLETON BOARD OF GOVERNORS ADOPTS CLEARER TRANSPARENCY RULES

 Ottawa, January 26, 2016 - Anthony Tattersfield, chair of the Board of Governors of Carleton University, issued the following statement today:

The Board of Governors has ratified a Code of Conduct for Governors that reaffirms the importance of open Board Meetings, brings greater transparency to how the Board operates and clarifies what is expected of Governors in Board communications.

The Code of Conduct – which had been proposed by the Governance Committee under the chairmanship of Michael Wernick, and adopted by the Executive - makes it clear that:

•             Most Board business is conducted transparently in open session and an obligation of confidentiality is not relevant to open session. Confidentiality is relevant to information provided for discussions at closed sessions. Closed sessions are the exception and typically involve potential tendering of contracts, personnel cases, performance reviews, legal advice and labour relations. 

•             All Governors are required to act in the best interest of the university. While perspectives may differ, debate and discussion are encouraged at the Board as the manner to resolve them and it is inconsistent with this role of a Governor to reopen and criticize Board decisions after they have been taken or to criticize, question the integrity of, or intimidate fellow Governors and university officials.

•             While individual Governors are free to discuss matters from the open session, in the end the chair, or his or her designate, is the spokesperson for the Board, and the minutes which are adopted are the record of discussion and decision.

This does not seem too bad at first glance, but the clause in red bothers me.  What does it mean that it is inconsistent to reopen/criticize board decisions?  Does that mean no blogging?  Because that ain't gonna fly.  Then it gets worse: was there really an attempt to intimidate?  It would seem to me that being on the board means one has to be responsible, but part of that responsibility might be to be transparent--to criticize decisions.

If they just want the profs to be on the board as silent partners, then, well, they don't understand profs.  I don't think this decision is going to play well even if they do away with excessively restrictive confidentiality agreements.