I’ve always been a bit suspicious of the concerns about leftist academic bias common on the right. The central issue for me is fairness, not politics. As long as academics and teachers mark fairly, I’m not too worried if they believe that we’re all secretly manipulated by a race of purple midgets living on Mars (building pyramids and avoiding fractional reserve banking, of course). I’m not even terribly perturbed if academics tell their students about said purple midgets.
That said, I think I’ve found a nest of biased academics over here in the UK – the University and College Union. Admittedly they’re concentrated in one of the staff unions, so probably won’t be representative of the membership as a whole. Even so, some of this stuff is teh weirds. As many people are no doubt aware, various academic bodies have been trying to induce UK universities to engage in an academic boycott of Israel. UCU’s latest effort was framed in the following terms:
B20 Palestine National Executive Committee
Conference notes the
affirms that
resolves that
This – as Oxford University pointed out in its statement on the issue – represents a watered down version of the original plan, which was for a straight-out boycott:
We reject this resolution. Knowing that an explicit call for an academic boycott would be unlawful, the UCU Conference has adopted a device which seeks the same end, but implicitly. The change in wording this year dispels none of our fundamental objections to any academic boycott.
The UCU document itself is a fascinating summary of loopy left hobbyhorses, not just on Israel, but on everything else from preventing the military from recruiting on campus to ‘Cuba Solidarity’ and encouraging ‘stop the war’ coalitions at British universities. It’s worth contrasting the weakness of the statement on human rights abuses in Zimbabwe with the strength of the motion supporting Cuba. Love the whole ‘socialist revolution’ line – never mind that there hasn’t been an election in the place since 1959, natch.
I suppose I should disclose a personal interest on the Cuba front, in that one of the legal jobs I took on last year involved getting a Cuban intellectual asylum in the UK. This meant getting up close and personal to a degree I found distinctly uncomfortable with the Cuban authorities and learning far more than I ever wanted to about the way Cuba treats all its people – not just dissidents.
This, however, is the best line of the lot:
To encourage branches and local associations to organise teach-ins on the “war on terror” in co-operation with students and other campus unions.
Teach-ins? Memo to the silly lefties in the UCU: it is not 1968. Repeat s l o w l y after me: it is not 1968.
[UPDATE: Here is my take on political beliefs and academia - LE]
22 Comments
How would you have put it and what do you think should be done?
I can see how twinning arrangements could be politically sensitive, but surely any processes which facilitate communication and discussion among competing interests will on the balance be productive, if not essential for any peaceful co-existence.
The Boltheads of this world would have us believe that Islamo Facists are beyond redemption and that Israel and those who created her can do no wrong. They are good people, quite like us really, and they are just defending themselves against pure evil. You can’t talk to them, for that would be appeasement, so the only alternative is to bomb the crap out of them.
And that’s working really well, isn’t it.
Doesn’t history suggest that sometimes social and national transformation comes about by small degrees and sometimes the small efforts of single individuals? I’m sure you know the Margaret Mead quote.
Surely any effort is better than none. How would you go about it?
I really dislike the paradigm that presents one side in the Middle East as wholly bad and the other side as wholly good.
From student activist groups with which I have been involved, I have found that this is a common problem: they tend to take hardline positions without looking into the complexities of the issue.
The resolution above suggests that Israel is THE evildoer, whereas both sides have done bad things. Both sides have suffered, people from both sides have lost friends and relatives as a result of violence, and both sides have some legitimate grievances.
If you’re going to ban Israeli academics who support illegal settlement, then what about also banning any Palestinian academics who support suicide bombings and militant action?
I just don’t think actions like the above are productive – how does it facilitate dicussion and communication? It paints one side as wholly bad, which is hardly likely to make that side want to engage in discussion or listen to what you are saying. Same thing would go for a motion that just condemned the actions of Palestinian terrorists without looking at the grievances of Palestinian people.
I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book Getting to Yes which involves negotiation techinique. It suggests that it is much better if you start from a position which acknowledges the legitimate grievances of the other side. If you start out aggressively, saying “Well, you’re a fascist pigdog who tramples the rights of others”, you just get the other side’s back up, and you’re never going to get anywhere.
Whatever you’re trying to achieve, an academic boycott is not the way to do it. Scholarship is about collegiality as much as anything else, and I cannot see what the UCU hopes to achieve by making resolutions of this type.
How would you have put it and what do you think should be done?
I don’t have trouble with a financial boycott – I try to avoid Israeli products for this reason (though my mobility scooter was built on a kibbutz … possibly why it’s as sturdy as a tank) but I’d like to know what their evidence is for the “apparent complicity of the Israeli academy”.
My guess is that the UCU feels the Israeli state gets an unfair level of support in and from the USA which needs to be balanced – tellingly all three presidential candidates felt it politically essential to express their support for Israel to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee recently.
Personally I don’t think the two-state solution is going to work economically. You will need both Israelis and Palestinians working together to create a viable international entity that is self-supporting. My understanding is that at the moment Israel only exists thanks to American largess.
I just can’t see how an academic boycott would encourage dialogue – it would actually impact the group most likely to have the freedom to talk to their fellows on the other side.
The Oxford Union has a histroy of, at the very least, caving to pressure from pro-Israel lobbyists to boycott critics of Israel etc. It was reported widely last year when they withdrew a speaker invitiation to Norman Finkelstein, who is very likely a crank himself, but giving people a hearing is pretty fundamental academic principle. Edward Said of course was often subject to similar sorts of insulting actions.
I don’t mind if academics are biased to one political side or the other, just so long as they admit that: say, at the start of semester, they tell the class ‘I believe in ‘X’ ideology, and to some extent that may pervade my teaching’. I just can’t stand it when academics ‘teach’ their opinion as though it were fact.
Laura: Finkelstein was at the OU last term (in February, I think). Various parties were unhappy, but he wasn’t prevented from speaking. The OU also had Nick Griffin & David Irving the term before (I know, I stood outside the Chamber and photographed the developing civil disturbance).
It’s possible that OU people may have buckled in days gone by (the scenes outside the Irving/Griffin shindig were ugly to say the least, and would put many private bodies off), but not recently.
Apple: that’s always been my view. Upfront is best, and be sure to mark fairly.
Having been an active member of the UCU when I was living in the UK, I’d offer the opinion that a lot of this is actually about the internal politics of the Union itself, and only incidentally for public consumption.
Having said that, and *leaving Israel aside* for the moment, I’d defend the in-principle rights of any union – including an academic union – to pass resolutions like this.
We’d all be aware that totalitarian states often remake their universities in their own image, and when colleagues are persecuted or academic freedoms are threatened, I think its perfectly reasonable for academics to resolve not to enter into partnerships or dialogue with the beneficiaries of such behaviour. There are various reasons why universities themselves, and governments, might not take the appropriate action in such circumstances, which is the point at which academics have to make a stand. I think that the democratic decision-making processes of unions also warrant some defence in such circumstances.
While I agree with some of what you say in your comment, LE, but there are occasions where we really *are* dealing with fascist pigdogs who trample the rights of others. Negotiation then becomes difficult, dangerous, and perhaps even unethical.
What I was taking issue with was not the power of the union to make resolutions like this (it can make whatever resolutions it likes via its democratic process). I was really taking issue with the proposition by Slim that this kind of action will “facilitate communication and discussion among competing interests”.
Sure, you can pass a resolution like this, but in so doing, you close off negotiation with the side whom you decide to boycott.
As you point out, Jason, there are occasions where it might be entirely appropriate to close off negotiation and refuse to discuss anything with the country in question because they are actually fascists or totalitarian, and to even give these kind of countries a chance to put their “side” is unethical because there is no excuse for that kind of behaviour.
I think another thing SL was highlighting was the difference in attitude of the UCU towards totalitarian countries of different political stripes. Her proposition was that they are more likely to be critical of a “right-wing” totalitarian state than of a “left-wing” totalitarian state such as Cuba, or a postcolonial totalitarian state such as Zimbabwe. Like SL, I think totalitarian states of any kind should not be tolerated, and it doesn’t matter whether they are communist or fascist. Why pick on Israel (which is actually a democracy) and not point out the violations of human rights in Cuba? Why does the union not criticise Zimbabwe equally as trenchantly as it criticises Israel? Surely there are equally terrible things going on in Zimbabwe?
The issue is one of double standards – some right wingers overlook the rights violations of the countries they support, some left wingers overlook the rights violations of the countries they support. I don’t think any violations should be overlooked.
LE: “The issue is one of double standards – some right wingers overlook the rights violations of the countries they support, some left wingers overlook the rights violations of the countries they support. I don’t think any violations should be overlooked.”
Agreed, 100%. It bugs me, too. A lot.
And again, I’m just at this stage defending the principle of boycotts as a strategy in certain circumstances, and also the way that such courses of action tend to be determined. In my experience while I was a member, at least, the processes of debate and resolution were all pretty transparent (not to say punishingly long-winded at times). I say that even though I often disagreed with resolutions and actions they took.
Anyway it sounds like we’re probably agreed on most of this.
The other thing to say, though, might be that the UCU spends the vast majority of its time doing things other than passing resolutions on Israel
I don’t mind if academics are biased to one political side or the other, just so long as they admit that: say, at the start of semester, they tell the class ‘I believe in ‘X’ ideology, and to some extent that may pervade my teaching’. I just can’t stand it when academics ‘teach’ their opinion as though it were fact.
I don’t really agree with the first part of this. I personally think it inappropriate for teachers to talk about their allegiances. Obviously in some fields one’s politics will affect what one is into. I don’t see many Tories going in for a history of the labour movement somehow.
Of course there’s another edge when teachers teach their opinion as fact. At present, in Academia I think this sin is principally of the Left. (Except in biology classes.) This is probably the result of the evangelism leftover from the 60/70s heyday and those academics who feel the need to pass the spirit on to the kids or whatever.
This can lead to ridiculous situations and some very tedious people. In the Humanities where empiricism isn’t privileged it has produced some outright nonsense. I’ve been re-reading Culture Studies founder (and Marxist) Raymond Williams’ classic text Culture and Society. The clarity and rigour of the work will surprise some familiar with some of the balderdash that passes in the field these days. Williams would be spewing if he was alive today to see what’s happened in some parts of the field he helped create.
That will out eventually.
But the Israel boycotts and whatever are silly. The trouble isn’t that you have a good guys/bad guys situation. That would be easy to deal with. The trouble is you have two peoples with perfectly legitimate claims consumed by the mutual hatred that 50 years of war engenders. The Jewish persecution complex, the manipulation of the Middle-East by oil hungry powers, the medieval nature of Arab politics and the famous Semitic stubbornness all play a part. Jews and Arabs are cousin peoples.
Westerners who go all blue in the face trying to portray this situation as some good v evil Rambo film don’t help. They make it worse.
From what Oxford’s statement says, it appears that a full-blown academic boycott was not possible anyway, although I’m not sure why. It’s possible that it may have enlivened English anti-discrimination law (the word ‘unlawful’ is used).
Love it when one set of meaningless group rights clashes with another set of meaningless group rights.
Reading this through again, I think I do agree with Adrien, although by the same token I’ve had some excellent teachers who were clearly biased, but were nonetheless fair markers. I suppose that’s a way of saying that principled objectivity is to be preferred, but we may as well admit that a large number of people struggle with it.
Love it when one set of meaningless group rights clashes with another set of meaningless group rights.
Chuckle.
Well said, Adrien!
Personally, I would not want my students to be too aware of my political preferences, and I would certainly not want to teach political opinions as “fact” when there is another side to the story. I’m not a member of any political party, I would not tell my students if I was, and I would never, never squash someone’s opinion just because it differed from mine (I had a very left wing lecturer in first year uni who did this, and since then I have an abhorrence of it).
I suppose some aspect of my personal preferences has to come through somehow (love of restitution and equity), although I try to make it clear that students do not have to follow this, and indeed I really enjoy it if someone puts forth a well thought out opposing point of view.
I was in a conversation with a young Sino-Australian a couple weeks ago. He studies criminal psychology and he was talking about the things that pissed him off viz political bias. On the Right it was the rigidity of scope, on the Left it was the view that their view was the only view. He saw virtues on both side and just didn’t understand why he was required to subscribe to one camp or t’other.
I still remember being amongst the Culti Studi postgrad circle a couple years ago and, when referring to the Arts scene as the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ being labelled a fascist and a conservative. I’m neither. And they’re not the same thing anyway.
The thing is none of these people really know anything about politics. Or care. They’re just trained to see things in an overtly political way they don’t even realize they’re doing it. They’re in for a shock ’cause I reckon the jig’s just about up.
Time to get a real job folks.
When I was about 16, I was into labelling things I didn’t like as “fascist”. My mother took me to task – she said I shouldn’t just throw that word around. I think those people in the Cultural Studies circle need a mother like mine.
SL
Is it possible to identify exactly which academics have supported this, and thus do a quick analysis of support by scholarly discipline? I would hazard a guess the support increases the lower down the academic food chain you go, with the most enthusiastic concentrated among the softer Social Studies disciplines.
I would also bet that the peer pressure in the softer disciplines is quite intense, with supporting the boycott demanded as a signal of worshipping at altars of “correct” theologies.
I think if I ever enrolled in course which gave oxygen to a lecturer broadcasting his/her views of the tedious shifting sands of day-to-day politics, I would withdraw on the spot. If it happened at Oxford, I would burst into tears!
What insight into the daily grind of politics do academics have that my Aunt Fanny does not?
A scholar’s worth to his/her students is the superior knowledge s/he has acquired after years of familiarity with great ideas, the most complex thoughts, and research findings. When it comes to what is “really happening” today, here, and now, they are just as blind as the rest of us, except overwhelmingly a shit more bigoted.
I don’t know about stripping out results based on discipline, JG, but if you go through the UCU document, most of the loopier resolutions are from second rate former polytechnics.
Now, now Oxbridger. Academic snobbery. [waving finger]
That’s call you’re all fascists. I’m the people’s poet and I demand no more social bigotry or hatred by 12pm tomorrow or I’ll set the bomb off.
Get up Neil I hate you.
Ha ha!
I didn’t watch that show until I was an adult because my younger sister was severely traumatised by the episode where Neil’s head comes off after he sticks it out the train.
She had a bit of a thing about people’s heads coming off thereafter – does anyone remember that CCs ad where the people’s heads came off into their laps? She really hated that.
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