Academia

One of the pleasant frustrations of modern life is that there are far more good books out there than any of us have time to read. Browsing the Brookline Booksmith -- the wonderful local bookstore in my hometown -- is simultaneously delightful and depressing: I get intrigued and excited by all sorts of titles, but then I have trouble deciding which to buy and which to read first.

I'm know I'm not the only person with that problem -- which is why book reviews exist -- so I thought I'd help out by suggesting a few books I've recently read that got my own synapses humming.

The first is John Mueller's Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al Qaeda, which relentlessly punctures the various ways that analysts of all persuasions have overstated the dangers and the importance of nuclear weapons. (For a preview of Mueller's argument, see the FP excerpt here). It is an equal-opportunity critique, as Mueller goes after hawks, doves, realists, and other Cassandras with equal relish and a playful but pungent wit. He emphasizes that nuclear weapons are in fact highly destructive and need to be handled with great care, but convincingly shows that policymakers and pundits have 1) routinely exaggerated their destructive power (i.e., by suggesting they can "destroy the world"), 2) inflated their importance in deterring war, imparting influence, or enhancing status, and 3) overstated the risk of nuclear accidents, nuclear terrorism, or other very low-probability events. And instead of encouraging a useful prudence, Mueller argues that our "atomic obsession" has led us to adopt various policies that wasted a lot of money and may have actually made the situation more dangerous rather than less. Not everyone will be convinced by Mueller's arguments, but the book will certainly make you think. Added bonus: It's immensely fun to read.

My second recommendation is Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall's America's Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity. This is a creative, carefully researched, and incisive analysis of U.S. strategy during the long struggle against the Soviet Union. There are plenty of good books on this topic already, but Craig and Logevall's is one of the best, and their interpretation has important implications for contemporary strategic debates. In brief, they argue that America's initial response to the Soviet threat in Europe was both necessary and successful, but overselling by early Cold Warriors also put in place a worldview and a set of domestic institutions that consistently exaggerated U.S. insecurity and led to costly and counterproductive excesses over the next 40 years. The Soviet Union is now gone, but that worldview and those institutions remain in place today. Which is why the United States spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined, why we find ourselves bogged down in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, and why we panic over countries like Iran (whose defense spending in 2007 was a whopping $7.5 billion, or about 1 percent of America's).

My third suggestion is Margaret MacMillan's Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History, which I read on my recent trip to Norway. Based on a series of invited lectures, it is a set of pointed reflections on history, historians, and the ways in which the past is employed (and distorted) for both noble and ignoble purposes. If not quite the intellectual tour de force of a book like David Hackett Fischer's Historians' Fallacies, her reflections nonetheless provide a smart and eminently sensible set of warnings for citizens and leaders alike. History is essential to our identities, but it can also a dangerous weapon in the hands of anyone with a political agenda.

And speaking of history, my last recommendation is Eugene Rogan's The Arabs, which I acquired last week. I haven't finished it, but so far it's an entertaining, gracefully written, and eye-opening look at a diverse people whose history, culture and character are often badly misunderstood (if not actively distorted) here in the United States. Read it. You'll learn a lot.

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Should the National Science Foundation stop funding research in political science? Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) thinks so, and the American Political Science Association is predictably upset. I can't say that I think Coburn is right, but I'm finding it hard to get too exercised about it. I say this in part because I think a lot of NSF-funded research has contributed to the "cult of irrelevance" that infects a lot of political science, and because the definition of "science" that has guided the grant-making process is excessively narrow. But I also worry that trying to use federal dollars to encourage more policy-relevant research would end up politicizing academic life in some unfortunate ways.

With respect to the first issue, NSF support has undoubtedly facilitated a lot of useful data collection, especially in the field of American politics, and that the availability of this data has contributed to our knowledge of voting behavior, electoral processes, and other aspects of democratic politics. (See Paul Krugman's blog post for more on this). What's less clear is whether that additional "scientific" knowledge is actually helping real democracies perform better, or helping policymakers devise solutions to real policy problems. And in the field of international relations, I suspect that most of the NSF-funded research has been by-academics-and-for-academics, and hasn't had a discernible impact on important real-world problems.

But I haven't done a comprehensive survey of NSF funding in this field, and it's entirely possible that I missed something important. (The work of Elinor Ostrom, who just received the Nobel Prize, might be a case in point). Here's a suggestion: why doesn't the NSF put a link up on its website, listing all the grants that it has made to political science since 1995 and then listing all the research products that these projects produced, along with hyperlinks to the books or articles? That way, we could easily examine the results and debate if they were useful or not. Or if NSF doesn't want to do that, the APSA could provide this information itself. If the field has a lot of accomplishments to be proud of, surely it won't take long to compile a compelling list. And by the way, it would be interesting to compare the results of NSF-funded projects with research that was either unfunded (i.e., done without outside grants), or funded from other sources. 

But please don't just give me a citation count, because all shows is that some academic has managed to get cited by his or her fellow scholars. In other words, incest. Demonstrating real-world value will require some serious process-tracing outside the ivory tower, to show how new knowledge and ideas are actually shaping policy in positive ways.

My other concern has to do with the relationship between government funding and policy-relevance. Much as I would like more academic research to address real-world problems, I worry that it would inevitably become more politicized once the government gets involved. It is hard to imagine how a serious study of counterinsurgency, the global financial crisis, human rights, or counterterrorism policy would not have important implications for current policy debates, and some of that research would be explicitly critical of key government policies. Senator Coburn is eager to cut off political science because he thinks it is wasteful, but other politicians are bound to try to fund projects that conform to their own political prejudices. Or they will go after government-funded research that they think is "unpatriotic," just as politicians once attacked a major RAND study on the dynamics of surrender by suggesting it was encouraging "defeatism." Academics are human, and some of them are bound to start tailoring their topics and their conclusions to fit the perceived preferences of funders. That's ok in the think tank world, but universities really ought to aim for a higher standard. The other danger is that academics will be encouraged to make their research as bland as possible, so that it doesn’t offend anyone. We hardly need more of that.

As I've written elsewhere, political science ought to place more value on its ability to contribute to solving real-world policy problems, but that will require a shift in the norms and standards that the field sets for itself.   Ironically, that rethinking might happen faster if the NSF gravy train were smaller, or if academics started to worry that ideas like Coburn's might catch on.

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Professional economists may be dismayed, but scholars and students of international politics should be delighted by the decision to award this year's Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (aka the "Nobel Prize in Economics") to Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University.  She is not only the first woman to win the economics prize, she's also the first political scientist.  She holds a Ph.D. in the subject from UCLA and is a past president of the American Political Science Association.

Ostrom's main research is pretty far from my own concerns, but I did list her book Governing the Commons on one of my "top-ten" lists earlier this year.  She is primarily known for her work on institutional solutions to collective action problems, most notably in the area of resources and environment.  Via a combination of "soft" rational choice theory and careful empirical work, she shows that common resources can be shared and managed through various institutional mechanisms, but also shows that there is nothing inevitable about this outcome, due to familiar dilemmas of collective action (that's why we call them dilemmas!), and the complex interactions of humans, institutions, and larger ecosystems.

Ostrom (and the co-winner, organization theorist Oliver Williamson) join a group of recent winners chosen more for theoretical insight and real-world relevance than for mathematical scholasticism.  Others in this same group would include economic historians Douglass North and Robert Fogel, behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman, game theorist/strategist Thomas Schelling, and economist-philosopher Amartya Sen.  Scholars with an international orientation have been doing pretty well in recent years too: Schelling was awarded for game-theoretic work on international conflict, Paul Krugman for his work on international trade, and Sen's work on poverty and famines has clear international implications.  Kudos to the prize committee for their eclectic approach to the award--if only more economics departments thought this way.

One more thing: need I mention that Ostrom received the award for work she had already done, as opposed to some other Nobel Prize winners I can think of?

Photo: Indiana University via Getty Images

I'll be spending the next few days at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association in Toronto, so posting will be intermittent at best. If I may indulge in some shameless self-promotion, here are a couple of Web links that some of you might find interesting.

The first is a video of a talk I gave a couple of weeks ago to the "Rethinking Strategy" seminar in Washington. This seminar is sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and attendees include a group of DoD and national security professionals, and my talk was a discussion of the grand strategy of "offshore balancing." The questions and comments were terrific, and I learned a lot from the exchange. There are links to a number of other presentations as well.

The second link is to a recent interview with Peer Schouten, who has assembled a interesting website of interviews with a diverse set of contemporary IR scholars. I was flattered that he invited me, as the other participants are pretty impressive company. His questions covered a wide range of topics and I don't think my answers were all that profound -- but some of our conversation may be of interest to IR theory mavens.

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This week the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed by Rivka Carmi, the president of Ben Gurion University. It was a response to Neve Gordon’s earlier op-ed announcing his support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel's occupation. Gordon is a tenured faculty member at BGU and chairman of the international relations department. He is also a decorated IDF veteran, an accomplished scholar, and a long-time peace advocate. (See here for my earlier discussion of Gordon's op-ed, including my own disagreements with it).   

Carmi's initial response to Gordon's article showed that she has little understanding of the core concept of academic freedom, insofar as she and her official spokesperson both made it clear that they think Gordon should consider leaving the university (if not the country) on account of his views. Her op-ed makes it clear her early reactions were not just a hasty misjudgment but rather a reflection of her core values. As such, they reveal why she is unfit for academic leadership at any institution that prizes free inquiry and open discussion.

Here's the key passage from Carmi's op-ed:

Academic freedom exists to ensure that there is an unfettered and free discussion of ideas relating to research and teaching and to provide a forum for the debate of complicated ideas that may challenge accepted norms. Gordon, however, used his pulpit as a university faculty member to advocate a personal opinion, which is really demagoguery cloaked in academic theory.

In other words, if your research and expertise leads you to express a "personal opinion" on important and controversial issues, and if that opinion isn't acceptable to your University's president, look out. By her standard, an American academic who concluded and openly stated that either the invasion of Iraq or the Bush/Cheney torture regime justified an international boycott of the United States would be unfit for a faculty position and could be sanctioned by his or her university merely for stating that view. Similarly, a scholar whose research led him or her to conclude that assassinating foreign leaders is morally or strategically preferable to invading an enemy country could also be sanctioned, because that recommendation was a "personal opinion." (Just to be clear, I'm not endorsing either of those views, although I know a few scholars who might).

Needless to say, everything that scholars write is their "personal opinion," based on the knowledge they have accumulated in the course of their research. And the concept of academic freedom is intended to insulate scholars from precisely the sort of pressure that Carmi is trying to bring to bear on Gordon. Anyone's research and commentary can be denounced as "personal opinion" if some administrator doesn't like it, or if it is inconvenient for those in charge, which is precisely why the principle is so important. The reason we have open scholarly debate and discussion is so that we can weigh these "personal opinions" (and the evidence behind them) and come to greater collective understanding of important issues.  

Carmi then reveals her real concern: 

This is particularly pernicious for our university, a proudly Zionist institution that embodies the dream of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, to bring development and prosperity to all the residents of the Negev region. This work -- which includes community outreach and scientific innovation in Israel and around the world carried out by nearly 25,000 students, faculty and staff -- is being threatened by the egregious remarks of one person, under the guise of academic freedom.

I can't tell if Carmi believes that all BGU faculty members must be committed Zionists (which would presumably rule out Israeli Arabs, anyone advocates of a bi-national state, or even some ultra-Orthodox Jews) but it's clear from the full text that her real concern is fund-raising. Specifically, she's worried that donors will punish BGU because of the views of one faculty member, and that's why she has to go after him in public. But a principle like "academic freedom" isn't worth much if you sell it out because it might cost you a few checks from wealthy donors. To have the president of a university leading a public flogging like this can only have a chilling effect on the overall atmosphere. If I were an untenured member of the faculty at BGU, or even a tenured member, and I was thinking about writing something that might be controversial, I would now have to ask myself: "what will President Carmi think and what might she do to damage my career?" Is that a situation likely to encourage free thought and discussion?  

She goes on to charge that:

Gordon has forfeited his ability to work effectively within the academic setting, with his colleagues in Israel and around the world. After his very public, personal soul-searching in his Op-Ed article, leading to his extreme description of Israel as an "apartheid" state, how can he, in good faith, create the collaborative atmosphere necessary for true academic research and teaching?

Carmi presents no evidence that Gordon "cannot work effectively" with his colleagues, and her claim is contradicted by the fact that nearly 200 Israeli academics and students (including colleagues at BGU) have already signed a petition defending him (without necessarily endorsing his views, of course).  Universities are usually filled with people who disagree with each other -- sometimes vehemently -- and every faculty I've ever been on also has a few loners who don't collaborate well with others and can be difficult to manage.  But presidents, deans, and other responsible administrators are supposed to hold those diverse communities of thought together, not try to drive out anyone with whom they disagree. Yet President Carmi has said that demands that Gordon resign his post as department chair are "legitimate," and that she hopes he will "reach the right conclusions."

Several other aspects of this incident merit comment. First, although Carmi obviously disagrees with what Gordon wrote -- which she's entirely free to do -- her op-ed devotes almost no space to actually refuting either his claim that Israel has become an apartheid state or his claim that an international boycott is the only way to save Israel from itself. These are controversial assertions, to be sure, and a number of thoughtful people -- including prominent leftists like Uri Avnery -- have offered sharply-worded critiques of his position.  But instead of explaining why she thinks he's wrong -- as a true scholar would -- her focus is on the damage he allegedly has done to BGU and his unfitness for continued service there. She admits she can't fire him, but leaves little doubt that she would if she could. Now that's an attitude that is likely to encourage free thought!

Second, like Phil Weiss, I suspect the LA Times printed her piece because they took a lot of heat for running Gordon's original op-ed. But instead of giving the space to someone who would challenge the substance of Gordon's claims and recommendations, they gave the space to his boss, so that she could explain why his remarks were bad for the university she runs. This is unfortunate, but not unusual when dealing with the always-sensitive subject of Israel in the United States.

Third, this issue is important because universities are among the last bastions of free thought and debate in many democratic societies. The think tank world in most countries -- and this includes the United States -- is heavily donor-driven, and many of them exist solely to disseminate a particular world-view. "Academic freedom" has little meaning in most think tanks. Consider, for example, what would happen to you if you worked at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy -- an important part of the Israel lobby -- and you publicly stated that you thought Neve Gordon was right. You would probably be fired or forced to recant, because WINEP (and many other think tanks) isn't in the business of encouraging truly open inquiry. I don't expect to see anyone at AEI defending socialism either, and if they did, I wouldn't expect them to stay there for long.

But universities are supposed to be different. They are also sensitive to what donors think, of course, which is why the principle of academic freedom has to be defended vigorously. Contrary to what many people think, donors don't get to pick the faculty and don't get to determine what they say (although some of them might like to!). But academic administrators do pay attention when donors are unhappy, which is why universities need strong and principled leaders who know where to draw the line and can stand up to outside pressure. If they don't, the faculty quickly learns what might get them into trouble -- even if only marginally -- and many will begin to trim their sails. The result is either scholarship that avoids controversial subjects or that confines its commentary within “acceptable” boundaries. And when that happens, foolish but well-entrenched policies are less likely to be examined, and the society as a whole is more likely to suffer.

If President Carmi understood her job correctly, she would make it clear that she disagrees vehemently with Professor Gordon's views, while making it equally clear that she defends his right to hold and express them, and that she is proud that Ben Gurion University is an institution in which especially unpopular views can be expressed and debated. Sadly, that is not going to happen.

Finally, the Middle East Studies Association has sent a letter to President Carmi on Gordon's behalf, see here. If you're interested in the American Political Science Association's general statement on academic freedom, see here.

One more thing: In a bizarre parallel, the New York Times reported earlier this week that government authorities in Iran are contemplating a purge of social science faculties at Iranian universities, which are believed to have been incubators of discontent as manifest following the recent elections. In particular, some faculty members are accused of fostering "un-Islamic" ideas. I'm not suggesting that the two situations are identical, but it reminds us that once people start enforcing orthodoxy in academic settings, it can be hard to know where to stop.

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It is easy to understand why Paul Wolfowitz dislikes "realism." On the most significant foreign-policy decision since the end of the Cold War -- the ill-fated invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- the realists who opposed it were right and Wolfowitz and the other architects of the war were dead wrong. No wonder he begins his article by saying that this "is not the place to reargue the Iraq War." I'd try to exclude Iraq from discussion if I were him too, because that tragedy demonstrates the virtues of realism and the follies of Wolfowitz's own worldview.

On the whole, Wolfowitz's discussion of "realism" in the Sept./Oct. issue of FP is about as accurate as his 2002 estimates about the troop levels needed to occupy Iraq and the overall costs of the war. He implies that realists are uninterested in moral issues and claims "there is a serious debate" between realists and their critics regarding the peaceful promotion of political change. But this is a caricature of realist thinking and a nonexistent debate, and it is telling that he never offers any evidence to support his description. The only "realists" he bothers to mention are Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, and he never quotes or cites other prominent realist scholars or policymakers. Having decided to expose realism's alleged limitations, in short, apparently he couldn't be bothered to do some research and read what they had to say.  

What do realists believe? Realists see international politics as an inherently competitive realm where states compete for advantage and where security is sometimes precarious. So, realists emphasize that states should keep a keen eye on the balance of power, which makes them wary of squandering blood or treasure on needless military buildups, ideological crusades, or foolish foreign wars. Realists cherish America's commitment to democracy and individual liberty, but they know that ideals alone are no basis for conducting foreign policy. They also understand that endless overseas adventures will inevitably provoke a hostile backlash abroad and force us to compromise freedoms at home.  

(Continue reading...)

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I'm clearing off my desk today and working on the opening lecture for my graduate IR theory course, so I'm not going to try to write a detailed commentary. Instead, let me take this opportunity to pass on a few pieces that caught my eye, on a wide array of subjects.

1. From the S Rajaratnam School in Singapore comes an optimistic assessment on the status of the Pakistani Taliban. According to Khuram Iqbal, the Pakistani Taliban have failed to gain popular support, and show no signs of becoming an effective mass movement (akin to Hezbollah in Lebanon). Instead, they are increasingly seen as a narrower terrorist group, reinforced their unpopularity. While they remain a problem to be dealt with, fears that the Pakistani state was on the verge of collapse or that the entire country might be "Talibanized" seem to have been greatly overblown. (Juan Cole: take a bow).

2. There is a fascinating article by Richard Oliver Collin in the latest issue of International Studies Perspectives, entitled "Words of War: Iraq's Tower of Babel." It is a careful analysis of the extraordinary degree of linguistic diversity and fragmentation in Iraq, and it underscores how ill-prepared the United States was to try to occupy and govern the place. Money quote from Collin's conclusion:

It cannot be argued that enhanced language proficiency in Arabic and Kurdish would assure military victory for the United States in its conflict with the various Iraqi insurgent groups.  Language capability is a necessary but not sufficient condition for triumph in war and diplomacy. The evidence does strongly suggest, however, that American inability to create a basic communications capability has contributed importantly to the failure of the United States thus far to resolve its Middle Eastern problems at some minimally acceptable level ... Can this historical trend be changed? There is no reason to believe that the present spate of Middle Eastern difficulties is going to be the last chapter in America's involvement in the Middle East ....

The United States historically has attempted to pursue a policy of intense involvement in Middle Eastern affairs, sometimes diplomatic and sometimes military, but without a concomitant commitment to understanding the region's culture, religion, and particularly its languages. Since American foreign policy in the Middle East policy has never been more than sporadically successful, an argument can be made that Washington needs to match its military investment with a serious commitment to language and area studies. Language lessons are cheaper than tanks, and if America's linguists were good enough, the United States might not need quite so many tanks."

Note: he says linguistic competence is "necessary but not sufficient," so please don't assume that training some more linguists would suddenly give us a magical capability to reorder other countries at low cost.

3. If you're just now trying to catch up on the situation in Afghanistan (and why haven't you been reading the AfPak Channel here at FP?), a good short introduction is Thomas Billetteri, "Afghanistan Dilemma," CQ Researcher, available here. (Full disclosure: I'm quoted a couple of times, but so are lots of other people with varying views.) Billetteri takes no position on the policy choices facing us, but the piece is an excellent introduction to the issues.

4. I've also just finished a fascinating paper by two economists from the Universidad de los Andes, analyzing the effect of Plan Colombia on the production and distribution of drugs (e.g., cocaine). The analysis is fairly technical and some of the math is beyond me, but it's clearly a serious attempt to determine the impact of different policies and how the different actors involved (the U.S. and Colombian governments, the drug growers, the drug smugglers, etc.) interact in a strategic fashion. Among other things, the authors (Daniel Mejia and Pascual Restrepo) show that although Plan Colombia's drug eradication efforts have reduced the amount of acreage under cultivation by nearly 50 percent, actual cocaine production has decreased by only 11 percent and the prices of coca leaf, coca paste, and actual cocaine have remained fairly stable. Why? Because growers responded to eradication efforts by adopting more productive cultivation techniques, thereby producing nearly the same amount of cocaine from smaller amounts of land. 

They also demonstrate that the Colombian and U.S. governments have conflicting interests in pursuing the "war on drugs." Specifically, the Colombian government benefits far more from every dollar spent on eradication efforts (i.e., against drug production) because that takes money away from the growers (and thus the insurgency). By contrast, the United States gets a larger "bang from the buck" from drug interdiction (i.e., against drug trafficking) because the main U.S. interest is in trying to keep cocaine out of the United States. Here's a summary of their main findings:

We find, among many other things, that a three-fold increase in the U.S. budget allocated to Plan Colombia would decrease the amount of cocaine reaching consumer countries by about 19.5% (about 60,000 kg). We also estimate that the elasticity of the cocaine reaching consumer countries with respect to changes in the amount of resources invested in the war against illegal drug production is about 0.007%, whereas the elasticity with respect to changes in the amount of resources invested in the war against illegal drug trafficking is about 0.296%. In other words, if the main objective is to reduce the amount of drugs reaching consumer countries, targeting illegal drug trafficking is much more cost effective than targeting illegal drug production activities.  However, if the objective is to reduce the cost of conflict in Colombia, targeting drug production activities is more cost effective .... Furthermore, we find that the optimal allocation of resources from the point of view of the U.S., whose objective is to minimize the amount of cocaine reaching its borders, implies that all the U.S. assistance to Plan Colombia should be for the war against drug trafficking.  From the point of view of Colombia, whose objective is to minimize the total cost of internal conflict, the optimal allocation would imply that all the U.S. assistance for Plan Colombia should go to finance the war against drug production."

I'm sure one can raise questions about their analysis, but this is the sort of work that really ought to be informing the debate over whether Plan Colombia is working and how U.S. assistance should be allocated. 

Happy reading!

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Last week, the Los Angeles Times published a courageous and moving op-ed entitled "Boycott Israel" by Israeli political scientist Neve Gordon, in which he reluctantly endorsed the "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions" (BDS) campaign against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Gordon is a tenured lecturer and department head at Ben Gurion University, and the author of several important scholarly works, including the recent book Israel's Occupation (2008). He is a committed Zionist who was wounded during his military service in an elite IDF paratroop unit. He is also a long-time member of the peace camp in Israel.

In his op-ed, Gordon argued that Israel is at an historic crossroads and that "massive international pressure" is the only way that Israel "can be saved from itself." For this reason, he says, he reluctantly supports the BDS campaign, "to ensure that Israel respects its obligations under international law and that Palestinians are granted the right to self-determination."

As one would expect, his article has provoked a firestorm of controversy. Israel's consul-general in Los Angeles wrote a letter to the president of Ben-Gurion University, Dr. Rivka Carmi, warning that Gordon's remarks could undermine fund-raising efforts. He suggested that the university create a Center for Zionist studies to "help dispel the lies disseminated by Gordon in the name of your university." But instead of defending the core principle of academic freedom, President Carmi said that Gordon's views were "destructive," "morally reprehensible," and an "abuse [of] the freedom of speech prevailing in Israel and at BGU." Even more disturbingly, she went on to say that "academics who entertain such resentment toward their country are welcome to consider another professional and personal home." A spokesman for the university added "We're proud to have a full range of political views at the university, and I want to live in a country that protects freedom of speech, but Gordon’s remarks are beyond the pale.”

I have three comments. First, as Richard Silverstein points out in his own blog, neither President Carmi nor her spokesperson seem to understand what academic freedom is all about. The tenure system and the principle of academic freedom exists for one main reason: to permit academics to say what they think without fear of retribution (provided, of course, that they aren't advocating a violent crime or some equally heinous act). Reasonable people can take issue with what Gordon wrote, of course, but nothing he said is even remotely near the boundaries of acceptable discourse in a democracy that values free speech and academic freedom. I'm not quarreling with President Carmi's right to disagree with Gordon; I'm just saying that her statements are at odds with the core principle of academic freedom, a principle that senior academic administrators are supposed to defend. She can't fire him, of course, but for her to call his op-ed an "an abuse of freedom of speech" was clearly intended to have a chilling effect on discourse. And trying to stifle the free exchange of ideas is not what we normally expect university presidents to do.

Second, this incident illustrates the harmful effects that the occupation is having on Israel itself. As opinions harden and the Israeli body politic moves rightward, dissenting voices inevitably get squelched or encouraged to leave the country. Any and all criticisms of Israel's conduct get attributed to either enduring anti-Semitism (when made by gentiles) or labeled as treason or "self-hatred" (when made by Jews). Israel's universities, once a legitimate source of national pride, become more and more politicized, with faculty expected to stay within the "acceptable" national consensus and with donors encouraged to fund programs intended to propagandize rather than enlighten.

Third, this sort of thing is going to become more widespread as long as the occupation continues. If we don't get a two-state solution soon, Israel will be stuck running an apartheid system in the Occupied Territories and inflicting additional suffering on its Palestinian subjects. Defenders of the status quo in Israel and abroad will have to rely on more elaborate rationalizations and forms of deception to defend this situation, and they will wind up denouncing critics in increasingly harsh terms. This situation won’t be good for anyone, but that's where we are headed if current efforts to bring about a two-state solution fail.

I might add that I dont support the "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement" myself. This is partly because I'm uncomfortable with even mild forms of collective punishment and partly because, like Gordon himself, I do worry about the double-standard issue (i.e., if you think it's ok to boycott Israel, why not China or Burma or any number of other countries?). And I'm especially leery of efforts to interfere with academic exchanges, because I don't like anything that interferes with free speech or obstructs the free flow of ideas. But I respect Gordon's motives and his op-ed did make me wonder: what if he's correct and this is in fact the only way to get a two-state solution? Making people think is something scholars are supposed to do, right?

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