LINGUIST List 14.1130

Wed Apr 16 2003

Disc: Academic Boycotts

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Prof. Thomas Chacko, RE: 14.1118, Disc: Academic Boycotts
2. Michael Newman, Re: 14.1096, Disc: New: Academic Boycotts
3. Dr Ghil`ad Zuckermann, Academic Boycotts

Message 1: RE: 14.1118, Disc: Academic Boycotts

I wonder if LSA and other academic organizations have considered the
"other side of boycott", where organizations and individuals refuse to
accept any form of partronage from oppressive governments. Travel or
research grants,and project funds should not be sought or
received. Yes, such denial will hurt our research, but we are
protesting against policies and practices that not only hurt, but kill
innocents by the thousands.

Thomas Chacko

Message 2: Re: 14.1096, Disc: New: Academic Boycotts

In order to evaluate a resolution against academic boycotts, it's
necessary to consider what they consist of. My guess, judging from
what I've heard about the current boycott against Israeli scholars
(which of course forms the background to the resolution), there is a
refusal to consider or publish papers or admit Israelis to
conferences, as Shalom Lappin pointed out.

Haspelmath argues that this option should not be closed because of the
success of the general embargo against South Africa at ending the
apartheid regime. Just considering comparison leads to two questions:
Was this embargo ever extended to work by South African scholars? and
Should it have been?

I don't know the answer to the first question, but my answer to the
second would be no. There something just so scary in discounting the
expression of the individual, be it for artistic or intellectual
purposes, because of that individual's group membership. It is just
too close to the loss of that individual's identity to their group
identity, which is the best definition of bigotry that I've found.
What you do doesn't matter because you are a member of bad group.
Does anyone really want to go down that path? Consider who does and
who did in the past. Do you want to join that ugliest of crowds? --


Michael Newman 
Associate Professor of Linguistics 
Dept. of Linguistics and Communication Disorders 
Queens College/CUNY Flushing, NY 11367

Academic boycotts oppose the very idea of UNIVERSity, supplanting it
with the notion of VILLAGity or CAMPANILity. They infect academia with
discrimination, weakening its ability to serve as a global model for
independent thought. We should not allow the boycotters to ban us from
inviting an Iranian colleague for a High Table dinner, or from quoting
a Damascus-based scholar. We shall continue to write academic articles
with Shanghai professors and participate in conferences in Moscow,
Alaska or a law school near Al-aqsa. Whether or not Mona Baker, Martin
Haspelmath or Steven and Hilary Rose permit it, we shall not allow
censorship and racism to destroy our academia.

 	Yours respectfully,
 
 	Ghil`ad Zuckermann
 	Churchill College
 	University of Cambridge
 	www.zuckermann.org
 	gz208cam.ac.uk
 
 	(currently in Israel, cooperating with in situ scholars)