Universal Ethical Principles and ‘Ethical Collaboration’
Or “Boycott only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law”
On Monday, students at my alma matter will be voting on a non-binding resolution to suspend collaborations with certain Israeli universities that they claim are involved in human rights abuses.
Were I still a student and able to vote, I would be voting against ending collaboration with Israeli universities.
The University of Waterloo has a spotty record on human rights. They had a campus in Dubai that only closed due to money problems, not over human rights concerns. They have research relationships with universities with a history of racist admission policies (this one is easy; you can pretty much count on the Ivy Leagues to have previously discriminated against Jewish students and to be presently discriminating against Asian students). The university is also particularly eager to collaborate with Chinese schools.
There is a group of countries illegally occupying captured territory in violation of international law: India, Pakistan, China, Russia, and Israel spring to mind. There are countries where universities are complicit in reinforcing systemic inequality (the United States is the obvious example, but if I really tried I’m sure I could find universities in India that discriminate against Dalits, universities in Pakistan that discriminate against Hindus, universities in China that discriminate against Uighurs and Tibetans, universities in Myanmar that host genocidal Buddhist monks, universities in Canada complicit in covering up residential school abuses and forced sterilizations, etc., etc.)
I don't recall students protesting against the slave labour that no doubt built the Dubai campus. I don't see any consideration given to the possibility that universities in any other country are complicit in human rights abuses.
I feel like this is a case of “it’s only not okay when Israel does it”, a phenomenon I see all too often from the left (and an attitude I’ve been guilty of in the past).
David Schraub has posited that leftists feel comfortable criticizing Israel because it doesn’t feel colonial ("It's all the joy of liberal guilt-induced self-flagellation, except the wounds show up on someone else's body"). Leftists don’t see Israelis as having a separate identity from European whiteness, so criticism of them doesn’t feel like imposing Western values on a foreign country the same way that criticism of Saudi Arabia or China would.
I think this is a charitable (although not an exclusive) explanation for why Israel is the only country being targeted by this resolution. And as long as Israel is the only country that students are targeting, I won’t be supporting the motion. What could be an attempt to stand up for universal ethical principals feels to me like an unprincipled attack on a country that presents a convenient target.
To stand up for universal ethical principles, activists would have to show that they’ve considered the perils of collaborating with other countries and explain why they’ve chosen to ignore abuses by universities in other countries. And they’d have to explain how a divisive resolution that has no chance of actually changing anything (no matter how students vote, the administration isn't going to end collaboration with Israeli universities) is worth the alienation that some students are bound to feel. Alternatively, activists could present a broader resolution that seeks to ban collaboration with certain Chinese, Indian, Pakistani , American and Russian universities at the same time as ending collaboration with Israeli universities. Ethical Collaboration talks about this being a first step, but there's no evidence they've done the research or have any desire to name universities in other countries.
I'm trying to be charitable in my treatment of this debate and I understand that many people have causes that feel personally important to them. But in the absence of a compelling universal ethical principal that separates Israel from other countries with spotty human rights records it's hard that to ignore the potential parsimonious explanation of anti-semitism.
From David Schraub again: 'One of the lodestones of progressive understandings of discrimination and inequality is that marginalized groups are in a privileged position to "name their oppression."' He notes that in a recent survey, 72% of Jews in the EU think that a boycott of Israeli goods or products is anti-Semitic. I think an academic boycott falls under the same umbrella.
I also worry that we are missing an opportunity for engagement with people we disagree with and trading the liberal virtue of free association and free debate into the reactionary vice of stifling voices. I have to believe that the default dialogue must not exclude parties from the beginning. Lacking some infallible outside view on morality, I can’t see any other system that doesn’t present an unacceptable risk to liberal causes.
I recognize that other people may have other compelling reasons to vote yes or no on this resolution and that I've barely scratched the surface of the issue. I urge every student to vote and vote their conscience today. My conscience would have me vote no. After consideration, what does yours say?