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5-8-2007
 By Judith Butler
In the last few years, two separate debates on academic freedom have emerged in the United States, and both of them have Israel/Palestine at their centre. The first has to do with arguments against the academic boycott of Israeli institutions on grounds of academic freedom, and the second has to do with the new Academic Bill of Rights, sponsored by David Horowitz, which maintains that the classroom should present balancing points of view on political issues and that the faculty should represent a balanced spectrum of such points of view.
I shall consider both of these debates. In the case of the boycott, a clear paradox emerged in which academic freedom became the principle under which many people opposed the boycott, arguing that academic freedom involves the free circulation of ideas and scholars across national boundaries and without discriminating on the basis of nationality. The fear that some Israelis who strongly oppose the Occupation
might be exempted from the boycott produced the response that there would be "lists" distinguishing good and bad Israelis. These conjectured "lists" clearly constituted, in the minds of some, discrimination on the basis of political viewpoints. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) published their objection in the spring of this year, arguing that the resolutions originally passed by the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) "damage academic freedom". As will be remembered, those resolutions called for a boycott against two specific institutions of higher learning, Haifa University and Bar Ilan University. The AAUP noted that the boycott excluded conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state's colonial and racist policies, and on the basis of what appeared to be an ideological litmus test the AAUP concluded that the exclusion, and the standard of judgement it implied, deepens the injury to academic freedom rather than mitigates it…
Abstract of "Radical Philosophy" 135 (January/February 2006)
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