Review of Cary Nelson, Not In Kansas Any More: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities. Washington DC: Academic Engagement Network (2021), ISBN 978-1-64021-367-9 (pbk).
Among Western liberals it is not uncommon to believe that their deepest values and beliefs, once understood, meet with rooted rejection and indifference only among Western conservatives. On this view the non-Western world represents a vast potential constituency for Western progressive ideas, with any passing rejection of their influence to be explained either by the unfortunate necessities of struggle against Western “capitalism,” colonialism and aggression, or by actual repression on the part of forces identifiable in some way as “Western.” As with most long-established political illusions, this one has deep roots in the history of ideas, going back in one direction to Rousseau, and in another to Hegel and Marx. Rousseau taught that the values of community and regard for others are natural to all men and women who have not been corrupted by European societies, whose values he held to be in essence money, power and the pursuit of self-aggrandizement. From the nowadays largely forgotten complexities of Hegel and Marx, present day progressives retain only the idea of history as responsive to laws guiding all humanity to progress in a single direction: towards the common development of an outlook and values not greatly dissimilar, they trust, to those already achieved by Western progressives themselves.
A different view holds that nothing in the sphere of culture and values is “natural” to humanity as a whole, let alone determined by a “law of history”; that every culture develops its own patterns of thought and action; that liberal ideas, just as much as Nazi or other totalitarian ones, require the environment of a specific society, with a specific culture and history, to bring them to wide acceptance and practical effect; and that it is a reasonable question which are more to be valued — to what extent, that is, the advantages to be gained from enacting each as a pattern of social life exceed, or even repay, the price that each exacts for its dominance.
This short but penetrating book pits one view against the other in the context of a single issue: the limits of academic freedom in Palestinian universities. In many quarters those limits are taken to be exclusively the responsibility of Israel. Miriam Elman, in her preface to the book, notes as typical a pro-BDS resolution proposed at the 2019 meetings of the American Political Science Association, that “laudably advocated for the academic rights of Palestinian students and scholars in Palestinian universities, yet maintained that Israel’s ‘colonisation of Palestine’ is to blame for ‘consistently and brutally’ denying academic freedom to Palestinians.'” [p.9]
Nelson argues that a far greater threat to academic freedom on Palestinian campuses is posed by the violent and mutually hostile armed groups that between them control Palestinian society, and especially by the presence and activity of these groups among both students and faculty on the campuses themselves. His title “Not In Kansas Anymore,” echoes Dorothy’s remark to her dog in The Wizard of Oz, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” The message to American academics of the type mentioned by Miriam Elman is that academic freedom is a human contrivance, not a natural condition like rain or sunlight. For it to exist requires vast amounts of political, cultural and historical scene-setting, that doubtless exist in Kansas, but may not, for reasons at least equally complex and diverse, do so elsewhere.
Nelson is particularly well qualified to explore this difficult and politically treacherous topic. He served as president of the American Association of University Professors for three consecutive terms, 2006-2012, and he has written extensively on the topic of academic freedom. His sense of the importance of that principle, and the breadth of the rights it confers, can be gleaned from the opening passage of a 1999 paper of his on that topic:
Academic freedom is the glue that holds the university together, the principle that protects its educational mission. It is the principle that guarantees faculty members the right to speak and write as they please without interference from the university, the state, or the public. It is the principle that gives both students and faculty the right to say whatever they believe is pertinent to the subject at hand. It is the principle that affirms there are no limits to what subjects and issues educational institutions may study, investigate, debate, and discuss. As Louis Menand writes in The Future of Academic Freedom, it “is not simply a kind of bonus enjoyed by workers within the system, a philosophical luxury universities could function just as effectively without. It is the key legitimating concept of the entire enterprise.”(5)1
Rights, of course, carry duties with them. Does the right of a faculty member to speak and write as he or she pleases carry with it the right to subject students to advocacy on behalf of this or that intellectual or political standpoint, and if so, at what point does advocacy shade over into indoctrination? On this issue Nelson’s present view, if I read him correctly, is that political advocacy in the classroom, which has become more common and also more accepted over the past half century, is acceptable, and may serve useful educational purposes, provided — and these are crucial caveats — it remains “respectful of evidence and respectful of alternative views.”2 Further problems, which Nelson has also more recently raised and discussed, arise over the notion of “respect for evidence” when entire disciplines become committed to the acceptance as true of essentially contestable claims. But while these issues concern, if you like, the fine tuning of the notion of academic freedom, they do not change its fundamental requirements.
Nelson’s claim in this book is that those requirements are not met at any Palestinian university, and that the reasons for that are in recent years to be sought more in the present character of Palestinian political life than in any action undertaken by Israel. Israel, curiously enough, bears the main responsibility for the existence of Palestinian universities in the first place. Before 1967, as Anthony Sullivan notes3, when responsibility for the present Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza lay with Egypt and Jordan, neither country, fearing the rise of a distinctive Palestinian nationalism, was inclined to encourage any such development. “Within a few years of its 1967 victory in the Six-Day War”, however, Nelson notes, “Israel recognized both the need for a true Palestinian higher education system and the Palestinian right to have one.”[32] The early essays in this direction passed into the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994 as part of the early implementation of the Oslo Accords. At that point the nascent Palestinian universities were already intensely politicized as a result of the involvement of students and faculty in the First Intifada (1987-1991).
The First Intifada was the period when student-organized demonstrations spread off-campus and shouted slogans, burning tires, hurled rocks, and Molotov cocktails accompanied the building of barricades across city streets, practices now deeply ingrained and continuing to the present day. [37]
These activities resulted in attempts at repression by the IDF. Campuses were repeatedly closed down, culminating in one closure which lasted from January 1988 t the Fall of 1991, and in the case of Bir Zeit to April 29, 1992. In this period the Israeli authorities certainly also attempted, contrary to the requirements of academic freedom, to censor what books could be read at Palestinian universities; an absurd policy which meant that titles supposedly forbidden in Ramallah could be bought quite openly a few miles away in Jerusalem, or found in the library of the Hebrew University.
These events of thirty years ago continue, Nelson notes [39] to provide the basis for accusations by the anti-Zionist BDS movement that academic freedom in the Palestinian universities would flourish were it not for Israeli repression. Such accusations, Nelson argues, aside from their anachronism, fail to take account of the continuing presence within these universities, dividing the allegiances of both students and faculty, of representatives of all the various armed groups whose mutual hostilities divide and dominate Palestinian society.
The book begins its examination of the effects of these divisions with Professor Sari Nusseibi’s account of what happened to him after he taught a philosophy class (one, as it happens, on “John Locke, liberalism and tolerance”) at Bir Zeit University. He was told by a student that there was a gang of armed men in the corridor stalking a traitor, but it was only when he reached the door that he realized that he was the “traitor.” Five men in keffiyas came at him with “clubs, fists, a broken bottle and penknives.” He managed to burst through them and reach the ground floor, which was crowded with students, at which point the attackers fled, but by that time he was pouring blood and had a broken arm. The “treachery” for which Nusseibeh was to be punished was having held several meetings with Israelis to discuss possible peace proposals. Yasser Arafat, at that time chairman of the PLO, had been informed of these meetings and had approved them, but — and this is the crucial point — that did not matter to his attackers. “Fatah itself was divided between militant and political factions. Indeed, a Fatah leaflet attacking Nusseibeh had been distributed in Jerusalem.” [17]
Nelson reviews much evidence, the bulk of it from sources not particularly known for sympathy to the Israeli Right, or indeed to Israel, oncerning the pressures brought to bear to recruit students to the nationalist or Islamist armed factions that dominate student life, and engage in constant factional fighting. Nelson records an instance of the kind of fighting involved from a 2014 Haaretz article by Matthew Kalman.
In 2007, university classes were suspended and students evacuated from the campus after Ahmed Jarrar, a student supporter of the ruling Fatah party, was assaulted in his dormitory room, apparently by four men from the Marxist PFLP. Jarrar was treated at a hospital for severe injuries suffered as he was apparently being tortured. The assailants used charcoal to burn Jarrah’s face and hammered nails into his feet. Fatah gunmen arrived soon after, threatening to kill PFLP supporters. [55]
While it is not easy to see how this kind of factionalism could advance any kind of intelligible opposition to Israel, it is not difficult to see the depressing effect it must have at the student level on freedom of debate and opinion in an academic context.
Academics, too, as the example of Nusseibi above suggests, enjoy no exemption from persecution for their political views or agency, and in particular risk severe consequences for participation in joint Israeli-Palestinian projects aimed at promoting peace and reconciliation; or as the armed factions see it, “normalisation” or “collaboration.” According to the Guardian, between 1987 and 1993, more than 800 suspected collaborators were killed by fellow Palestinians [64]. And this continues to the present day. B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization mainly concerns itself with Israeli violations. But its 2011 report “Harm to Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel” begins:
Since the beginning of the al-Aqsa intifada, Palestinians have killed dozens of Palestinian civilians on suspicion of collaborating with Israel. Some of the victims were killed in assassinations conducted by organizations; others died at the hands of Palestinian Authority security forces as a result of being tortured or when attempting to escape, while still others were lynched by crowds of people. Also, the Palestinian Authority killed several Palestinians whom the State Security Court, in a patently unfair judicial process, had convicted of collaborating with Israel.
Further chapters identify a range of additional obstacles to academic freedom intrinsic to the present condition of Palestinian society, governed as it is by mutually hostile armed groups, each controlling a largely independent territory; for Hamas, Gaza; for Fateh the parts of the West Bank under PA control.
There is, for a start, the financing and organization of terror attacks on Israel by both parties. This is never going to destroy Israel, and may even strengthen it, but its capacity to corrupt Palestinian institutions, including the universities, is virtually limitless. Hamas is constantly active in the creation of terrorist cells among students at universities in both Gaza and the West Bank. It is useless, Nelson argues, to demand that Israel maintain these universities as protected “spaces of education”, when they are in fact, and have been for many years, “sites at once for education and for the radical militarization of students.”
Such a demand “Ignores the primary responsibility the PA and the universities themselves must take. Are there sufficient numbers of Palestinian faculty members ready to help lead a campaign to demilitarize campuses? Will the student councils aligned with hams allow such a movement? Will those who speak out for nonviolence put themselves at risk? How long will it take to reform Palestinian higher education.” [97]
The problems for academic freedom posed by competing armed factions are complicated by the limits on freedom of debate within the Palestinian community at large, imposed from above by both Hamas and the PA. The book includes chapters covering the implications for academic freedom of the general lack of press freedom in the territories under the rule of Hamas and the PA, and “the corruption of the curriculum, indeed of the educational mission as a whole, by anti-Zionist and Islamist politics.” [111]. Chapters on travel abroad by Plalestinian students, and by foreign faculty travelling to Israel and the West Bank, conclude the book.
This carefully researched, extremely well documented and shrewdly argued book offers essential but very depressing reading for anyone hoping for early implementation of the “two-state” solution to the Israeli-Palestinian question. By exploring a fairly extreme instance of the immense harm capable of being done to freedom of expression in university education by politicized faculty/student organizations and supine administrations, it should also raise concerns over similar tendencies visible of late years, if in far less extreme and developed forms, in universities throughout the West.
Bernard Harrison
Emeritus E.E. Ericksen Professor of Philosophy, University of Utah
Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Sussex, UK
- Nelson, Cary, “Academic Freedom,” in Cary Nelson and Stephen Watt, Academic Keywords: A Devil’s Dictionary for Higher Education. London and NY: Routlege (1999) ↩︎
- Nelson, Cary, “Does academic freedom Protect Anti-Semitism” (forthcoming), 19 ↩︎
- Sullivan, Anthony Thrall, Palestinian Universities Under Occupation. Cairo, Egypt. The American University in Cairo Press (1988), 251 ↩︎