“The new McCarthyism is rising,” warned Omar Barghouti as the faint voices of protestors outside filtered into the buzzing room, where over 250 students and members of the public gathered at Brooklyn College on February 7 to attend a panel on the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. The Brooklyn College Students for Justice in Palestine group hosted the event.
Barghouti was hyperbolically referring to the efforts of lawyers like Alan Dershowitz and New York City lawmakers to stop Brooklyn College from hosting the event. The controversy, spanning over the past month, was focused on the Brooklyn College Political Science Department’s endorsement of the panel, featuring Palestinian scholar and activist Barghouti, and Jewish-American theorist and activist Judith Butler.
Commonly known as BDS and drawing from South African anti-Apartheid efforts, the campaign hopes to use non-violent resistance and economic sanctions to aid the Palestinian quest for statehood and self-determination, specifically by putting “pressure on cultural and academic institutions that have failed to criticize their government and oppose the occupation,” said Butler.
Initiated in 2005, the movement has three goals, as described on its website. It aims to end “[Israel’s] occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantling the Wall,” push for “the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality;” and urge Israel to agree to “respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.” Endorsed by over 170 Palestinian organizations, including political parties, and trade unions, BDS is currently the largest Palestinian civic movement.
It is expressly non-violent, said Butler and Barghouti, and has garnered support throughout the world, including within Israel.
Critics of BDS, like Dershowitz, argue that the movement itself suppresses academic freedom by boycotting collaboration with Israeli universities and academics. Barghouti responded that BDS is not about academic boycott, but rather about “holding institutions accountable for complicity,” especially institutions of knowledge.
While it has been successful over the years in getting organizations, like the African National Congress and universities, to divest from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation, BDS has not been discussed at length in the American mainstream media.
This lack of attention changed about a month ago. The controversy surrounding the event began when Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and Brooklyn College alum, published an op-ed with the Daily News and the Huffington Post alleging that the BC Political Science Department had acted immorally by sponsoring the panel event. He wrote, “shame on the Brooklyn College political science department for falsely invoking academic freedom and freedom of speech to deny equal freedoms to those who disagree with its extremist politics.”
Dershowitz argued that because both speakers at the panel were supportive of BDS, it was too one-sided and even an anti-Semitic event. In an op-ed in the Daily News, he referred to the event as a “propaganda hate orgy.”
Next, Councilmember Lewis A. Findler, and ten other members of the New York City Council then sent a letter to Brooklyn College President Karen Gould, demanding the event be canceled or that the BC Political Science department revoke its endorsement. “We believe in the principle of academic freedom,” said the letter, “However, we also believe in the principle of not supporting schools whose programs we, and our constituents, find to be odious and wrong.”
Village Voice writer Ben Adler criticized the letter, saying that the very “meaning of academic freedom is tolerating the expression of views one finds to be odious and wrong. Tolerating only those views that everyone on the City Council agrees with would not grant Brooklyn College much freedom at all.”
The controversy also affected the campus atmosphere at Brooklyn College. Omar Moussa, a junior, commented that tensions within the student body had been tangibly high in the week leading up to the panel, saying, “This issue has never been brought up at this level before.”
President Gould responded to the criticisms and allegations by defending the Political Science Department’s right to academic freedom and the exchange of ideas. She stated that while she herself was personally opposed to the BDS movement, she saw no reason to cancel or un-endorse the panel event.
Anna Calcutt, an attendee and activist working with New Yorkers Against the Cornell-Technion Partnership (NYACT), viewed the controversy in a positive light. “Dershowitz has shot himself in the foot,” said Calcutt, “BDS now has more publicity that it has ever received before this.”
Moussa, who studies chemistry, remarked that although he knew little about BDS as a movement, the controversy surrounding the event had encouraged him to attend and learn more. He also wanted to show support for the college’s decision to hold the panel at all. “I loved President Gould’s response,” said Moussa, “It made me proud to be a Brooklyn College student.”
