The furor over the American Studies Association’s boycott of Israeli higher-education institutions has spilled over to the Modern Language Association, making for an unusually contentious buildup to the group’s annual meeting, which begins on Thursday in Chicago.
As usual, most of the 800-plus sessions on this year’s program focus on language and literature and on professional issues, not on Middle East politics. Other topics that will come under scrutiny during the four-day conference include the challenging job market, the struggles of adjunct and non-tenure-track faculty members, and what the MLA and those with tenure can or should do to help them—topics that all feed into the conference’s official theme, “Vulnerable Times.”
There’s even going to be an unaffiliated “subconference,” “Resisting Vulnerable Times,” aimed at graduate students, adjuncts, and others who feel marginalized by the profession.
All of that has stirred up an unusual amount of preconference commentary—in columns and blogs posts and on Twitter and Facebook, where Michael Bérubé, a former president of the MLA and a professor of literature at Pennsylvania State University, defended the association against charges that its conference exploits desperate job seekers.
Politics and Boycotts
With the American Studies Association’s experience still raw, the subject of academic boycotts has already set off a loud debate around the MLA. This year, the MLA’s Delegate Assembly, which represents the membership, will consider a resolution calling for the U.S. State Department to challenge “Israel’s arbitrary denials of entry to Gaza and the West Bank by U.S. academics who have been invited to teach, confer, or do research at Palestinian universities.”
Although the resolution does not call for a boycott, opponents say it would compromise academic freedom and push the MLA in too political a direction.
The conference program also includes a round-table discussion of academic boycotts, featuring MLA members who support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement.
Like the resolution, the round table has attracted plenty of negative attention from boycott opponents and supporters of Israel inside and outside the MLA. For instance, B’nai B’rith International issued a statement condemning the organization for what it termed an “anti-Israel discussion.” And Hillel International and the Israel on Campus Coalition have organized a “counterpanel,” “Perspectives Against Academic Boycotts,” that will take place on the same day as the round table.
Organizers of the counterpanel have presented it as a “balanced alternative” to the MLA session, and have complained that the association would not allow the panel to take place at the conference itself. In a statement dated January 2, Hillel and the Israel on Campus Coalition said they had protested the MLA’s decision “to deny the organizations the right to present a balanced and open discussion featuring MLA members regarding academic freedom in Israel, its territories, and Gaza.”
In a letter sent in response, the association’s executive director, Rosemary G. Feal, said that the groups had missed an April 1 deadline to request space at the meeting. Hillel and Israel on Campus Coalition apparently approached the MLA about the counterpanel in December.
The accusation that the MLA had failed to include opposing points of view “is a fundamental misunderstanding of how scholarly conventions work,” Ms. Feal said in an interview. “It’s not a public-square event for any group to stage a session. It’s by members, for members, and it always has been. And this one session is no different.”
As for the question of whether the MLA panel on boycotts was balanced enough, Ms. Feal noted that many MLA panels are organized around a particular point of view. Session proposals go through the MLA’s program committee, which evaluates their intellectual quality, she said.
‘Lively’ Discussions
Ms. Feal said the MLA expected “a lively discussion” at the round table. “It’s clear that academic boycotts where the Middle East is concerned are contentious for scholarly associations,” she said. “Nevertheless, members of scholarly associations have traditionally examined questions of how scholars and teachers are treated in all kinds of settings.”
Also likely to be lively is the counterpanel, which will feature three MLA members: Russell Berman, a professor of German studies and comparative literature at Stanford University and a former president of the MLA; Gabriel Brahm Jr., an associate professor of English at Northern Michigan University; and Cary Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and past president of the American Association of University Professors. Ilan Troen, director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University and a professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, will also take part.
Mr. Berman and Mr. Nelson, along with Martin B. Shichtman, a professor of English and director of Jewish studies at Eastern Michigan University, wrote to the MLA’s Delegate Assembly on behalf of a group they called MLA Members for Scholars’ Rights. They sent the delegates a letter and background materials about the proposed travel resolution. Unless the assembly rejects it, they wrote, “it faces the possibility of making what we believe to be a grave error—launching the MLA into a new area of foreign-policy debate and action” without sufficient information or investigation.
In a call with reporters ahead of the convention, Mr. Berman and Mr. Nelson spent a good deal of time criticizing the American Studies Association’s boycott, in what appeared to be an attempt to persuade the much larger MLA not to take a similar stance. (The MLA has about 30,000 members; the ASA has about 5,000.)
Even though the MLA resolution does not press for a boycott, Mr. Nelson called it “part of a gradual agenda.” If the resolution passes, he said, “we would probably see a boycott resolution passed next year.” The ASA paid a big price for its boycott—more than 80 university presidents denounced the move, and at least five institutions withdrew from membership—and the cost to the MLA “would be just as great or greater if it moves in this direction of what I consider irresponsible politicization,” Mr. Nelson said.
Boycotts “are fundamentally inimicable to academic freedom,” Mr. Berman said. “The only grounds on which somebody should be excluded is poor scholarship.”
Agreeing with Ms. Feal, Mr. Nelson said it wasn’t the MLA’s responsibility to ensure that all viewpoints got equal hearing at its sessions. “I don’t hold the MLA responsible for forcing an alternate point of view on that panel,” he told reporters. That too would violate academic freedom, he said, and many MLA sessions have “a consistent point of view.” A panel on Shakespeare, for instance, isn’t required to include scholars who question whether he wrote the plays.
‘Open to Being Convinced’
Samer M. Ali, an associate professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin, put together the MLA round table. “Personally, I am agnostic about academic boycotts in general,” Mr. Ali said via email. “I have not found any convincing arguments yet one way or the other, and find it bizarre to boycott Israeli universities when so many of our colleagues there eloquently and bravely criticize Israel’s occupation. I organized this round table because I remain open to being convinced.”
Another panelist, David Lloyd, said that the participants were “keen to engage with the kinds of arguments that people make” against boycotts like the ASA’s.
Mr. Lloyd, a professor of English at the University of California at Riverside and a member of the ASA as well as of the MLA, described himself as “a fairly vocal advocate of the boycott movement.” Asked if the MLA ought to be a public forum for debate about topics like Israel and Palestine, he said, “I think it’s just produced one.”
But, he added, “I don’t think the MLA is under any obligation to police panels.”
Correction (1/8/2014, 11:06 a.m.): This article originally stated that all panels must be approved by the MLA’s program committee. In fact, session proposals go through the program committee. The article has been updated to reflect that.
