Soundings, June 2002

Most Americans are probably unaware of the extent to which European intellectuals are pressing an "academic and cultural" boycott of Israel. The boycott seems to have begun last April 6 with a press release announcing that an "open letter" would be published in the Guardian calling for "a moratorium on all future cultural and research links with Israel at European or national level until such time as the Israeli government abide by UN resolutions and open serious peace negotiations with the Palestinians along the lines of the recent Saudi peace plan." The open letter was signed by more than 120 university academics and researchers from across Europe, including more than 90 from the United Kingdom.

Early in July, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported: "Two Israeli scholars have been dismissed from the boards of British journals of translation studies as part of an academic boycott of Israel declared in April by a group of European scholars and intellectuals. Miriam Shlesinger, a senior lecturer in translation studies at Bar-Ilan University, was dismissed from the editorial board of The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication, and Gideon Toury, a professor in Tel Aviv University's School of Cultural Studies, was dismissed from the international advisory board of Translation Studies Abstracts. Both journals are published by St. Jerome Publishing and are privately owned by their editor and publisher, Mona Baker, of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology." Baker was one of the signatories of the April 6 open letter.

Of course, it is hardly a matter of surprise that Leftist nonsense should emanate from the humanities and social science departments of European Universities. More surprising has been the participation of scientists in the anti-Israel boycott. In June, Donald Kennedy, editor of the prestigious journal Science, wrote an editorial deploring the profound violations of scientific protocol that some scientists have indulged in to express their dislike of Israel. "In a case recently brought to Science's attention, an Israeli researcher asked an author of papers in two peer-reviewed journals to supply cells from a clone used in expression analyses. The author declined, citing her institution's protests against the recent Israeli military actions. . . . The author's refusal is a clear violation of the policies in place at most journals and commonly understood in the scientific community. When authors submit a manuscript, they make a commitment to supply cells, special reagents, or other materials necessary for verification. They are not free to violate that commitment once their paper has been published. Science's Instructions to Contributors set out the rule this way: 'Any reasonable request for materials and methods necessary to verify the conclusions of the experiments must be honored.'"

Writing in the spring issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review, Tobin Siebers, a professor of English and director of the Program in Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, proclaims a new aesthetic genre: vandalism. Quoth Siebers: "The most important criterion for identifying art would seem to be its ability to affect the emotions, sensibilities, and perceptions of the people who experience it. One thing is clear about art vandalism, despite its often confusing meanings: it possesses extraordinary resources to produce these kinds of changes in its audience."

The University of Chicago Press describes the thesis by which one of its forthcoming books links horror stories to the horrors of capitalism: "From the novels of Anne Rice to The Lost Boys, from The Terminator to cyberpunk science fiction, vampires and cyborgs have become strikingly visible figures within American popular culture, especially youth culture. In Consuming Youth, Rob Latham explains why, showing how fiction, film, and other media deploy these ambiguous monsters to embody and work through the implications of a capitalist system in which youth both consume and are consumed."

College Students Put Political Goals above Business Ethics.

Respondents were given the alternatives listed below and asked: "I will give you several examples of business practices that are generally regarded as good. Based on what you've been taught at college, tell me which one of these business practices would probably rank as the most important?"

38% chose "recruiting a diverse workforce in which women and minorities are advanced and promoted."

23% chose "providing clear and accurate business statements to stockholders and creditors."

18% chose "minimizing environmental pollution by adopting the latest anti-pollution technology and complying with government regulations."

18% chose "avoiding layoffs by not exporting jobs or moving plants from one area to another."

(4% were not sure.)

By a plurality of 43%, business and accounting majors accorded "providing clear and accurate business statements" their highest rating, thereby attaching more importance to it than did any other major. But even with this group, a majority of 56% preferred one of the other three alternatives.

This poll was conducted for the National Association of Scholars by Zogby International during the period from April 9 to 16, 2002. Pollsters contacted 401 randomly selected college seniors, giving the survey a +/- 5% sampling error.