While debate about the principles of the upcoming Palestine Solidarity Movement conference has swept the campus into a storm of rhetoric and competing claims, one voice has been uncharacteristically quiet-- that of the faculty.
While debate about the principles of the upcoming Palestine Solidarity Movement conference has swept the campus into a storm of rhetoric and competing claims, one voice has been uncharacteristically quiet—that of the faculty.
But recent faculty actions have been targeted at opening new avenues of discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Seven faculty members issued a statement offering support for freedom of speech and democratic principles and insisting that those principles guide responses to the underlying issues.
“We support the principle that universities ought to make room for all individuals and groups, no matter what their views, to present arguments fully, freely and peacefully to students and faculty,” the statement reads. It then urges the administration to act against any disruption of the free exchange of ideas at the conference.
While the statement supports President Richard Brodhead’s decision to open the campus to PSM on the grounds of free speech, it stipulates that anyone who invokes this line of reasoning must, by extension, endorse other democratic principles such as tolerance and the non-violent resolution of conflicts.
The statement also calls for a rejection of both Palestinian terrorism and civilian-targeted actions by the Israeli army or Jewish settlers, an end to the expansion of Jewish settlements and the endorsement of a two-state solution to the conflict. All of these assertions have been problematic points of disagreement between the pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian student groups on campus and in the broader dialogue.
Rann Bar-on, a spokesperson for PSM and a graduate student in mathematics, praised the faculty’s attempt to enter into the dialogue. He took issue, however, with the statement’s terminology.
The statement calls participants to “reject the resort by Palestinian armed groups to any form of terrorism” and “reject targeted actions by the Israeli army or by Jewish settlers which result in the death of or injury to civilians.”
Bar-on accused the statement’s drafters of discrimination through their selection of vocabulary. “The issue here is that the language used is fundamentally pro-Israeli because it does not acknowledge that the Israeli army engages in terrorism, which is a view very strongly held by the PSM,” he said.
Bernard Avishai, a visiting professor of public policy from Israel, drafted the statement with constant feedback from the other involved faculty, who represent a range of convictions about the history of the Middle East.
“One of the things that was most frustrating and tragic about Jerusalem was that we felt the broad centers of each population—Palestinian and Israeli—were being dragged to extreme positions and ungenerous versions of one another by fanatics on both sides,” Avishai said. He added that a similar polarization happens on many university campuses when students and faculty feel pressed to identify themselves with one camp.
Alternatively, many faculty have hesitated to declare affiliation. This is not because of a lack of opinions, but a lack of an assuredly open and safe space for expression, said Ellen McLarney, assistant professor of the practice of Asian and African languages and literature.
“I think that people are worried their statements may be misconstrued,” McLarney said, citing an online petition that she said pulled statements about PSM out of context.
The petition, created by an outside group urging Brodhead to reject the conference, cites alleged speech excerpts from previous conference participants and movement leaders to justify its claim.
“They managed to take these statements and really turn them against the speaker,” McLarney said. “With that kind of organized propaganda, people are afraid to be dragged in.”
As of Wednesday night, the anti-conference petition had 56,790 online signatures. The faculty statement has 22 faculty signatures online.
Rebecca Stein, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology who will speak at the PSM conference, said “the charge of terrorism has been a genuine distraction from the issues.”
“Many faculty have felt that they didn’t want to grant these claims legitimacy by engaging in a dialogue,” she said.
Stein said faculty might be afraid to voice support for Palestinian activists due to the “fallacy that the critique of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism” in what is already a highly volatile arena.
Other faculty members are also launching efforts to make themselves heard during the weekend.
Several originators of the faculty statement met with local conference organizers to discuss the possibility of a cross-disciplinary group—which would include citizens of Israel and pro-Palestinian faculty members—forming a panel for the conference.
Another group of faculty members recently formed Duke Radical Action Group, which has taken a position of strong support for the conference.
“No one chose for this issue to become so urgent right now for Duke,” Avishai said. “But the fact that the conference is going to be held here, and the threat of polarization and the threat of hyperbole is so strong, it seems to me that the faculty should take this occasion to reaffirm the very principles underlying the University.”
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