The Dirty Work of Nationalism

I disagree with Stanley Fish’s arguments as to why the academic boycott of Israel is a bad idea. Fish believes that it is wrong for academics to engage in any sort of boycott whatsoever because it is not their business to be political.

I oppose the boycott of Israel, as well, but I’m actually very much in favor of the idea of boycotting in order to defend academia. We should boycott Bates College and Quest University for destroying scholarship and making a mockery of higher education. We should organize and protect our own, irrespective of where our colleagues are located.

Fish makes a very valuable point when he says that judging the goodness or badness of nations is a fool’s errand, a task that is so intellectually pathetic that it doesn’t suit academics:

The problem with this debating point is that it puts the emphasis on the wrong question — whether Israel is a good or bad country, and thereby implies that if it were clearly one or the other, the boycott would be clearly bad or good. But Israel’s moral status is irrelevant to the right question, which is whether academic institutions boycotting other academic institutions can ever be an expression of, rather than an undermining of, academic freedom.

I don’t believe in institutions boycotting institutions either. What I do believe is that academics should boycott all institutions of higher learning – including their own – which behave in ways that put academia in danger of extinction. One thing we definitely should not do is carry nationalism’s dirty water. All nations have done and continue doing horrible things. The moment you proclaim Israel as an especially “bad” nation, you declare that your own nation is somehow less bad. And no academic who has read at least half a book on any subject can seriously make that claim.

Nations come and go but we, the guardians and creators of knowledge, have existed long before the concept of a nation was invented. I need a passport because it makes traveling easy and not as an object of sappy worship. Participating in the game of “My nation is more moral than your nation” is an embarrassing activity I have no use for.