The Academic Freedom of Social Movement

Abstract

The Academic Freedom of Social Movement Junaid Rana (bio) Hallowed terms like “democracy,” “freedom,” “values,” and “dialogue” or “free exchange,” even “morality,” are employed in unexpected ways and used to mask sheer irrationality. The righteous haze that surrounds such figurative potential blinds us to the literal violence before our eyes. When public discourse threatens to become illegal, what responsibilities do teachers have to speak about actions that some consider mere “ideology”? —Colin Dayan, “The Boycott Effect”1 Steven was in Urbana to give a book talk on his recently published Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom and wanted to see the campus.2 I was immediately nonplussed. “Really, you want a campus tour?” I responded. And then it quickly dawned on me, and I had to smile. Was this a subversive act? This was a public common, or so I’d been made to believe. It crossed my mind that walking on campus grounds might be interpreted as trespassing. Was a faculty member allowed to escort a colleague with a pending lawsuit against the university across campus? It didn’t matter. We did it anyway. I recalled how over a year earlier journalist Ali Abunimah was asked by campus police during that fateful Board of Trustees meeting if he was Professor Salaita.3 It was as if the officers were shown a picture of a brown guy with a shaved head the morning before and told to escort him off the premises should he appear. Earlier that afternoon Steven and I had been asked if we were brothers. In my head I said “brothers-in-arms.” And here we were taking a lap on the main quad. This most ordinary of things, the campus walking tour, suddenly felt exciting. I started to feel it around me. I’ve walked this quad hundreds of times and no one ever pays attention. Never have I noticed students looking at me, much less being the center of attention. That day, alongside Steven, there were a lot of double takes, some smiles, and the usual business of students enjoying the beautiful weather. As we circumambulated, I pointed out the spot [End Page 111] where the Student for Justice in Palestine apartheid wall in 2012 elicited the great headline: “‘Tear down this wall’ Hillel tells … Israel? (No, University of Illinois).”4 We then passed the north end of the quad, where over a year earlier in the damp, brisk air on September 11 a large protest denounced the administration and board for the firing of Professor Steven Salaita. There were many ironies on this campus walk. Here we were presumed lawbreakers, rebels, outlaws, even if for a few minutes. Or to some, perhaps, we were showing our true character. Engaging—as scholars are often wont to do—even against the odds. Steven ended our tour with the centerpiece of campus tourism: a selfie with Foellinger Auditorium, the image often used to represent the University of Illinois. In January 2014, almost two years earlier, I was on my way to Palestine for the second time in my life. I was part of the North American Academic and Labor delegation traveling to meet with members of Palestinian civil society. It was a demanding itinerary with the intention of learning from as many as possible, meeting with scholars, researchers, and organizations involved in a broad spectrum of activity. Arriving in Amman, Jordan, from Lebanon, I had just attended a conference at the American University in Beirut. At the conference there was a buzz over the growing intellectual interest in Palestine. The unprecedented growth of academic associations in the United States that had passed resolutions to join the academic boycott of Israel in response to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement was also creating an openness of academic inquiry and participation with the question of Palestine.5 Boycott is engagement, after all. The American Studies Association (ASA) had just passed an academic boycott resolution, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) declared support for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions, and the previous March the Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS) was the first U.S.-based academic institution to pass a boycott resolution...