Hillel Foundation, the American Studies Association and Hypocrisy

 A few weeks ago, the American Studies Association (ASA) voted to boycott all Israeli scholars (I think that means no Israeli could present papers at meetings - of course, why any Israeli would be presenting papers at meetings of the American Studies Association is an open question. The ASA boycott was based, on the 'lack of effective academic freedom of Palestinian scholars and students...".  The ASA boycott was opposed by numerous organizations including the Hillel Foundation.

For some years, the Hillel Foundation (We are contributors to the Hillel Foundation), has had a policy to reject the formal participation of those who boycott Israel at official Hillel events.

Recently, one Hillel (the Swathmore campus Hillel) voted to call itself the 'open Hillel' and to allow such participation.

Supporters of the Hillel at Swathmore have accused the national Hillel foundation of being hypocritical in opposing the ASA boycott while undertaking a boycott of their own. 

For Hillel not to be hypocritical, there must be substantive difference between the two cases, and, there is.

1. The ASA policy bans all Israelis, whatever their belief, whatever their academic merit, whatever the topic of the presentation or paper. The national Hillel policy bans only individuals.

2. The ASA policy aims at a highly tangential population and seems odd on its face. After all, how many Israelis are even interested in American studies. The national Hillel policy bans a group that is much larger (a lot of anti Israel groups are on American campus).

3. The ASA policy seems to single out Israel and, in fact, their boycott policy falls under the national Hillel policy (which dates a few years before the ASA boycott). That is, the national Hillel policy mentions boycotts and those with double standards (the ASA doesn't seem to acknowledge that some groups are discriminated against other than Palestinians). 

Thus, I don't think Hillel can be fairly called hypocritical in this case.

Notwithstanding that, I personally, don't understand the national Hillel policy. It seems to me that national Hillel ought to allow, on a case by case basis, supporters of the boycott, those with double standards, etc. to address Hillel if such persons are otherwise of good will.

The open Hillel policy is here.
The national Hillel policy is here.
Information on the ASA policy is here.
A NYTimes editorial following a NYState Legislature action is here

You're a slease; Oh yeah, you're worse, you're a hypocrite.

The primary for the Democratic candidate for Governor of Maryland is this year. The leading candidates are Doug Gansler (left, the current Attorney General of Maryland) and Anthony Brown (right, the current Lieutenant Governor of Maryland).

Gansler implied Brown was unethical because Brown's campaign had accepted some $30k or so of donations from individuals in firms with ongoing contracts building, maintaining or managing the State Healthcare website (the Maryland health care website is arguably the third worst of the nations worst performing health care websites - Oregon and Minnesota are worst. In addition, Brown was formally tasked by Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley with leading the website effort).  Gansler does not use the word 'hypocrite' nor does he imply any criminal or civil wrong doing. He does however fail to mention that the $30k involved is below 1% of the Brown campaign funds raised so far.

Brown countered by accusing Gansler of hypocrisy because Gansler's campaign had accepted contributions from individuals in companies that do business with the State (the scale of this is unknown). 

Gansler then said that the latter contributions (that is the ones to the Gansler campaign) are less important that the former (that is the ones to Brown) because the individuals in companies that contributed to the Gansler campaign were awarded contracts based on bidding while the firms that contributed to Brown are in an ongoing effort managed by Brown. Gansler could have said (he did not) that the contributions to Brown's campaign were a type of protection racket given that many of these firms should be fired for bad work.

First up, Gansler. He didn't accuse Brown of hypocrisy. 
Next up Brown. He did accuse Gansler of hypocrisy. Gansler's defense, that is, that the two situations are dissimilar, is a reasonable one even if the dissimilarity isn't that much (by the way, Gansler's implication that all Maryland contracts awarded by bid are on the up and up is laughable - bidding language can be, and frequently is 'tilted' to produce certain results- and selection panels are easily influenced by 'hints'). 

In fact, I think that maybe the issue that Gansler was trying to emphasize was that the website that Brown was 'in charge of' isn't working.

The idea for this post came from Irwin. He had seen an article in the Baltimore Sun that reported on these issues.