Counterarguments, Ripostes, and the like
At a meeting of the faculty yesterday, we heard a presentation on the question of asking our union to support divestment from the state of Israel. As you might expect, discussion was heated. It was also tight, because we’d already spent 90 minutes debating our proposed new contract. Over about 20 minutes, I listened to the counterarguments, watched them in chat, and felt I wanted to respond. Obviously I won’t be naming any names, nor pretending to offer a comprehensive response to everything. What follows is just what sticks with me. L’esprit de l’escalier.
Divestment is divisive. Haven’t we been told to act as a united body to try to get the best contract we can?
Solipsistic. The presumption that the current state of affairs is NOT divisive is unwarranted. For our colleagues who have family, friends, or colleagues in the regions currently being or recently attacked by the state of Israel, our retirement fund’s contributions to the economic well-being of Israel are already “divisive.”
If we do this, the press is going to ignore all the stuff about adjuncts needing more money.
Okay, yes, that’s fair. But someone has to stick their neck out first.
Why Israel? Why not Russia or China?
Smokescreen. The call for divestment against the state of Israel is a call for a politically effective lever against a US proxy. But by all means, if our retirement funds are being invested in Russian companies, that should be shut down, because that would be illegal. China is a different matter, but whatever the cruelties of China towards democracy and its religious and ethnic minorities — which are considerable! — China is capable of carrying out these cruelties without US support, because China is a wealthy state and is not a regional US proxy. Divestment in such a case would be, in a practical sense, of little value.
We should not be letting politics come into decisions about how our retirement funds are invested.
The barn door’s already open. The 0.05% of our retirement funds invested in the state of Israel are already evidence of a political decision. There’s no escaping politics.
How does this help us get a better contract? How is foreign policy something our union should be concerned with?
It doesn’t, but it arguably does help do some good in the world. There are surely limits to what we would find acceptable for our investments, regardless of the returns.
This is antisemitic.
Uncollegial. Some people are focusing on Israel solely because it is a Jewish ethnonationalist state; some are focusing on the state of Israel because they hate Jews. There’s no doubt about that. If such people are among our colleagues at Brooklyn College, they should be condemned. But the presence of Jews among the groups calling for a divestment, an end to the state of Israel’s attacks on Gaza, theft of land in the West Bank, incursions into Syria, and, recently, bombing of Beirut is good evidence that an opposition to Israeli State policy is far from indicative of antisemitism. Nor is such opposition to the Israeli State a recent thing. It’s become increasingly evident, too, that support for the state of Israel is not necessarily counterindicative of antisemitism, especially among the political right. Furthermore, charges of antisemitism — an exceedingly serious charge! — against one’s colleagues on the basis of disagreements about foreign policy strike me as wildly uncollegial.
This is illegal.
No one said that that I recall. Worth remarking on though. In many states — not ours yet — it is now indeed obligatory for investment funds to support the state of Israel. To me, that’s outrageous.
