Traumatic Memories and the Need to Punish: The Boycott of Israeli Academics

This paper explores the signifying discourses used to support the proposed boycott of Israeli academics and researchers. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding the links between the political and the personal through an exploration of the emotional basis for supporting the boycott and the power of ideological language in splitting thoughts from affects. The original support for the boycott by the British Teachers Union in 2002 was to prevent British universities from collaborating with Israeli universities and research scholars. It started with the aim of applying political pressure to the Israeli state regarding withdrawal from the occupied territories. Unless Israeli universities and academics actively recanted/confessed or criticized the Israeli state, they were collaborating in the oppression of the Palestinians—a form of guilt by association—and should be subjected to the boycott.1 Ironically, universities provided a context for the expression of ideas and feelings (hate, despair, disappointment, guilt) of boycott supporters at the expense of other colleagues with whom they disidentified and who they wanted to discipline and punish. The campaign for the boycott has created deep divisions within the left, each camp resorting to attacks, counterattacks, and mutual condemnations (Cockburn & St. Clair, 2003).2 Key to this battle was the way “academic freedom” became politicized from the start. The supporters of the boycott argued that academic freedom was a bourgeois capitalistic idea that should not take precedence over other forms of freedom, such as freedom