After the American Century

Should Nordic Universities Boycott Israeli Universities?

Neither the Hamas regime nor the Israeli government can be described as innocents. Both have been wronged. Both can be accused of unreasonable violence. Both have committed unlawful acts. Both might be accused before the World Court of war crimes committed during their current conflict. 

Some demand that we take sides, as if this would help resolve the crisis. In particular, some are calling for Nordic universities to boycott Israeli universities. This idea is hardly new, as it has also been advocated by supporters of Palestine in the United States. Such proposals attack the foundation of universities, as institutions that promote freedom of speech, dialogue, and cultural diplomacy. During the Cold War there were still exchanges between universities on either side of the Iron Curtain, notably those of the Fulbright Program. Russian and eastern European professors went to the United States, and Americans went the other way. For half a century all sorts of cultural exchanges, including orchestras, choirs, writers, engineers, farmers, and many more, helped maintain a dialogue between the two sides. When the Cold War ended, the Berlin Wall came down with scarcely a shot being fired. Decades of cultural exchange played a role in achieving that result. In the current conflict, the Nordic countries are not at war with either side, and the best role they can play is that of honest brokers. This is not a new role. Remember the Oslo Accords of the 1990s?

If you join a boycott in order to support the Palestinians, you are siding with Hamas and with Iran, which is fighting proxy wars and supporting terrorism in the Middle East. If you support the Israelis, then you are joining hands with an extreme right-wing government, whose prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been undermining democratic institutions in Israel, as well as treating the Palestinians unjustly. Boycotting Israel's universities will not bother that government very much, and it will likely please the rightwing extremists who support Prime Minister Netanyahu. Universities are places where moderates can work toward a different and more democratic future than what either Hamas or the right-wing Israeli government are fighting for. The former chair of the American Association of University Professors, Cary Nelson has written, "there is more academic freedom in Israel than in other nations in the Middle East. It is hypocritical and a fundamental betrayal of our mission as academics to advocate boycotting universities not because of their fundamental character but because of the policies of the nation in which they are located."

Yet Michelle Pace's essay in Politiken (29.11.23) calls for a boycott of all Israeli universities. She does not compare them to universities in Syria, Iran, or other Middle Eastern nations that are dictatorships. Only Israel's universities are guilty by geographical association. Her proposal would isolate moderate Israelis, many of whom are professors and students. The actual situation is not fairly described in her essay, which depicts Israeli academic research as being almost identical with government plans and policies. In fact, opposition to the Netanyahu government has been notable in the universities, and they teach not only Jews but also Arabs, Christians, Druze, and agnostics. There are about 320,000 students, including more than 40,000 Arabs, whose numbers were increasing rapidly before the current crisis. A boycott would prevent them from taking a term abroad in Denmark. Is that sensible? Is it defensible to prevent Israeli academics from attending conferences in the Nordic countries, regardless of their point of view? Is a boycott to be extended to their books, journals, or articles, regardless of subject matter? Are medical laboratories to break off cooperative research that has nothing to do with the war? Should Jewish writers, regardless of nationality, to be banned as well? 

Universities struggle to maintain academic freedom, and boycotts are threats to that freedom. The American Association of University Professors has long opposed the use of university boycotts. Of course there are professors in every nation's universities who support their government's actions, but that hardly justifies boycotting an entire university system. 

Boycotting Israeli universities would punish 350,000 students and faculty indiscriminately. By isolating moderates who seek conflict resolution and by taking sides with Hamas, who seek to eradicate Israel, a boycott would be like throwing kerosene on a fire. The university is the wrong target, and a boycott is the wrong weapon. In times of polarization it is crucial to maintain dialogue and free speech so that a resolution can become possible. The goal is not to proclaim virtuous outrage, take sides, and demand a boycott. The goal is to support moderates on both sides and help them to find peace.

During the Vietnam War, protests occurred at universities in both the United States and around the world. The protests were primarily calls for peace. I participated in many of them from 1966 until the end of that war in 1975, and the crowds were singing, "All we are saying, is give peace a chance." I suggest that Michelle Pace and others who are attracted to a boycott might reconsider their tactics. A boycott is a negation, a refusal to engage in dialogue, and a claim of superior virtue that will anger one side and encourage the other, helping to sustain a conflict. What we need are large, non-violent protests that include not only Palestinians and refugees now living in Denmark but also a broader coalition calling for peace and asking politicians to take an active role as arbitrators. 

National Security Agency costs more than faculty of the Ivy League plus US Cultural Exchanges

After the American Century                                                                                                                     

Should the United States invest in education, cultural exchange, and international understanding, or should it take money away from such things and instead invest in spying, code-breaking, eavesdropping, and the creation of international distrust? Since 2001, the answer to that question has been to plow billions into The National Security Agency (NSA) while cutting funding for cultural programs. Since May the NSA has been much in the news, as the extent and reach of its programs has become known. Most Americans, if asked before then, probably could not have said what the initials N S A stood for, even though they were paying billions of tax dollars to support it.

The scale of the NSA's main facility at Ft. Meade, Maryland is best grasped by some comparisons. It is larger than the United Nations building and US Congress combined. It is the largest employer and the largest user of electricity in the State of Maryland. There are spaces for more than 18,000 cars in its parking lot, and the site has its own entrance from the nearby interstate highway. Do not try to use the entrance, however, as it is for NSA employees only, and you will be stopped if trying to enter the area.

There are many NSA facilities besides the buildings at Ft. Meade, both in the United States and abroad. Estimates of the number of employees vary, but apparently there are about 30,000. Being a secret organization, it is hard to get a reliable figure. The Washington Post recently wrote that there were 35,000 code breakers working for the NSA and affiliated groups at the CIA and other agencies. Whatever the number, it is clearly more than the combined faculties of the Ivy League plus MIT and CalTech. Harvard has 2100 faculty, for example. Dartmouth and Brown have fewer, Cornell has more. But the faculty for these ten elite universities are less numerous than the employees of the NSA.  Is the social, educational, and cultural value of the NSA greater than ten of the world's finest universities? The Harvard faculty has won 44 Nobel Prizes, trained generations of outstanding leaders, and graduated an international body of alumni from almost every country in the world. Such universities are a major force for progress, peace, and prosperity. They not only create knowledge; they create a global community. 

BEcause the NSA is secretive it cannot create a global community. It creates suspicion and distrust. It stimulates paranoia. It assembles enormous databases.  It listens in on the presidents of foreign countries, and has recently angered Brazil, Germany, and Mexico, to name just a few. Its staff creates encryption and de-encryption codes. They publish some articles, but their best work must be hidden from scholars, and they cannot be said to be part of or to participate in the global community of knowledge. They are paid as well as Ivy League faculty, but they do not have the same credentials. Would anyone seriously propose that the NSA's contribution to life is equal to that of one Harvard or one Yale, much less 10 such universities?

I am not arguing against the NSA, as such. But how large should it be? At what point would money be better spent elsewhere? Its value does not increase as a direct function of its size. When do diminishing returns set in? An NSA twice as large is not necessarily twice as valuable. There is an enormous new building about to open in Maryland. There is a new data center in Utah as well, and there are more facilities on the drawing board. 

The budget increases for the NSA have come at the expense of other programs, notably cultural exchanges, such as the Fulbright program, which creates strong international connections and builds understanding and trust. As the NSA has grown, such programs have shrunk or disappeared. The Mike Mansfield Fellowship program improved cultural understanding between Japan and the United States, until it was cut from $1.8 million to 0! Likewise, the Institute for International Public Policy Fellowship Program (IIPP) once offered study abroad to minority undergraduates, but it has lost all of its funding. The State Department also plans to eliminate all funding for the George J. Mitchell Scholarship. It provides postgraduate study in Ireland and Northern Ireland for 12 individuals a year. That is a small investment, but over time such programs create valuable networks of human relationships.

The largest and oldest such program, The Fulbright, has had to struggle for funding since the end of the Cold War. Yet in many nations the American contribution is matched or topped by the partner countries. Germany and Denmark, for example, put more money into their Fulbright exchanges with the US than the State Department does. American cutbacks in this case make no economic sense, for these foreign countries are funding US faculty and students to go abroad. There are more than 300,000 Fulbright Alumni from more than 150 countries, and everywhere they are a force for mutual understanding that promotes economic growth and cultural exchange. About 8,000 Fulbright awards are granted every year, with roughly 30% of the money coming from other nations or private contributions.More than 40 Fulbright alumni have won Nobel Prizes. No one from the immensely better-funded NSA has done so or ever is likely to do so, because its organization and goals are antithetical to the values that these prizes recognize.

The US government contributes about $275 million per year to Fulbright. By comparison, the 2014 budget for NSA and the like is 175 times that size. It "Provides $48.2 billion in discretionary base funding for the National Intelligence Program." This is more than the operating budgets for the ten leading universities already mentioned and all the exchange programs combined.

Instruments of "soft power" such as the Fulbright Program are being neglected or even abandoned in favor of secrecy, spying, and code-breaking. Yet the West won the Cold War in good part because its cultural life, its educational institutions, and its consumer goods were more appealing than the Soviet alternatives.  Expanding the NSA at the expense of good universities and cultural exchange is not good policy. It is time to see the NSA as just one part of a coordinated approach to better security and improved international relations. Spying cannot bring peace or prosperity. Creating vast secret agencies with no public oversight does not enhance democracy. The danger in such enterprises is that the means become the ends, that surveillance itself (and its expansion) becomes the goal.