When You're the Target of a Boycott You Support

posted on: Feb 24, 2015

The decision by the chancellor and Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to revoke a job offer to Steven Salaita because of his anti-Israel tweets prompted a wave of activism by faculty and students on my campus—protests, rallies, teach-ins, no-confidence motions, petitions, and open letters to the chancellor and president.

I joined in those actions both as an individual and as a member of the three departments in which I work: English, Asian-American studies, and the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. The university’s decision also triggered a sweeping boycott signed by thousands of scholars in the United States and around the world, who refused to participate in any lectures, conferences, or events organized at the university until Salaita was reinstated. That boycott inspired additional discipline-specific boycotts, some of which further specified that the signatories would not participate in any tenure and promotion reviews for the university.

For someone like me, who is inside the university and supports Salaita, the boycott represents an experiential impasse. I find myself in the impossible position of being the target of a boycott as a member of an institution whose actions I and many others here have challenged. Unlike faculty members outside Urbana-Champaign whose safe target is another university, our target is our own. The frequently repeated joke here—How do we boycott ourselves?—captures this problem. How do you oppose your own institution yet protect valuable parts of it at the same time?

In the 10 years I have been on this campus, we have built some of the strongest ethnic- and indigenous-studies programs in the country. I have worked on several searches, and we have hired stellar faculty of color in the departments of English and Asian-American studies.

But in less than six months, I have watched the results of my own labor and that of so many others weakened as the crisis batters vulnerable units, demoralizes the faculty, and intensifies student anxiety. Junior faculty members who accepted positions here just before the Salaita crisis are now part of a stigmatized institution, struggling to understand the implications for their careers. Should they stay or try to leave? Can they leave?

Source: chronicle.com