imhilien

I am the president of a European-based organization that focuses on collaborative projects between classes/groups of people in different countries and contexts, Our membership includes Israeli academics and Palestinian academics, the latter of which are often based outside of Palestine and in Jordan, Canada, the US.

In January, a member of our training team received an email criticizing her involvement in a panel that included a researcher from an Israeli university that has ties to the IDF. The email was from a Palestinian-American based in California who had spoken at a webinar on decoloniality hosted by our orginization but is herself not a member of our organization. The criticized member of our organization requested that we have an explicit policy regarding organization members collaborating with or being involved with Israeli organizations. The outcome of our discussion and vote was that individual members are free to choose who they partner with but when members are representing the organization that the management board vet the collaboration in cases of uncertainty or conflict to ensure the partnership aligns with our values.

Initially the question was targeted at Israel (i.e. whether we should collaborate with Israeli institutions) but some on the management board (including me) argued that this is too country specific and there may be other countries (like the US) that are similarly violating organizational values and we don't want to have to come up with a new policy for every country. Although not everyone supported this position (some wanted an explicit anti-Israel stance and others wanted to remain entirely neutral) this decision was passed by a majority vote.

Now I have been contacted by the editors of our journal who want to know what our policy is regarding journal editors having explicit political statements in their email signature. I believe this pertains to one of our journal's associate editors who is a Palestinian-Jordanian PhD student in Canada having an explicit pro-Palestinian signature in her university email, which is the email she uses for correspondence for the journal. I have asked the editor to submit this to the management board to discuss. 

However, on a personal level, I'm really tired and annoyed by people wanting a policy forbidding involvement with or explicit support of countries in conflict. I can understand this on an abstract level, but on a visceral level and because I am in a country where these specific countries and positions are being used by bad actors, I do not want to indulge the banning of any of them. It is possible the email signature promotes genocide, but that is a step beyond being political (which is what the journal editors were worried about). To educate is to be political and all of us in the organization are in the business of promoting internationalization and global citizenship. So banning political signatures seems to really misunderstand what the hell we're doing. 

At the same time, I question my own thinking on this. I do not want to abandon our Israeli colleagues, many of whom despise what their government is doing and are advocating for peace and support for Gaza. I also do not want to tell people who are facing the obliteration of their people and culture to tone down their email signature - what the ever-living fuck!

The good thing out of this is that it is making me aware of my values on some level, but it is also making me question whether my values are right in this situation.