Dennis Fox’s Weblog

I left the hyperbolic “First International Academic Conference on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Pathways to Peace” halfway through its second day. The conference had its positive moments. I met a few interesting people, but only a couple whose political take on things left them as frustrated as I was. For the most part my previously discussed hesitations about whether to participate proved to be on target. Maybe someday I’ll learn to trust my instincts and stop trying to manufacture optimism.

Mazin Qumsiyeh attended the first day. He and I both tried to raise critical points about the underlying even-handed, equal-victimization assumptions. Except for our own presentations to smaller groups, though, we could only ask questions at the end of keynote talks. The schedule left no time for the entire group to address what we both thought central: the implications of forging ahead without considering whether their basic framework made sense. We asked our questions, and were met with polite interest, but no follow-up.

One thing that did surprise me – to show my own naiveté -  was the lack of Palestinian participation. The conference was billed as co-sponsored by JANIP, the Jewish-American Network for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, and ATFP, the American Task Force on Palestine. And the featured speakers included almost as many Palestinian or other Arab academics as Jewish (Israeli and American). I knew the motivating force was Moises Salinas, whose book on the psychology of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I’ve reviewed critically. And I knew the conference theme — working toward something like the Geneva Initiative – was more attuned to Israeli perspectives than Palestinian. But despite this I did think they’d have actual Palestinians more or less on their wavelength in the room. But I was wrong. The actual conference program reveals the paucity of Arab names.

When I asked about this disjunction during a lunch-time announcement break (since there was no time scheduled for this sort of discussion), the response was predictable. We tried to get more Palestinians, but they didn’t come. The ATFP is not an academic organization, and so doesn’t have JANIP’s connections. But although there were regrets about this, there was zero discussion of whether this Palestinian absence was one more sign that the underlying assumptions were, by their very even-handedness, tilted toward Israeli interests.

Many of the Jewish attendees were affiliated with JANIP and/or Meretz-USA, an affiliate of Israel’s left-Zionist Meretz party. There were a lot of members of the campus-based Union of Progressive Zionism. The conference was, in reality, a strategy session of these inter-connected political groups rather than a serious scholarly effort to get at the root of the problem.

Mazin Q, a geneticist by training, pointed out in his talk that the group was focusing on symptoms and moving to treatment without having come up with an adequate diagnosis. I made much the same point using other terminology (Academic Objectivity, Political Neutrality, and Other Barriers to Israeli-Palestinian Reconciliation). Thinking about this as I drove home yesterday, I boiled it down to this: In approaching an issue such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, academics claiming objectivity should begin with no preconceived notions about either the cause of the underlying problem or the preferred solution. This conference, though, explicitly rejects the usefulness of looking at history and responsibility, and aims explicitly for a particular outcome. These assumptions make the scholarly garb pretty feeble. They also demonstrate a main point of my presentation, that the pose of objectivity more often than not supports a status quo in which those with power stay in power.

As I’ve reiterated endlessly here, proper diagnosis should take into account how existing injustices came about. Polls that show majority Palestinian support for a two-state solution, which the conference stalwarts rely on heavily, don’t really get to whether Israel would possibly agree to the kind of two-state solution most Palestinians think fair. My own sense is that, in addition to a viable state, Palestinians want Israeli acknowledgment of its responsibility for Palestinian oppression and some method of making up for that past to the extent feasible. Some people at the conference agreed this is reasonable, but the more formal presentations and suggestions made it clear that Israel should not be expected to delve into the past.

There was a lot of conference talk about generalizations and stereotypes, a lot of psychologizing about people on both “extremes” who don’t quite see things as they really are, who don’t understand their own cognitive biases. This got pretty thick, but not once did I hear a presenter speculate about whether their own analyses might fall into the same trap.

I was reminded, as I had feared, of my experience last summer at the Minneapolis Dialogue on the Wall panel discussion, another public event that became a Jewish-centric forum where the polite search for peace and reconciliation meant an even-handed process that excluded reference to justice, human rights, and law. It just astonishes me, over and over, that so many people claiming progressive motivation can dismiss these concerns as irrelevant, not even worth talking about.

Technorati Tags: critical psychology, dialogue, international law, Israel, Jewish State, Mazin Qumsiyeh, Moises Salinas, neutrality, Palestine, Reconciliation, social psychology

In September I noted here a planned academic conference in Connecticut next March on Israeli/Palestinian “Pathways to Peace.” I also described my hesitations about its focus, which seems much in line with the  book Planting Hatred, Sowing Pain: The Psychology of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Moises F. Salinas, which I reviewed here.

Despite my cautions, I tried to arouse interest in collaborating on a panel discussion on any of several relevant issues. No luck. But in the end I decided to submit a presentation proposal on my own. Here’s the proposal. Reflecting several themes I’ve touched on previously, it’s titled “Academic Objectivity, Political Neutrality, and Other Barriers to Israeli-Palestinian Reconciliation”.

It is not self-evident that academic research can help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A traditional academic stance often promises more than it delivers. Conventional norms highlight approaches adaptable to status quo requirements while relegating to the sidelines scholarship that challenges underlying assumptions. Efforts to extend boundaries are routinely dismissed as impractical or irrelevant.

Norms demanding the appearance of objectivity mask the passion that drives researchers into contentous fields to begin with while over-emphasizing rock-no-boats approaches. They also reinforce the ideological belief that significant social problems derive from poor data rather than conflicting values and access to power. The combination of academic objectivity, political neutrality, and the language and styles of even-handed mediation and dialogue should be treated cautiously precisely because it is so powerful. When it gets things wrong, the damage can be significant.

In this paper I will apply these considerations to various approaches to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For example, although this conference’s Call for Proposals “encourage[s] researchers from all sides of the conflict to send their proposals,” the primary sponsors all seek a two-state solution representing what many consider to be an international consensus. it is not clear if this underlying goal will be open to reassessment.

Similarly, assuming an equivalence of perception and victimization, depoliticized models based on neutrality-based negotiation, mediation, and dialogue often discount appropriate external standards. Approaching issues initially as a neutral can help identify complex issues for further exploration, but a primary research goal should be to sort through complexity as a means of assessing responsibility. That does not mean taking sides. It does mean using reasonable principles and standards regardless of which side benefits more. Scholarship that reinforces inaccurate perceptions is unlikely to lead to stable outcomes.

I’ll let you know if they accept the proposal.

Technorati Tags: academic objectivity, dialogue, Israel, Moises Salinas, Palestine, Planting Hatred, Sowing Pain, Reconciliation, social psychology, Zionism