The academic boycott of Israel, a branch of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, is one of the richest—and most divisive—topics in the politics of knowledge today. In Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine, Nick Riemer addresses the most fundamental questions raised by the call to sever ties with Israeli universities, and offers fresh arguments for doing so. More than a narrow study of the boycott campaign, the book details how academic BDS relates to a range of live controversies in progressive politics on questions such as disruptive protest, silencing and free speech, the real-world consequences of intellectual work, the rise of the far right, and the nature of grassroots campaigning.
Written for open-minded readers, the book presents the fullest justification for the academic boycott yet given, considering BDS efforts on campuses around the world. The opening chapters explore the fundamentals of the academic boycott campaign, detailing the conditions on the ground in Palestinian and Israeli higher education and analyzing debates over the boycott and its adoption or resistance in the west. The later chapters contextualize the boycott with respect to broader questions about the links between theory and practice in political change. Directly rebutting the arguments of BDS’s opponents, Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine demonstrates the political and intellectual soundness of a controversial and often misrepresented campaign. In defending an original view of the differences between reflecting on politics and doing it in the specific context of the liberation of Palestine, the book’s arguments will have a resonance for many wider debates beyond the context of either universities or the Middle East.
Nick Riemer is senior lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Sydney. As a Palestine solidarity activist, Riemer has published widely in both academic and popular outlets and been criticized openly by conservative media. In addition to his Palestine solidarity work, his political activity includes long-term, close involvement both with the Australian National Tertiary Education Union and with the Refugee Action Coalition in Sydney, a grassroots refugee rights group. He has written for The Guardian, Jacobin, Al Jazeera English, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and many other publications.
Introduction
1. Institutions of Occupation and Resistance
2. The Academy and its Freedoms
3. Little Israels
4. Disruption, Protest, Democracy
5. The Politics of Regressive Research
6. The Opium of the Educated
The impressive breadth of Nick Riemer’s original analysis of the institutional academic boycott of Israel combines thought and action, theory and praxis, leaving no aspect unexplored. A wide range of readers, not only scholar-activists, will be swayed by this necessary persuasive analysis of the academic boycott as both intellectual and political.
— Ronit Lentin, author, Traces of Racial Exception: Racializing Israeli Settler Colonialism, Trinity College Dublin
In Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine, Nick Riemer brilliantly makes the case for the Palestinian campaign for an academic boycott of Israel. He offers a sophisticated rebuttal of the liberal politics behind the notion of academic freedom and an analysis of how it can work to sustain oppression of Palestinians and other racialised groups. In doing so, he invites us to rethink our political vocabulary and to reflect on academic boycotts also in relation to the struggle to remake our universities
— Lana Tatour, University of New South Wales
Lucid, logical, and nuanced, this is a must-read for all those people of good will whose natural aversion to shunning has kept them, thus far, from endorsing the single most effective project of Palestinian civil society, the best hope for a non-violent solution in the Middle East, the three most misunderstood letters in contemporary politics: BDS.
— Bruce Robbins, Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University
A fascinating and timely book by a courageous academic that points the way that academics and intellectuals should be taking right now in support of one of the most just causes in modern history. Bottom-to-top policy is the lesson BDS activists have learned from South Africa: first you call for a Boycott, then Divestment from apartheid and from entities benefiting from it, until you reach the top echelons of the government and call for Sanctions since that is the right thing to do!
— Haidar Eid, al-Aqsa University, Gaza, and editor, Countering The Palestinian Nakba: One State For All
As the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement gains momentum, one of its most controversial aspects is the academic boycott of Israel. Nick Riemer argues that a boycott of Israeli academic institutions is both justified and essential to the success of the movement, and that it also supports the rights of indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups throughout the world.
— Osama Jarrar, Department of English, Arab American University, Jenin
Nick Riemer’s Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine is a vitally important book because it uses the anti-Zionist BDS movement as a springboard from which to reflect more generally on the boycott as a legitimate practice within today’s academic humanities. A neglected but central topic springs to life.
— Simon During, University of Melbourne
