“Then nothing in the world will”: A Breakup Note
On November 3, 2023, I wrote the following letter to the executive committee or Council members of the Classical Association of Canada (CAC), the Society of Classical Studies (SCS), the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR), and the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE):
“Dear colleagues,
I write to inform you that 200-plus Classicists, ancient historians, archaeologists, and scholars of antiquity have committed their names to a letter in support of the people of Palestine. Bringing together dozens of faculty members, several public-facing independent scholars, and nearly a hundred graduate students, this letter represents a collective belief that those in our fields have a specific responsibility to safety, and liberation, of the Palestinian people, and must ethically, intellectually, and organizationally orient ourselves towards such a goal.
At this point of great crisis, it is to be hoped that the support collected in this letter moves the [Association name] towards a statement of its own that notably asserts its commitment to academic freedom and freedom of expression without threat of censure or retaliation. Such a statement would be in agreement with those other professional associations have made (for example, the ASA), as well as in line with the statement that the SCS/AIA made in the summer of 2020 concerning police brutality.”
In total, a few dozen colleagues were sent this email.
***
Between the time I sent these emails and the time I am writing those lines, ASOR’s annual conference took place. This year’s conference was held from November 15 to 18 in Chicago. To date, ASOR is the only of the above-mentioned associations to have released a statement on the events that have been unfolding in Palestine and Israel since October 7th. Indeed, prior to me emailing the members of ASOR’s executive, they had already released this “Response to October 7 events”:
“ASOR, the American Society for Overseas Research, condemns in the strongest possible terms Hamas’ vicious massacre of more than a thousand innocent non-combatant Israelis on Saturday, October 7, 2023.
ASOR is an organization that fosters a community of scholars across borders. Our mission is to initiate, encourage, and support research into, and public understanding of, the history and cultures of the Near East and wider Mediterranean world. ASOR is apolitical and has no religious affiliation. ASOR has a large and diverse membership that does not speak with one voice about world politics.
We believe strongly that recent attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians are not politics, but evil acts of terrorism. We agree and reaffirm with the President of the United States that Israel has the right and duty to protect its citizens. We also concur with a recent statement by President Biden that “the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people.”
We grieve deeply with our Israeli colleagues. We also recognize that there is great suffering in Gaza and among the Palestinian people. We are deeply concerned for the well-being of civilians on all sides of the crisis. It is our hope that all of us will recognize and respect our common humanity.”
As ASOR’s annual conference was taking place, I browsed through their online schedule and typed the word “Gaza” in the search window. Two talks appeared, each containing Gaza in their title.
First, two members of the Maritime Endangered Archaeology (MarEA) Project were supposed to give a talk on “Maritime Cultural Heritage in the Gaza Strip”. Sadly, the talk was cancelled. You might wonder why it was cancelled. I do too. In a Twitter thread, I asked whether this had to do with the fact that Gazawi involved in the project were killed by the USA-funded bombings of civilians in Gaza.
One of the speakers confirmed that it did, and that in addition to the 3 students and partners who were murdered, many other members were displaced during the ethnic cleansing of Gaza:
The second paper did go on. It was part of a panel entitled “Archaeology of Israel II”, which was co-organized by two scholars appointed respectively in an Israeli and a German university.
Why a talk focusing on Gaza, in the northern Sinai Peninsula, was scheduled in a panel on Israel is not specified. That the German speaker presented material extracted from Gaza during the Israeli occupation of the Sinai (an information that was confirmed by people in attendance) is not a valid rationale. People in attendance also confirmed to me that no reference was made to the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. However, concerns regarding the destruction of archaeological sites during a future rebuilding of the city of Gaza were voiced.
How do the organizers of this panel, the speaker, as well as ASOR, rationalize such occlusive display of scholarship amidst a genocide? What is their stance on the murder and displacement of Palestinian students and partners of MarEA in Gaza? How are they caring (or not) for those impacted?
To date, the organizers of ASOR 2023 have not responded to the email of the MarEA speaker informing them of their decision to cancel their talk and of the reasons behind this decision. Furthermore, none of the many colleagues in attendance who I was in touch with have witnessed any public statement or expression of care from the conference organizers regarding the murder and displacement of their Palestinian partners.
***
To date (November 22), the only organization that has responded to my email is the CAC. In her response, which was sent on November 7, the President informed me that:
“The Equity Committee of the CAC-SCEC is working on a revision of our Ethics Statement, and they may decide to include a statement on Academic Freedom. The Executive Committee, however, is unanimous in our commitment to representing the interests of our 400 members and to respecting the diversity of their opinions. Although our recent Council meeting had a very packed agenda, we did manage to canvas the attendees. There was very little support for the Association making a statement like that of the ASA.”
2 things:
1. I am currently a CAC member and as for what regards the CAC response to my emails, my “interests” are not respected.
2. Genocide is not a matter of “opinions”.
***
This morning, London-based Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq posted a video showing a bulldozer pushing sand on top of a mass grave dug in Khan Younis. These 110 Palestinians were killed by the IDF during their bombing and ensuing siege and murderous raid inside al Shifa hospital. These deceased Gazawi were buried in a mass grave because all the cemetaries are full and they are “without or unknown identity”, with no family alive or present to claim them. As a caption to his post, Alnaouq wrote: “ I don’t know what to say… if this video doesn’t shake you, then nothing in the world will.”
As I read Alnaouq words, I thought of all the tenured (and White) colleagues who, over the past 40+ days, have refused to sign letters of support on the televised genocide of the Palestinians. I also thought of the departmental chairs and other colleagues who have been bullying and doxxing junior and/or racialized colleagues and students who speak up against the war crimes committed in Gaza. I thought of all those scholars, supposedly experts on matters dealing with imperialism, colonialism, othering, power, oppression and racecraft, who, have all of a sudden gone m.i.a., or else have outed themselves as closeted Zionists for whom “never again” does not apply to the Palestinian People. I thought of all the usually vocal antiracist folks who have gone silent, because they don’t care, are afraid for their job (in which case, fair enough), or are more interested to keep their academic-climbing capital and excavation permits than to model basic moral decency. I thought of the silence my dozens of emails to colleagues appointed in Antiquity fields associations were met with. Then, like Alnaouq, I thought that I didn’t know what to say anymore, and that if the video he posted, and the hundreds of videos and pictures that preceded it, and the livestreamed reality of the dehumanization and mass murder of thousands upon thousands of Palestinians haven’t shaken all these colleagues out of silence yet, then nothing in the world will.
***
I have been thinking about how the stance of the current CAC Council as it was articulated in the email its President sent me fits with their performances of EDI. How can they include a list of BLM resources on their website and yet be opposed to issuing a statement on what genocide experts and international law experts are loudly calling a genocide?
How can they showcase interest in/support for those of us who work on the colonial entanglements between Classics & settler colonialism, and yet justify their refusal to take a stance against televised land theft and ethnic cleansing on the ground of their membership’s “opinions”?
How can they reconcile giving Everyday Orientalism — a platform whose very name and mandate stems from the seminal work of Palestinian scholar Edward Said, and of which I am a co-editor — an award a few months ago, and taking such a stance now?
Apart from a group of mostly student/junior scholars, a large number of whom are racialized, North American Antiquity field scholars — like the members of so many academic disciplines — have responded to the genocide of the Palestinians in a way that testifies to their investment in settler colonialism.
Their dissociated and sugar-coated investment in settler colonialism, with all the latent and manifest violence it entails, is indicative of their occlusive relationships with the ancient societies they purport to study. It is also indicative of their disdain and uncare for most of these ancient societies’ communities of descent, especially those living in majority Muslim countries.
To all the students and (junior) colleagues who care and show it: Thank you.
To the CAC: Sadly, your response to my email makes it impossible for me to ethically justify why I would renew my membership or continue to present my work at your annual conference. Accordingly, I have taken the decision to cut my ties with you. I am not doing this because I hope changes will be made. Because to be perfectly honest, I don’t. I am doing this to be true to my core values, which include speaking up against all war crimes, as well as supporting the rights of Palestinians to exist and be sovereign on their Land.
To ASOR: The very least you can do is respond to the MarEA colleague who informed you of the murder and displacement of their partners. Then, it might be worth reckoning with the violence your current stance is enacting on the Arab and Muslim students, communities, partners, colleagues, and students whom a large number of your members work with, and depend on.
To the SCS, AIA, and ARCE: Just like in the case of ASOR, I am not a member of your associations and, based on your silence, I don’t want to be. Do you all think remaining silent will age well? If, like me, you don’t, there is still time to change your mind.
***
In “Salmon is the Hub of Salish Memory,” the late Sto:lo word artist Lee Maracle recalls a conversation she had with Kanienʼkehá꞉ka (Mohawk) lawyer, activist, and author Trish Monture:
“Trish gets up and starts talking: ‘You know the white man is emotionally stunted and spiritually crippled and he has no idea that he got that way by thingifying everything and then giving it a high highfalutin name so that we would all try to speak just like him, which we did, and now we have these institutions full of empty, uncaring academics who speak a crazy combination of culturally disconnected jargon made of Greek, English, and Latin, and are completely not understandable; all the while they maintain that this business of thingifying is the gold standard of all speaking, thinking, and knowing — and yes, I am aware that this past thought is framed in a long-ass run-on sentence, thank you very much. Consequently, we know nothing and nothing changes.”(Lee Maracle 2015, Memory Serves, p. 55)
