Pratt Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine

Context for the Resolution Supporting an Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel

On May 1st, 2024, Pratt faculty members presented a resolution calling for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel to the Pratt Academic Senate. The resolution called on our senators to:

Approve a resolution for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel.

Approve a resolution that Pratt no longer engages in events, activities, agreements, or projects involving Israel, its lobby groups, or its cultural institutions.

Approve a resolution to suspend Pratt’s partnership with Bezalel University.

Approve a resolution that Pratt provides full transparency regarding institutional investments in Israeli companies or companies that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine and prepares to divest from these holdings, if any.

These four demands were embedded within a longer document. You can read the full text of the resolution here.

Pratt FSJP also created a context document for the resolution. This document is linked in the resolution itself, but we are publishing it below to make it more accessible.

In the Senate meeting, a motion was made to vote upon the four items separately. Resolution #4 passed by a supermajority, but the other three did not. While we celebrate our wins, we also recognize that we have work to do, and we need your help! Keep educating and applying pressure to boycott-divest. Read more about the results of our senate resolution in the next blog post. And read on below for our Academic and Cultural Boycott Context Document.

Context for the Resolution Supporting
an Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel at Pratt

Protesters marching toward the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2021, holding “Gaza” posters by artist Kyle Goen that riff on Robert Indiana’s “Love” artworks (photo Hakim Bishara/Hyperallergic)

Just as we said during apartheid that it was inappropriate for international artists to perform in South Africa in a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity, so it would be wrong for Cape Town Opera to perform in Israel.  —Desmond Tutu, 26 October 2010

Dear Community,

We write to you today as a multi-faith and secular group of faculty peers, in mourning and in action during the Passover season as we witness the catastrophic situation in Palestine. We are devastated by the killing of 1,200 Israelis, and by the ongoing killing of Palestinians, which is nearing 40,000 — mostly women and children, with no end of slaughter in sight. Starvation, disease, and wholesale destruction of life in Gaza and the West Bank move us to act not symbolically toward liberation, but materially.

As many of us are Jews who grew up celebrating the possibility of liberation on Passover, we ask you all to move with us in the spirit of Pikuach nefesh, which means “saving a soul” or “saving a life.” The basic principle is simple: If complying with a Jewish law or convention endangers life then that law or convention can be suspended. Hence, this year we are spending our time not preparing for Passover but preparing a resolution for a boycott of Israel while it behaves in a manner that can only be understood as genocidal. The time to refuse passive witness of a stoppable cataclysm is now. It is what makes this Passover different from all others.

We received approval from the Pratt Academic Senate Executive Committee to present this resolution. We leave you here with a link to the resolution for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, as well as context materials.

Here is the link to the Boycott Resolution. 

Please click here if you would like to sign the Boycott Resolution. 

Members of the Pratt Community are welcome to sign the resolution (Faculty) or in solidarity (Students, Staff, Alumni). 

The time is now.  If not now, then when? 

In the US,  we have a special responsibility living in a powerful nation that has excused, abetted and funded the near annihilation of Palestinian life, infrastructure, history and culture in Gaza. Unless we publicly oppose these actions, we are giving our tacit consent to what has been identified as a “plausible genocide.” (International Court of Justice).

We write in solidarity and as part of a growing movement of artists, designers, cultural and academic institutions, organizing to use our voices to interrupt and refuse to normalize genocide, the unthinkable violence, forced famine, destruction, and devastation we are witnessing from afar.   

What Can We Do?

Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression, we call upon Pratt to join the non-violent boycott of Israeli cultural and academic institutions that participate in occupation, apartheid, and the systematic denial of Palestinian rights.  This action recognizes the level of engagement of Israeli universities in the political and military arm of the Israeli state (including the use of AI). Over 600 of our students have already spoken out, we must take a bold stance and join them.  

What is an academic and cultural boycott?

An academic and cultural boycott is focused on the actions of governments and those institutions that provide support through financial and material and knowledge-production support.  This is NOT about individuals (artists, cultural workers, scholars), and is not a boycott of individuals based on their opinion or identity (such as citizenship, race, gender, or religion) as stipulated in the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)

Continuing relationships with cultural and academic institutions in Israel violates Pratt’s commitment to anti-discrimination since students, faculty and staff of Palestinian and Arab origin cannot participate freely, equitably or safely. 

What does this mean for Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression? 

Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression are of primary value and concern to this resolution and Pratt Institute as a whole. The boycott is not about policing an individual’s right to share their opinions, thoughts, beliefs, or expressions. For example, the process of discussing and voting on this resolution must ensure that both our community as a whole and the individuals within it have an opportunity to express their views publicly should they wish, as well as the chance to vote their consciences without fear of retaliation or public censure, whether for or against. 

Likewise, this resolution in no way discourages the continued free exchange of ideas and opinions by individuals and groups on campus.  The commitment to ongoing discussion which honors the complexity of individual relations to, and movement through, various institutions with respect to the spirit of the boycott is something we should expect and protect. 

Art critic John Berger wrote that the boycott is “a very personal call… a way of encouraging the very courageous Israelis who oppose their government and an encouragement to Palestinians to somehow go on surviving.”

A sign posted on the window of the Israeli pavilion at the Venice Biennale reads The artist and curators of the Israeli pavilion will open the exhibition when a ceasefire and hostage release agreement is reached. The word hostage is underlined in red.
The sign on the window of the Israeli pavilion on Tuesday. Image Credit: Matteo de Mayda for The New York Times.

Earlier this week, artist Ruth Patir, Israel’s representative at the Venice Biennale, shut down her own show in the national pavilion until “a cease-fire and hostage release agreement is reached.”

Are there precedents?

Yes, boycotts during the Civil Rights movement and against apartheid in South Africa proved to be effective in applying social, moral and financial pressure against regimes committing extreme injustice. These were initially very controversial, but now are praised for the role they played in the negotiated end to the apartheid state

Pratt is part of a group of universities that have already divested from companies that profit from fossil fuels.

When does it end?

Boycotts do not last forever. Boycotts end when the injustice has been addressed. In this case, when Israel ceases its military assault on the people of Gaza and the occupied territories. 

Are there other cultural and educational organizations that have supported the cultural and academic boycott of Israeli institutions?

(See other examples below)

By affirming this resolution in support of the Palestinian people, we also honor the statement from Jewish Voice for Peace that Passover 2024 is a most apt and meaningful time to demand the U.S. stop arming the Israeli military and do everything we can to stop this unconscionable slaughter. 

None of us are free until all of us are free.

***

We want to join artists, designers, writers, and institutions who are refusing to be silent. See below a partial (and growing) list of artists, thought leaders, academic and cultural institutions that are already participating in the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel: 

Breaking: Thursday, April 18, the Student Government of Harvard Graduate School of Design is the first school of Architecture/Design in the United States to Pass a Divestment Resolution. Thirty GSD student organizations signed a letter of support.

FURTHER RESOURCES 

You may find the following useful for further reading and consideration: