The patina of democracy
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Opinion

The patina of democracy

During the waning days of the fall 2024 semester, two Rutgers University faculty unions voted to call on the university to divest from companies whose enterprise supports the Israeli military and to sever its formal relationship with Tel Aviv University. Although the vote garnered little publicity, it cuts against the heart and soul of our university.

The resolution was filled with charged, politicized, and inflammatory language, including dubious and false statements. Notable was the complete omission of Hamas, a recognized terror organization; the atrocities that Hamas committed on October 7, 2023; and the 400-day captivity of more than 100 Israeli hostages (including seven Americans). To be sure, the academics who drafted this resolution never would have their words pass muster in any peer-reviewed journal. Thus, for example, anyone with even a basic knowledge of Israel knows the twofold fallacy of the claim that “Israeli universities play a key role in supporting Israel’s system of apartheid rule” — given a) the fact that Israel’s Arab citizenry have full rights, so that the apartheid claim is simply false; and b) the role of the universities as the most integrated part of Israeli society.

According to the AAUP-AFT, those members who cast a ballot voted 58% to 38% in favor of the resolution (with 4% abstaining), while members of the Adjunct Faculty Union voted 62% to 34% in favor of the resolution (with 4% abstaining). The union informed members about the result via email and posted the announcement at its website. (Henceforth, when I say “the union,” I speak of the AAUP-AFT, as I know less about the workings of the Adjunct Faculty Union.)

Oddly, in the same email announcing the final vote, the union leadership went on, anti-climactically, to assert a “need to work together to resist the Rutgers administration’s ongoing attempts to undermine our contract victories.” That’s it? You would assume after such an intensive effort to pass this resolution, framed in such morally urgent language, the union membership would now confront the university administration with its demands. Instead: nothing.

To be sure, President Holloway and the board of governors have stated repeatedly that they will neither divest from companies that do business in Israel, nor sever the official ties with TAU. In fact, such actions — known collectively as BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) — are illegal in the State of New Jersey. And yet the union proceeded anyway.

During the vote, I asked members of the union leadership several questions. In their responses to me, they hid behind the language of “democracy,” stating that they personally may not have put forward the resolution, but that 200 union members approached them to do so — and thus democracy required that a membership-wide vote proceed. In reality, they were invoking not democracy per se, but rather a patina of democracy.

The issue at hand has naught to do with the union’s mission, which is to promote local campus issues affecting faculty, staff, and students. Its members pay dues for that goal, not for intervening in broad politically contested global affairs. The union has no expertise in foreign affairs, and yet the leadership insists that they were obligated to bring the resolution to a vote, all under the commitment to “democracy.” If the union leadership merely stuck to its mission, it simply would have informed the 200 people who brought the resolution that the issues fall outside the union’s purview.

Instead of engaging in divisive actions, the union should adhere to its core mission, including fighting the battles of budget cuts, especially for the writing program, one of Rutgers’ nationally recognized stellar programs. Instead, to repeat, the union leadership hid behind the patina of democracy and advanced the resolution, biased language and all.

Moreover, all members of the two unions are educators, and yet no one, it appears, stood up to actually educate people about true democracy, about Israeli society, about the Hamas attacks, and more. Instead, they tossed around words such as “genocide,” “apartheid,” “scholasticide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and so on.

Has any one of these people actually ever been to Israel to observe the vibrant democracy? Do they realize that 16% percent of TAU’s enrollment are Israeli Arabs, approximately the same proportion as the general population?

Strikingly, as adumbrated above, once the resolution passed, the union appears to have taken no action whatsoever. In fact, the matter seems to be concealed on the union’s website. On a general web search and on social media I was unable to find the announcement of the recent vote, no matter how many sub-pages I visited, and only upon using Google (ironically, see anon) to search for the announcement was I able to locate it here.

Similarly, if you visit the union’s page titled Statements and Announcements (this page is easy to find), you will see that the resolution is not posted there. (The most recent one is dated September 20, 2024.)

Where is the union leadership? Where is the union membership? Why is no further action being taken? Might it be because the union recognizes that it put forward a misguided resolution and referendum? Might it be because they know that this action has weakened the union’s credibility?

Now, let us look more closely at some of the specific issues, especially by asking, why Israel? Why is Israel singled out in such a statement?

The Economist Democracy Index, which ranks the countries of the world each year, ranks Israel 30, one spot behind the U.S. (29) and ahead of such European democracies as Portugal (31), Italy (34), and Belgium (36). Authoritarian regimes such as China and Saudi Arabia are ranked 148 and 150, respectively.

And yet, what does the union do? It singles out Israel. Why not ask the university to divest from Chinese and Saudi Arabian companies, or from companies that do business in these totalitarian countries? Here we must mention how the union mission statement refers to its commitment to “democratic principles” and “democratic processes,” both of which are abundant in Israel (whether you agree or disagree with the outcomes, no different than in the U.S.) — and yet, the union leadership and membership decides to target Israel, a leading democracy in the world, per the Economist Democracy Index, while giving a free pass to China, Saudi Arabia, and many similar countries.

Democratic principles? Democratic processes? Hardly, only the patina of democracy.

Rutgers has official ties with several dozen Chinese universities and one such agreement with a Saudi Arabian university. Clearly, the union leaders and members must be fine with such relationships, established with totalitarian regimes that hold no democratic values whatsoever. No call to boycott these countries, no call to divest from companies, no call to sanction the universities and their associated scholars. Ah, democracy, or shall we say, the patina of democracy.

Next let us turn to the list of companies mentioned in the resolution approved by the union membership. Here one will find Google, Amazon, and Boeing (to mention just three), and thus I asked several members of the union leadership: So, now that the resolution has passed, will the union no longer use Google, but instead find another search engine; will the union no longer use Amazon, but instead find another e-commerce platform; and will union leaders no longer fly on Boeing aircraft (which, by the way, comprises about 90% of United’s fleet, based at its Newark hub) to conferences, but instead seek out different aircraft?

I even asked several union leaders, who implied that they supported the resolution, why not boycott these companies in their own personal lives. They all agreed that neither the union itself nor they as individuals would stop using Google, Amazon, and Boeing aircraft. What hypocrisy! Where are the “democratic processes” and the “democratic principles”? Oh, right, the whole thing is simply a patina of democracy.

I implored them to proceed with a boycott of such companies (not to mention divesting from their own investment portfolios), as a means to follow the example set by the Rendsburg household. In our home, we do not buy any products made in China — no clothing, no household items, nothing. We refuse to support a country that has illegally occupied Tibet for 75 years, that places Uyghurs in so-called re-education camps, that suppresses Christian worship, and that quashes pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Apparently, however, the union leadership and membership approves of all such actions, since there are no resolutions forthcoming to decry and condemn China.

The union leadership and membership must also adore Saudi Arabia. No resolutions against this regime are forthcoming, notwithstanding its atrocious human rights record, especially against the LGBTQ community and with the ongoing mass executions.

So much for the union’s mission statement, its leaders, and its members, who hide behind a patina of democracy.

The whole thing is a stain on our great university. The drafters and supporters of the resolution engage in pure hate; the union claims to promote academic freedom, and yet they would cut off scholars from Tel Aviv University; and the whole thing is done shamefully in the name of democracy.

And to what end? Reliable reports inform me that about 60 people have resigned from AAUP-AFT in the last month, in addition to the approximately 70 people who resigned last year, when an earlier resolution was approved. The loss of about 130 members translates to hundreds of thousands of dollars that no longer will flow into the union coffers each year and that now cannot be marshalled to support the union’s primary mission.

But that is how democracy works.

Dr. Gary A. Rendsburg is a Distinguished Professor and the Blanche and Irving Laurie Professor of Jewish history at the department of Jewish studies at Rutgers.

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