Enforcing Silence

Enforcing Silence is a much-needed intervention in debates that have long raged about academic freedom in relation to the Palestine question and academic boycott. It provides a thoughtful critique of the usefulness of a liberal notion of academic freedom from a variety of disciplinary and geographic locations … a thoughtfully curated and insightful collection of essays that will give scholars, students, and activists important lines of analysis to counter enforced silence. * Journal of Palestine Studies *This collection of essays deserves the attention of political theorists and civil liberties lawyers as well as Middle East area experts. Its arguments may also be of interest to a wider public in the wake of America’s long, hot summer of protests by Black Lives Matter. * The Middle East Journal *As global support for Palestinian justice grows steadily, the silencing of criticism of Israel takes new aggressive forms. To understand why this is the case, and how the politics of Israel-Palestine has become indelibly connected to academic freedom, read this valuable and wide-ranging collection. * Bashir Abu-Manneh, University of Kent *Criticism of Israel has become the litmus test of “academic freedom”. Anyone believing that this is, at bottom, a straightforward and unquestionable notion will change their mind after reading this very stimulating and useful book. * Gilbert Achcar, School of Oriental and African Studies *

David Landy is a lecturer in sociology and the director of the MPhil in Race, Ethnicity and Conflict at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He is the author of Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights: Diaspora Jewish Opposition to Israel (Zed 2011).

Ronit Lentin is a retired associate professor of sociology at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Her other books include Thinking Palestine (Zed 2008), Co-Memory and Melancholia: Israelis Memorialising the Palestinian Nakba (2010), and Traces of Racial Exception: Racializing the Israeli Settler Colonialism (2018).

Conor McCarthy is a lecturer in the School of English at Maynooth University, Ireland. His other books include The Cambridge Introduction to Edward Said (2010) and The Revolutionary and Anti-Imperialist Writings of James Connolly (2016).