Re: boycott of Russian academics. Several people asked how this is different from boycotting South African or Israeli apartheid. @fahad_s_ali helpfully referred to the guidelines written by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). See:
"Anchored in precepts of international law and universal human rights, the BDS movement, including PACBI, rejects on principle boycotts of individuals based on their identity (such as citizenship, race, gender, or religion) or opinion."
"If, however, an individual is *representing* the state of Israel or a complicit Israeli institution (such as a dean, rector, or president), or is commissioned/recruited to participate in Israel’s efforts to “rebrand” itself...
..., then her/his activities are subject to the institutional boycott the BDS movement is calling for."
The crucial line, emphasized in the document:
"Mere affiliation of Israeli scholars to an Israeli academic institution is therefore not grounds for applying the boycott."
I think this is very important and makes a lot of sense.
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Opinion polls in a dictatorship (thread). Before claiming that "60-70-80% of Russians support Putin, according to the polls", consider two things: 1) non-responses. Lots of people refuse to respond to pollsters, many of them out of fear.
The share of non-responses is not included in the poll results, however, most estimates place it in 30-50% of those surveyed. Out of 150 people, 50 refuse to respond, 30 say they disapprove of Putin and 70 say they approve. What is the actual share of Putin supporters then?
2) Falsification of preferences. Even among those who agree to respond and say they approve of Putin, at least some simply lie - again, out of fear. Bearing in mind these two things, we simply *don't know* the actual number of Putinists in Russia...
I'm so disgusted with rejection letters, invitation cancellations, grant withdrawals etc. against Russian scholars from Western academics who fight Putinism by attacking those who have suffered from it for decades.
So encouraging to come home after being chased by riot police and discover that you were excluded from some space/platform b.c. 'you've done too little'. Who are you to judge? You've never risked anything in your life and this costs you nothing.
'It's not about you, it's about the institutions'. And who would teach students and tell them the truth if we abandon the universities? Oh I understand - who cares about Russian students and Russians in general, they're all orcs from Mordor more or less, right?
1) OK, my first thread. Last year I published an academic paper on the interplay of political and economic imperialism in Russia. I did try to read as much as possible and the article is quite comprehensive. I'm sharing it on Academia.edu.
2) In the paper I argue that up until 2014 Russia was negotiating its position within the global capitalist order dominated by the West. It was aiming at the 'subimperialist' role: a regional power with its own political-economic bloc, yet still integrated in the global economy.
3) In 2014, things changed. Instead of 'subimperialist' status, Russia shifted into full-on confrontation with the West. This marked the divergence between the interests of big capital and the state's geopolitical strategy.