POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH

As readers are no doubt aware, the problem of undemocratic professional associations is coming more and more to the fore as members attempt to hold their scholarly and professional associations accountable in some way over the genocide in Gaza and its concomitant scholasticide. A veritable new and necessary genre has emerged: the resignation letter. On Christopher Newfield’s site Remaking II: Long Revolution see, for examples, Anthony Allessandrini’s “Why I Walked Out of the MLA for Good” and Rebecca Colesworthy’s “Resigning from and to the MLA”. (The latter contains a good timeline of events for those of you needing more context regarding the MLA.) Here is another important one for the living archive — David Palumbo-Liu’s. David is a professor of comparative literature at Stanford University and the author of books such as The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age. His most recent book Speaking Out of Place: How to Get Our Political Voices Back, published by Haymarket Books in 2021, holds important lessons for our moment. An extension of the book, his Speaking Out of Place podcast covers human rights, environmental justice, race, indigeneity, and gender. I highly recommend, among many others, his recent interview with Peter Beinart: Against “Jewish Innocence”: A Conversation with Peter Beinart on his new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.

To: Paula Krebs, Executive Director, and Members of the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association

After helping compose, and signing, the December 17, 2024 letter to you, initially from 13 former members of the Executive Council and now signed by 26, protesting your denial of a vote on resolution 2025-1, I have refrained from responding to the various statements coming from you rationalizing your decision. Your reasoning then and now is not persuasive to me and many others, for reasons we have made clear.

I had thought to let the matter rest, however, I recently had the opportunity to read an advance copy of Omar El Akkad’s new work, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.

Of the many remarkable blurbs for this book, one strikes me as particularly germane in this instance: “Omar El Akkad’s devastating new book lays bare the deliberately distorted twists of language and logic that have allowed us to sustain a politics of extermination. The care, grief, anger and intimacy that Akkad brings to every page implicates all of us and is a testament to the moral and intellectual courage that make this desperately needed book absolutely necessary.”—Dinaw Mengestu, author of Someone Like Us.

I confess that as I read your account of why the resolution could not be voted on, I found myself dismayed by precisely “deliberately distorted twists of language and logic.”

In discussions amongst those proposing the resolution, some argued that the objections to be made should be against a structural decision, not personal ones. That to my mind is ridiculous—of course they are personal–you bear responsibility for your vote.

Each of you ran on a platform, each of you was elected by a constituency that expected something of you based on the statements you made at the time, as well as the professional reputations you had established. The argument not to name you as having been instrumental in the silencing of your fellow members would be like saying we should not hold any member of Congress personally responsible for their votes. It is a mark of just how far we have fallen that we accept this feeble academic mode of “democracy,” especially when it comes to things that matter the most.

I have no doubt most of you feel that the on-going genocide (which is disproportionately aimed at children, mind you—half of the inhabitants of Gaza is under the age of 18) is wrong, I likewise have no doubt each of you feel you did the best that you could (at the MLA, or elsewhere). It would be interesting if we all wrote a paragraph or two on a piece of paper accounting for our actions during one of the greatest crimes against humanity of our age, and then opened it in a few years. We will see how things meet the test of time—for indeed, we are all “implicated” on the basis of what we do, and do not do.

I began as a scholar of ancient China. In the Confucian Analects, there is the call for the “rectification of names” (zheng-ming). The argument goes that when words no longer mean what they are supposed to mean, the entire fabric of society frays—there can be no morals, no ethics, if we no longer know what we mean, when “distorted twists of language and logic” flourish because everything has become mere rhetoric.

Therefore I would suggest that the Modern Language Association revise all of its public-facing documents to make clear what it does, and does very well, and deletes what in fact it does not, cannot, and will not do. I am speaking of course of the claims in the Mission Statement that read:

Equity: The MLA supports and encourages impartiality, fairness, and justice throughout the humanities ecosystem.

Inclusion: The MLA recognizes that all members should feel a sense of belonging within the association—that they are accepted, supported, and valued in word and in actions and that the association’s resources are accessible to them.

How dare you say that you support “justice” and that you “recognize” “that all members should feel a sense of belonging within the association—that they are accepted, supported, and valued in word and in actions” when you so disrespectfully silence a vote on a resolution that was brought to you properly and in good faith? What you did was to pre-empt any possibility of justice.

In my opinion, the EC’s decision is part a troubling pattern noted by the American Association of University Professors: “recent events suggest that some administrations are not only acquiescing to attacks on fundamental principles but engaging in what scholars of authoritarianism call anticipatory obedience—that is, they are acting to comply in advance of any pressure to do so.”In your zeal to exercise your fiduciary duties to the MLA, you precisely forget what the MLA is. It is not the corporate entity you should be defending, but rather the scholars who trusted you to hold to the values you advertise. The corporation is simply the encasement of a human ethos you advertise for your benefit, and then betray during a time of crisis and urgency.

I hereby relinquish my lifetime membership.

David Palumbo-Liu