GLOW 2024 in Israel?

12/03/2023

This is the letter Ken Safir sent to the GLOW Board regarding the vote and the decision on the 2024 GLOW venue, reproduced with his express permission:

Dear Susi and Radek,

I support the democratic process you have allowed to take place which has resulted in rejecting Israel as the venue for the next GLOW. I appreciate that you have addressed a fraught issue with the best process for settling the matter in an equitable way.

I am not a voting member of GLOW, nor have I attended a GLOW in person for 20 years (I have been in the Zoom audience), so my view is that of one sympathetic to the organization from the outside.

You have respected the will of the members of your organization, and whatever criticism from the outside you face by those who are dissatisfied with the outcome, those critics undermine the legitimacy of their own cause by insisting that an anti-democratic result would be preferable, if only because it would serve their political commitment to Israel.

As a Jewish American who knows you both, I find the claim, whoever is willing to make it, that this democratic decision reflects an anti-semitic bias, to be offensive.

I wish you the best of luck in finding a good location for the next GLOW.

Best wishes,

Ken

PS. I don't care who else sees this letter.

06/03/2023

Here is a link that could be informative in the context of the voting outcome (and otherwise).

Over the last decade, a dynamic movement in support of Palestinian human rights, particularly active in US colleges and universities, has helped raise public awareness regarding the Israeli government’s violations of international law, as well as the role of corporations and the US government in f...

06/03/2023

Here is the letter of the LODGI steering group to the GLOW Board, following the new vote on the 2024 venue.

Dear Susi and members of the GLOW board –

We are writing to you in the aftermath of the final vote for the venue of GLOW 47, and the decision taken by the voting membership last week to seek another venue. As you no doubt remember, the initial communication between LODGI and GLOW, dating back to almost 9 months now, focused on the necessity for an open discussion on the venue choice that would include a wider and better-informed community. We were already gratified by your decision, last October, to initiate and facilitate such a discussion, and we would now like to take the time to thank you for what was a well-managed and extremely fair and transparent process. We feel that the membership, or those parts of it that wished to voice their opinion, had a chance to do so, despite the predictable pressure not to.

The outcome of the vote, splitting the membership nearly in the middle, only serves to highlight the divisive nature of the issue, divisiveness that would have plagued GLOW just as much had the matter NOT been re-opened for discussion. One can only regret that such a volatile issue that has already created a substantial rift in numerous academic societies, was put on the table to begin with without sufficient preparation, as once that happened, the resulting conflict was virtually inevitable. In our view, however, GLOW has acted extremely honourably, and we are proud to count ourselves among its members.

Hagit Borer, for the LODGI steering group
Anders Holmberg, Phoevos Panagiotidis, Ur Shlonsky, Ivy Sichel

31/12/2022

The LODGI steering group are sending our best wishes to everyone for 2023.

Here is our response to the GLOW Board regarding the upcoming vote:

Dear members of the GLOW Board,

We are of course very pleased that the GLOW Board decided to open the venue of the 2024 conference for a renewed consideration. We do however seek some clarifications on the matter of eligible voters.

The first of our queries concerns the restriction to registrants of the 2020-2022 GLOW conference. Our understanding is that GLOW membership is a nominal status conferred upon registrants at any given year, and for that year alone. Strictly speaking, then, the only members of GLOW at present are registrants of the 2022 conference?

We share what appears to be your opinion that this would be a very limited pool, but on the other hand, restricting the vote to registrants of 2020-2022 but not beyond seems arbitrary. We also note that in any given year, active contributors to GLOW are not only registrants but all who submitted an abstract and all who reviewed abstracts.

It goes without saying that we believe ― and you probably share that belief ― that the significance of GLOW transcends by quite a margin any accidental subset of registrants in a given year, or three, and that GLOW truly is an asset to the generative community worldwide.

We have also voiced previously our opinion that whatever decision is reached on the choice of Israel as a venue is political, and will have ramifications for the generative community at large. In view of that, we urge you to open the vote to all linguists who care to voice their opinion on a matter that has consequences for GLOW and for the generative community in general.

In this context, we appreciate the fact that you extended voting rights to all signatories associated with the LODGI correspondence, as our involvement and concern are without a doubt.

However, since our last correspondence with you and as a direct result of the issue having been opened to a broader discussion, our original letter and subsequent correspondence have been endorsed by additional members of the community. It does not seem right to us to exclude them from the two votes.

We therefore urge you to open the vote to all concerned, including but not restricted to the more recent signatories of the LODGI correspondence.

26/12/2022

Here's a link to all documents related to the correspondence on the matter of GLOW 2024:

Proton Drive allows you to securely store and share your sensitive documents and access them anywhere.

26/12/2022

What Human Rights Organizations say about Israel:

Btselem (Israel's leading human rights organization), January 2021
http://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid

Human Rigths Watch, April 3021
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

Amnesty, February 2022
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/

UN Human Rights Council, March 2022
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/israels-55-year-occupation-palestinian-territory-apartheid-un-human-rights

GENEVA (25 March 2022) – A UN expert called today on the international community to accept and adopt the findings in his current report, echoing recent findings by Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organisations, that apartheid is being practiced by Israel in the occupied Palesti...

19/12/2022

The LODGI call to reopen the discussion on the venue for GLOW 2024 is not a call for boycott.

Actually, at this point ours is an appeal to the GLOW community to reconsider whether a country (and not its universities) described by various bodies in the terms used in official documents (see comments) is accessible enough to host our conference.

Scrolling down our page, we can see that GLOW has acknowledged this appeal and acted upon it.

16/12/2022

Ben Gurion University, proposed as the GLOW venue for 2024, has very recently convicted a student for disobeying campus rules by reading a poem at a campus event which contained the censored word "martyr".

You might have guessed: The student is Palestinian and the poem was written by Mahmoud Darwish, one of the most important Arab (and Palestinian) poets of the 20th century.

***

01/12/2022

BREAKING!

The GLOW board has just written that it will initiate a wide membership vote on whether to reopen the “GLOW Israel 2024” question.

This is great news and we’re happy to see that our call for an community discussion has been heeded.

28/11/2022

Here is the second letter LODGI sent to the GLOW Board

November 24, 2022

Dear Susi, dear members of the GLOW board,

We thank you for your response to our letter of July 7 2022, which you curiously addressed to two of the twenty six signatories, Hagit and Ur, ignoring the others.

We are however, dismayed that you think that the issues we raise can be addressed by ensuring access for residents of the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories) to Israel. This response fails to consider the violent nature of the Israeli occupation for millions of people who are permanently prevented from traveling to Israel not just to attend conferences, but even to receive emergency medical care. Residents of the OPT are not in need of charity, like you seem to assume. Free meals and crash space will not solve the restrictions on their freedom of movement and their access issues.

Similarly, your proposal to enforce a hybrid format for the conference as an answer to the non-attendance of Palestinian OPT residents misses the point. Your decision is a political decision and one which would most probably not be tolerated if the roles were reversed.

After sending our letter, we found out that the decision to hold GLOW in Israel was made on the basis of 26 votes for and 13 votes against. Ironically enough, our own letter was signed by 26 linguists, following a mere 72-hour notification. The claim that the membership’s decision cannot be rescinded, or a new vote taken is gratuitous in the context of decision-making within a democratically-run organisation. Your summary refusal to do so reflects badly on the GLOW Board and consequently on GLOW.

As you have declined our request to open the issue to a broader community discussion, we have little choice but to initiate such an open community discussion ourselves. We therefore notify you that we will be sharing our communication with the GLOW Board with the community at large, and that we will be soliciting
responses as well as an open discussion.

We can only repeat what we said in our original letter – any decision the GLOW Board chooses to take is political. The political decision to hold GLOW in Israel will mark GLOW and its future every bit as much, if not more, than the decision not to hold it in Israel. GLOW in Israel, if held, will without question cause a rift and acrimony within the community, with multiple scholars refusing to submit abstracts, to review abstracts, to
attend or to present.

Sincerely,
Linguists for an Open Discussion of Glow in Israel (LODGI)*

Ad Neeleman, UK
Anders Holmberg, UK
Andrew Koonz-Garboden, UK
Anna Cardinaletti, ITALY
Anna Roussou, GREECE
David Adger, UK
Ellen Brandner, GERMANY
Eric Reuland, NETHERLANDS
Eric Wehrli, SWITZERLAND
Gillian Ramchand, NORWAY
Guido Vanden Wyngaerd, BELGIUM
Hagit Borer, UK
Hamida Demirdache, FRANCE
Hazel Pearson, UK
Itamar Francez, USA
Itamar Kastner, UK
Ivy Sichel, USA
Klaus Abels, UK
Laurie Tuller, FRANCE
Linnea Stockall, UK
Luisa Marti, UK
Neil Smith, UK
Peter Hallman, AUSTRIA
Philippe Prevost, FRANCE
Phoevos Panagiotidis, CYPRUS
Rita Manzini, ITALY
Ur Shlonsky, SWITZERLAND
Youssef Haddad, USA

01/11/2022

Dear Colleague,

You may know that the Board of the Generative Linguists in the Old World (GLOW) association plans to hold the 2024 annual conference in Israel. In May 2022, twenty-six linguists signed a letter to the Board calling on it to reconsider the decision and to initiate public discussion of this possibility. In its response, the GLOW board refused to open a discussion of the matter and reiterated its decision to hold the conference in Israel, citing as its main reason the view that overruling the membership vote would be inappropriate. We believe that it is the Board’s refusal to invite an open discussion of the Israel venue which is inappropriate. The issue is highly controversial, and any decision taken on the matter is highly political and divisive.

We invite you to voice your opinion on this matter on our page or elsewhere, and to share this communication with others.

Some of you may feel that your links to GLOW are too tenuous for you to voice an opinion. However, it is our view that GLOW, as a prestigious linguistics conference host, belongs to all of us, and that positions taken by the GLOW Board reflect on the wider linguistic community, well beyond some participating subset.

READ MORE

Following a vote held at the business meeting of GLOW 2021 (26 for / 13 against), the GLOW board took the decision to hold the 2024 GLOW meeting in Israel. To the best of our knowledge, two Israeli universities have come forth offering to host it – The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheba.

This decision, together with the circumstances that led to it, were presented during the business meeting of GLOW 2022 at Queen Mary University of London by the then GLOW president, Gillian Ramchand. In particular, the venue options for both 2023 (Vienna) and 2024 (Israel) were presented for an online vote without any discussion to the attendants of GLOW 2022. 41/41 participants approved Vienna as a venue for 2023 but 26/39 approved of Israel as a venue for 2024.

Gillian herself stepped down as a GLOW president directly after that session and was replaced by Susi Wurmbrand. One of Gillian’s first acts after having stepped down was to send a letter to the GLOW board, criticising that very decision (available on this page).

After the report during the 2022 business meeting, 26 of us sent a detailed letter to the GLOW board asking it to revisit the decision and, in particular, to open the issue to a broader discussion by the community (4 more signatures were added in the few subsequent days).

We note in particular that our appeal to the GLOW board came in the wake of the publication of 4 reports in the previous year alone by major human rights’ organizations, characterizing the ongoing policies in Israel/Palestine as apartheid (B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights organization; Human Rights Watch; Amnesty International; and the United Nations Human Rights Council).

The GLOW board declined our request. Its response was addressed exclusively to two of the signatories. We recently responded to their response; altogether, 4 letters are available for your consideration on this page.

An additional point we elaborate on in our original message concerns the fact that a significant group of linguists would be prevented from participating altogether, or might opt out due to severe restrictions on entry to Israel. The US State Department is very explicit about the nature of harassment and/or refusal of entry that visitors to the country may endure. Here are some citations from the official Travel Advisory (also check the link below):

“All persons seeking to enter or depart Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza are subject to immigration and security screening, possibly including prolonged questioning and physical searches, and may be denied entry or exit…

U.S. citizens who have traveled to Muslim countries or who are of Arab, Middle Eastern, or Muslim origin may face additional questioning by immigration and border authorities…

The Israeli Ministry of Interior has continued to deny entry into the country of some foreign nationals (including U.S. citizens) affiliated with certain political and non-governmental organizations that the Government of Israel views as anti-Israel…

Israeli security officials have also on occasion requested access to travelers’ personal e-mail accounts or other social media accounts as a condition of entry. In such circumstances, travelers should have no expectation of privacy for any data stored on such devices or in their accounts…”

As the GLOW Board has declined to open the issue for a broader community discussion, we find it necessary to do so ourselves and to initiate s what we believe to be an essential broader discussion.

Our specific reasons to NOT hold GLOW in Israel are spelled out in great detail in our original letter, which we invite you to read and share with others. We invite you to participate in this discussion and to voice your opinion, be it on this page or elsewhere. Please consider signing our original letter to the GLOW Board, also posted here, or writing directly to the GLOW Board at [email protected]

It is our hope that an open discussion of this issue will indicate to the GLOW Board that this its decision must be revisited, and at the very least, subjected to a more compelling and better-informed vote than the previous one.

Linguists for an Open Discussion of Glow in Israel (LODGI)*

1. Ad Neeleman, UK
2. Anders Holmberg, UK
3. Andrew Koonz-Garboden, UK
4. Anna Cardinaletti, Italy
5. Anna Roussou, Greece
6. David Adger, UK
7. Ellen Brandner, Germany
8. Eric Reuland, Netherlands
9. Eric Wehrli, Switzerland
10. Gillian Ramchand, Norway
11. Guido Vanden Wyngaerd, Belgium
12. Hagit Borer, UK
13. Hamida Demirdache, France
14. Hazel Pearson, UK
15. Itamar Francez, USA
16. Itamar Kastner, UK
17. Ivy Sichel, USA
18. Klaus Abels, UK
19. Laurie Tuller, France
20. Linnea Stockall, UK
21. Luisa Marti, UK
22. Neil Smith, UK
23. Peter Hallman, Austria
24. Philippe Prevost, France
25. Phoevos Panagiotidis, Cyprus
26. Rita Manzini, Italy
27. Ur Shlonsky, Switzerland
28. Youssef Haddad, USA

Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza international travel information and Travel Advisory