"This is an exceptionally valuable and illuminating examination of academic freedom in Palestinian universities and the forces that threaten it. Cary Nelson's carefully documented, thoughtful, and systematic analysis demonstrates how those threats stem (in genuinely "intersectional" fashion) both from the Israeli occupation and, even more strongly and directly, from dynamics in Palestinian society and politics--involving not only external pressures on universities but also political factionalism, violence, and intimidation within the universities themselves. Nelson's exploration of this highly charged subject and its larger implications brings together three of his long-term commitments: active and principled defense of academic freedom and open intellectual exchange; strong support for achieving a peaceful two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that can do justice to the legitimate aspirations of both peoples; and his penetrating critical analyses of the ways that one-sided anti-Zionist ideological discourse distorts the realities of the conflict, is used to promote and justify academic blacklisting, and thus endangers academic freedom internationally as well as harming both Israelis and Palestinians. This study can usefully contribute to informing debates on all those issues, and it should be welcomed--and seriously engaged--by fair-minded people on all sides of those controversies who are willing to honestly confront difficult and complex realities." --JEFF WEINTRAUB, Bryn Mawr College.