This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/education/scholars-group-endorses-an-academic-boycott-of-israel.html

The article has changed 8 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 2 Version 3
Scholars’ Group Endorses an Academic Boycott of Israel Boycott by Academic Group Is a Symbolic Sting to Israel
(about 9 hours later)
An association of American professors with almost 5,000 members has voted to endorse an academic boycott of Israeli colleges and universities, the group announced Monday, making it the largest academic group in the United States to back a growing movement to isolate Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. An American organization of professors on Monday announced a boycott of Israeli academic institutions to protest Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, signaling that a movement to isolate and pressure Israel that is gaining ground in Europe has begun to make strides in the United States.
The group, the American Studies Association, said that its members approved the boycott resolution by a 2-to-1 margin in online balloting that concluded Sunday night, with about a quarter of the members voting. Members of the American Studies Association voted by a ratio of more than two to one to endorse the boycott in online balloting that concluded Sunday night, the group said.
“The resolution is in solidarity with scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom, and it aspires to enlarge that freedom for all, including Palestinians,” the American Studies Association said in a statement released Monday. With fewer than 5,000 members, the group is not one of the larger scholarly associations. But its vote is a milestone for a Palestinian movement known as B.D.S., for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions, which for the past decade had found little traction in the United States. The American Studies Association is the second American academic group to back the boycott, movement organizers say, following the Association for Asian American Studies, which did so in April.
The statement cited “Israel’s violations of international law and U.N. resolutions; the documented impact of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian scholars and students; the extent to which Israeli institutions of higher education are a party to state policies that violate human rights,” and other factors. “It’s almost like a family betrayal,” said Manuel Trajtenberg, a leading Israeli scholar. “It’s very grave and very saddening that this happens, particularly so in the U.S.,” he said.
Boycott supporters concede that resolutions by professors’ groups are primarily symbolic, as long as no American college or university supports such an action. The boycott called on American schools and academic groups to ban collaboration with Israeli institutions, but individual Israeli scholars would still be able to attend conferences, lecture at American universities or do research with American colleagues, as long as they did not officially represent Israeli universities or the government. Dr. Trajtenberg, an economics professor at Tel Aviv University, earned his doctorate at Harvard and like many Israeli academics has had frequent sabbaticals at American universities.
Still, attempts in the West to isolate Israel have received close attention in that country. The greatest danger to Israel may lie in calls for an economic boycott, an idea that has gained much more traction in Europe, where Israel has close trade ties. Last week, a Dutch company, Vitens, announced that it would no longer do business with Israel’s national water company. Israel has strong trade ties with Western Europe, where the B.D.S. campaign has won some backing for economic measures, a particular concern for Israelis. Last week a Dutch company, Vitens, announced that it would not do business with Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, because of Israel’s policies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israelis are also accustomed to sharp criticism from Europe and unstinting support from the United States, and are sensitive to signs that support may be waning. The vote came despite a statement last week by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, that his government’s stance is to boycott Israeli businesses and other activities in the occupied territories, but not in Israel itself. Israel recently faced a potential crisis when it seemed that its universities and companies would lose out on some $700 million for research from a European Union program called Horizon 2020 after new European guidelines prohibited investment in any institutions operating in territory Israel seized in the 1967 war. Israeli academics were reeling at the possibility that they would be punished over government policy toward the Palestinians, until Israeli and European officials struck a deal late last month to allow Israel to participate.
The national council of the American Studies Association voted unanimously on Dec. 4 in favor of a boycott resolution, and then put the issue to its members. The group’s stance has pitted scholars and organizations against one another in a heated debate about the ethics of academic boycotts, the motives behind the campaign and whether Israel is being singled out unfairly. In April, the Teachers’ Union of Ireland endorsed an academic boycott of Israel, and several times in recent years there have been strong efforts within Britain’s largest professors’ group, the University and College Union, to do the same.
The movement to cut off relations with Israeli academic and cultural institutions dates back a decade, but organizers say it was not until April that an American academic group of any size, the Association for Asian American Studies, endorsed a boycott. The Modern Language Association’s annual meeting next month will include a discussion session on academic boycotts, and it will consider a motion critical of Israel for restricting professors’ freedom to visit Palestinian universities. Israelis have long seen Europe as more hostile — even anti-Semitic in some pockets — but a slap from the United States has a particular sting. America is viewed not only as Israel’s staunchest ally, but its best friend, and many analysts have fretted publicly in recent weeks that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s outspoken opposition to the interim Iran nuclear deal had damaged relations with Washington.
The American Studies Association has never before called for an academic boycott of any nation’s universities, said Curtis Marez, the group’s president and an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego. He did not dispute that many nations, including many of Israel’s neighbors, are generally judged to have human rights records that are worse than Israel’s, or comparable, but he said, “one has to start somewhere.” Next month, the Modern Language Association’s annual meeting will debate a resolution calling on the State Department to criticize Israel for barring American professors from going to Gaza and the West Bank when invited by Palestinian universities.
The singular focus on Israel has become the most pointed part of the boycott debate, with opponents seeing signs of anti-Semitism — which supporters vehemently deny — and arguing that the real aim of Palestinian boycott backers is not to change Israel’s behavior, but to eliminate the state. People on both sides of the issue acknowledged that despite the heat it generates, the requested boycott will have little practical effect, at least for now. The American Studies Association resolution bars official collaboration with Israeli institutions but not with Israeli scholars themselves; it has no binding power over members, and no American colleges or universities have signed on.
On the Charlie Rose show on PBS last week, Lawrence H. Summers, the former Harvard University president and former Treasury secretary, disparaged “the idea that of all the countries in the world that might be thought to have human rights abuses, that might be thought to have inappropriate foreign policies, that might be thought to be doing things wrong, the idea that there’s only one that is worthy of boycott, and that is Israel.” In fact, the American Association of University Professors, the nation’s largest professors’ group, said it opposed the boycott. A number of American scholars, while angry at Israeli policies in the West Bank, say they oppose singling Israel out over other countries with far worse human rights records. Others in both countries say it makes little sense to focus on Israeli universities where government policy often comes under strong criticism.
He called for a kind of reverse boycott, saying that universities should reconsider paying for faculty members to belong to the American Studies Association or to participate in its events. “O.K., so a couple of Israeli researchers will not be invited by a couple of American researchers,” said Avraham Burg, a leftist former Labor Party member of Parliament who runs Molad, a research group that recently published a report on Israeli isolation. “That for me is awful, because the academic community is the last one with the freedom of thought and freedom of expression.”
The American Association of University Professors, with 48,000 members, has reiterated its stance against academic boycotts, which it said “strike directly at the free exchange of ideas,” and not at those responsible for oppression, stifling precisely the kind of interaction that would aid human rights. The association has noted that during the apartheid era, it backed economic boycotts of South Africa, but not academic ones. But Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian activist and a founder of the B.D.S. movement, said the boycott vote shed light on the close collaboration between Israel’s universities and its government and military, and it put those universities on notice that they will become unwelcome in international academic circles.
The push for an academic boycott is an outgrowth of a broader campaign against Israel called the B.D.S. movement, which calls for boycotts, disinvestment and sanctions, much like those against South Africa in the 1980s. “It is perhaps the strongest indicator yet that the B.D.S. movement is reaching a tipping point, even in the U.S., the last bastion of support for Israel’s unjust system,” he said. The movement aims to put pressure on Israel until it “complies with international law and Palestinian rights.”
The academic boycott movement has drawn far more attention in Britain, beginning in 2002, when two academic journals fired Israeli professors from their boards because of their nationality. There have been several strong attempts in Britain’s largest higher-education labor group, the University and College Union, to put its weight behind a boycott. President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority has publicly rejected a boycott of Israel. While pro-boycott forces draw parallels to the sanctions movement against South Africa during the apartheid era, Mr. Abbas, who was in South Africa last week for the funeral of Nelson Mandela, restated the Palestinian Authority’s longstanding position of supporting a boycott only against products made in West Bank settlements, but not institutions that operate within Israel’s 1948 lines.
In May, the physicist Stephen W. Hawking withdrew from a conference in Israel, in support of the boycott. “We are neighbors with Israel, we have agreements with Israel, we recognize Israel, we are not asking anyone to boycott products of Israel,” Majdi Khaldi, a diplomatic adviser to Mr. Abbas, clarified in an interview on Monday. “The problem is two things: occupation, and the government of Israel continuing settlement activities.”
On Dec. 4, the 20-member national council of the American Studies Association voted unanimously for a boycott resolution, but decided to put the matter to a full membership vote. The group said that of 1,252 members who cast ballots, 66.05 percent voted in favor and 30.5 percent against, with the rest abstaining.
During the balloting, the American Association of University Professors, with 48,000 members, expressed its opposition, repeating its position that while economic action against a nation might be warranted, academic boycotts stifle academic freedom and are likely to hurt people who are not the intended targets.
But the American Studies Association’s online forum on the subject filled with comments rejecting that logic, like this one from David Palumbo-Liu, a professor at Stanford: “People who truly believe in academic freedom would realize protesting the blatant and systemic denial of academic freedom to Palestinians, which is coupled with material deprivation of a staggering scale, far outweighs concerns we in the West might have about our own rather privileged academic freedoms.”
The American Studies Association has not previously endorsed a boycott of any nation.

Richard Pérez-Peña reported from New York, and Jodi Rudoren from Jerusalem.