At the American Historical Association annual meeting in New York City, an anti-Israel group called Historians Against the War sought to present two anti-Israel resolutions (here and here).
Neither resolution called for a boycott of Israel, because they knew that would not pass (the AHA apparently is not controlled by anti-Israel radical activists, unlike the American Studies Association).
So in a strategy we have seen at the Modern Language Association, a resolution condemning alleged Israeli offenses against Palestinian academic freedom was offered. (It failed at MLA, btw.) This is the stepping stone approach — first get a resolution condemning, then later come back with a boycott resolution.
The resolutions were factually inaccurate and engaged in unsubstantiated hyperbole.
But the resolution sponsors missed the November 1 deadline for the resolutions to be considered at the business meeting. Only an affirmative vote at the business meeting could send the resolutions to a full membership vote.
So the anti-Israel activists sought to have the business meeting rules suspended. That would require at least a 100 person quorum and a two-thirds vote.
Based on the Twitter feed, it appears that the motion to suspend the rules met spirited opposition on a variety of grounds, including the lack of good grounds for missing the deadline, the importance of providing adequate time to fact check the resolution, and the merits of the ultimate resolution.
The vote at the business meeting was taken just minutes ago.
The motion failed, with 144 voting No, 54 voting Yes, and 3 voting Present. So the Resolutions will not even be debated, much less sent to the membership.
Sanity prevailed someplace in academia. A good start to the New Year.
(Added)
Here is a video of the “Radical Historians” meeting at the conference yesterday, composed of many of the people pushing the anti-Israel resolutions.
Here are some tweets from people in the room when the vote took place today, as well as some others commenting.
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