Based on its Quarterly publication, the American Studies Association as of last year had
80 Institutional Members.
Since ASA announced its academic boycott of Israel,
we have confirmed that 6 universities have dropped their Institutional Memberships, while 11 more have denied being Institutional Members despite being so listed.
The updated list appears at the very bottom of this post.
While over 190 university presidents have denounced the ASA academic boycott of Israel, many have decided either to keep the membership or to leave the decision to individual American Studies Departments. Some others are switching the membership listing to their American Studies Departments, rather than the full University name.
Anything other than a full termination of Institutional Membership, however, opens up the universities to legal liability for national origin discrimination under
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
That potential liability is explained in a recent article by two attorneys at the
Seyfarth Shaw law firm.
Seyfarth Shaw is an 800+ international law firm with a 380+ attorney
labor and employment law practice.
On January 7, 2014, two Seyfarth Shaw attorneys published an article regarding the potential liability of university employers arising out of the ASA academic boycott.
In their article, they make points similar to those I made in
my challenge to ASA's tax-exempt status: The boycott constitutes national origin discrimination.
While I approached it from the angle of whether such discrimination is a valid tax exempt purpose (it's not), the Seyfarth Shaw lawyers approached the problem from the perspective of employer liability under Title VII.
Here are relevant portions of the Seyfarth Shaw analysis (emphasis added), including the recommendations of dropping institutional membership in ASA and evaluating whether boycott advocates can serve on hiring and tenure committees.