As detailed in numerous posts over the past weeks, the American Studies Association has passed an
academic boycott of Israeli universities.
Although
the resolution does not make this distinction, ASA asserts
in its explanation that the boycott applies only to the institutions and "not individual scholars, students, or cultural workers who will be able to participate in the ASA conference or give public lectures at campuses, provided they are not expressly serving as representatives or ambassadors of those institutions, or of the Israeli government."
The explanation continues that the boycott also applies to "participation in conferences or events officially sponsored by Israeli universities."
This would mean the boycott applies to programs and projects jointly sponsored by U.S. and Israeli academic institutions, like the
Cornell-Technion campus under construction in New York City, the
Brandeis-Middlebury Program at Ben Gurion University, dozens of other programs for
terms abroad in Israel run by U.S. universities but hosted at Israeli universities, and many other
joint university programs.
In the
talking points ASA provided to its members on how to address criticism from University Administrators, Deans and Faculty, ASA states that "U.S. scholars are not discouraged under the terms of the boycott from traveling to Israel for academic purposes, provided they are not engaged in a formal partnership with or sponsorship by Israeli academic institutions."
Now you can see how pernicious the ASA academic boycott becomes.
ASA's boycott requires monitoring of individual Israeli scholars interacting with ASA and having such scholars disavow representation of their institutions. No scholar from any other nation is required to disavow representation of their institutions.
