The vote by the 5,000-member American Studies Association to support the academic boycott of Israel, reportedly by a 2-1 margin, has evoked many responses, but none so far has identified the irony at the core of the matter. To show that irony, and the deeper problem it illustrates, you need to know that a couple of weeks before the ASA vote, the ASA’s 20-member National Council, which administers the ASA and is elected by the ASA membership, pre-voted in favor of the Israel boycott—and did so unanimously.
Can you imagine twenty serious scholars in any discipline voting unanimously on any controversial issue? I can’t, so I thought it worthwhile to examine the composition of the ASA’s National Council and to peruse its members’ academic profiles, as described on the webpages of their home institutions. This simple exercise reveals a stunning lack of diversity of intellectual interests and perspectives in a sector of American society, the university, that explicitly places a very high premium on “diversity.” The apparent obsession with gender, gay and race studies (or of U.S. imperialism) among the members of ASA’s National Council seems to come at the expense of scholarship on just about everything else.
You don’t have to take my word for it. See for yourself or, if you like, scan through the abridged academic profiles below of 18 of the 20 members of ASA’s National Council. All the information is drawn from the faculty profiles as presented on university webpages; none of the language is mine.
Lisa Duggan, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU (President-elect, ASA)
Areas of Research/Interest: Modern US cultural, social, and political history; history of gender and sexuality; lesbian and gay studies
Graduate courses taught: Gender and Cultural History; Social Theories of Citizenship; The State, the Law, and the Public Sphere; Critical Historiographies/Queer Historiographies; Constructions of Whiteness in the United States
Undergraduate courses taught: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in US history; Studying Sex, Studying Gender; Introduction to Lesbian/Gay Studies; Queer Critique
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Curtis Marez, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, UC San Diego (President, ASA)
Research and teaching focus: race and political economy in popular culture and media, with emphasis on U.S. Latinos
Ph.D., English, UC Berkeley
Matthew Frye Jacobson, William Robertson Coe Professor of American Studies and History, Yale University (Past President, ASA)
Teaching interests: race in US political culture 1790-present, including US imperialism, immigration and migration, popular culture, and the juridical structures of US citizenship.
Jennifer Brody, Professor and Dept. Chair of Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford University
Her books “discuss relations among and between sexuality, gender, racialization, visual studies and performance.”
Chandan Reddy, Associate Professor, University of Washington
Areas of Specialization: Critical Race Theory, Sexuality and Queer Studies, Globalization Studies, and Asian American Cultural Studies
Ph.D., English/Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Maria Josefina Saldana-Portillo, Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU
Areas of Research/Interest: Latina/cultural studies; development and globalization studies; comparative race in the Americas; 20th century revolutionary thought and literature of the Americas
Ph.D., Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University
Avery Gordon, Professor of Sociology, UC Santa Barbara
Her work focuses on radical thought in action; “over the last few years, she has been writing about captivity, war and other forms of dispossession and how to eliminate them.”
Teaching areas: introduction to sociology; sociology of art and literature; the prisoner; problems of radical thought
Ph.D., Boston College
Martin F. Manalansan IV, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies, University of Illinois
Research interests: sociocultural anthropology, sexuality and gender, immigration and globalization, cities and modernity, food and culture, critical theory, performance, public health, Filipino diaspora, Asian Americans, North America, Southeast Asia, and the Philippines
Book: Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Duke University Press)
Ph.D., Social Anthropology, University of Rochester
Karen Leong, Associate Professor, Women and Gender Studies, Asian Pacific American Studies, Arizona State University
“In all aspects of Karen Leong’s scholarship research, teaching, and community engagement, she explores the overlapping and mutually reinforcing discourses of gender, race, class, and nation, and how these discourses have advantaged some and disadvantaged others in United States society.”
Recent courses: Race, Gender and Class; Critical Concepts of Gender; Masculinities; Asian Pacific American Experience; Introduction to Ethnic Studies/US
Ph.D., history, UC Berkeley
Nikhil Pal Singh, Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, History; NYU
Areas of research/Interests: race, empire, and culture in 20th century US; black radicalism and US liberalism; US foreign policy
Forthcoming book: Exceptional Empire: Race and War in US Globalism (Harvard University Press)
Ph.D., Yale University
Ann Cvetkovich, Ellen Clayton Garwood Centennial Professor of English and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Texas at Austin
Courses taught: Gender sexuality and migration; Lesbian literature and culture; Gay and lesbian studies
Books include: Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality and Lesbian Public Cultures (Duke University Press, 2003)
Ph.D., Cornell University
Juana Maria Rodriguez, Professor and Chair, Gender and Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley
Author of Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces (NYU Press, 2003)
Forthcoming book: Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings (NYU Press, under contract)
E. Patrick Johnson, Carlos Montezuma Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies, Northwestern University
Courses taught: Studies in Gender and Performance; Folklore and Oral Traditions; Performance and Pedagogy; Postmodern Performance
Author of Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South: An Oral History (University of North Carolina Press)
Ph.D., Speech Communication, Louisiana State University
Sunaina Maira, Professor of Asian American Studies, UC Davis
Books include: Desis in the House: Indian Youth Culture in New York City; Missing: Youth, Citizenship, and Empire after 9/11
Roya Rastegar, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Bryn Mawr College
Teaches courses on: independent film cultures, gender and racial formations, and film and new media curatorial practices
“Rastgar worked as an investment banker at UBS Warburg and Merrill Lynch prior to pursuing her doctorate under the guidance of Professor Angela Y. Davis.”
Ph.D., History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz
Jeremy Dean, secondary school teacher at St. Stephens Episcopal School, and education program coordinator at Humanities Institute at U of Texas at Austin
Ph.D., English, University of Texas at Austin
J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Associate Professor of American Studies and Anthropology, Wesleyan University
Books include: Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity
Currently working on a book on gender and sexual politics and the question of Hawaiian indigeneity in relation to state-centered Hawaiian nationalism
Member of a radio collective that produces a program on anarchist culture, politics, and philosophies
Ph.D., History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz
Marisol LeBron, Ph.D. student in American studies, NYU
Currently working on contradictions of gay identity in the Bronx
Research interests include: “Puerto Rican and Latin cultural production, hip hop, reggaeton, citizenship, queer of color critique, and ambivalence”
Now, when Curtis Marez, ASA president and an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California-San Diego, was asked “why single out Israel?”, he acknowledged that numerous states, including many of Israel’s neighbors, are much more egregious human rights abusers, but said, “One has to start somewhere.”
If this isn’t one of the most disingenuous statements uttered recently, it is certainly one of most ironic (or perhaps hypocritical or bizarre). Given that gender and gay studies is a special area of interest for this group of academics, it is notable that the Council chose to single out the only country in the region where homosexuals can live freely and without inordinate fear, and can practice their professions unfettered by boycotts of another sort. (For some details on attitudes toward gays in the Middle East, take a look at the recent Pew Research Center study, The Global Divide on Homosexuality.)