SPME
The membership of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has now passed a resolution taking the organization well down the road to endorsing the academic boycott of Israel. The resolution, which passed by a 561–152 margin, urges “MESA program committees…
read more“It’s inevitable that MESA will adopt BDS,” announced Noura Erakat, Palestinian-American “activist,” to the members of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) last week. They had assembled at an open forum to discuss a boycott-Israel resolution scheduled for a vote…
read moreLet’s start with a fact: Steven Salaita is a hater of Israel. Just ask him (via his Twitter feed). • “‘Hate‘ is such a strong word. That’s why it’s my preferred verb when discussing racism, colonization, neoliberalism, sexism, and Israel.”…
read moreOver the coming days, I’ll be attending the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) annual conference in Washington. It’s time for me to catch up on the zeitgeist in my field, and there’s no better place to do that than at…
read moreWhenever criticism is leveled at federal funding for area studies in universities—especially those bias-laden, error-prone Middle East centers—someone jumps up to claim that this funding is crucial to the national interest. Now it’s the turn of Nathan Brown, a political…
read moreThe Gaza war has raised up another tide of Holocaust inversion: the claim by assorted Jew-baiters that Israel has become the Nazis, and the Palestinians their Jewish victims. This was a staple of old Soviet propaganda, which then spread to…
read moreFive years ago, during an earlier Israeli operation in Gaza, the British novelist Howard Jacobson explained why “call[ing] the Israelis Nazis and liken[ing] Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto” goes far beyond mere “criticism” of Israel: Berating Jews with their own history, disinheriting them…
read moreThere’s a brouhaha at Ramaz, the private Orthodox high school on the Upper East Side, around Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor at Columbia and promoter of the Palestinian hard line. Some students invited him to speak, but the head…
read moreDear Fellow Members of the American Studies Association (ASA), We are pleased to report our progress toward our next boycott resolution. As you know, our president, Professor Curtis Marez, gained some notoriety from a quote given by him to the New York…
read moreCritics of the Israel boycott resolution of the American Studies Association (ASA) sometimes ask why the ASA doesn’t also boycott Chinese or Iranian universities. (I make the double-standard argument myself, in a post today at Foreign Policy.) Even the president of the ASA, Curtis Marez, admits that…
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