The movement among some scholars to condemn Israel hit a bump on Sunday night, when members of the American Historical Association, the nation’s largest organization for professional historians, agreed not to vote on two resolutions condemning what was characterized as Israel’s violations of academic freedom for Palestinians and others.
The resolutions, which were brought up at the business meeting of the A.H.A.’s annual convention in New York, had been sent to the group’s leadership well after the group’s regular early November deadline, and so could not be considered without a suspension of the rules. The resolutions had been drafted by the group Historians Against the War after an earlier proposed resolution by another group, calling for a full academic boycott of Israel, was rejected by the A.H.A.’s leadership as falling outside the group’s mission.
The margin of the vote was 144 against suspending the rules to consider the resolutions and 51 in favor, with three others listed as “present.”
The A.H.A. vote was the latest effort by members of a scholarly association to condemn Israel. The American Studies Association started a furor when it voted in December 2013 to boycott Israeli higher education institutions. Since then, the progress of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, as it is known, has made steady, if mixed, progress in academia.
Last spring, members of the Modern Language Association of America, the nation’s largest academic association, failed to approve, for lack of a quorum, a resolution condemning what it called Israel’s interference in some scholars’ travels to the West Bank. But in December, members of the American Anthropological Association resoundingly voted to defeat a proposed measure rejecting academic boycotts of Israel.
Van E. Gosse, a professor at Franklin and Marshall University and a member of Historians Against the War, said in an interview that the proposed A.H.A. resolutions were not concerned with boycotts, but with academic freedom — a matter of legitimate concern to historians.
“The goal is to send a message to Israeli academics that they would mobilize to stop these violations,” he said.
But some opponents questioned both the factual assertions in the resolutions and their focus on Israel.
“There is a subtext that Israel is more guilty because it’s Israel,” said Hasia Diner, a historian at New York University. “I think the agenda is a political one, and they don’t really care about scholarship.”
The A.H.A. business meeting, which was closed to nonmembers, including the press, was contentious but mostly civil, several in attendance said. And the atmosphere in the halls, as well as at a roundtable discussion on the responsibility of historians regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was held on Saturday, was less charged than at last year’s Modern Language Association convention, which drew widespread advance press attention and monitors from groups like Hillel International and the Israel on Campus Coalition.
David Greenberg, a professor at Rutgers University and a member of the Alliance for Academic Freedom, an ad hoc group of scholars who seek middle ground on Israel and which organized opposition to the resolution, said that the group’s goal was to promote open scholarly dialogue, rather than partisan battles.
“We don’t want to whip up a mob of ferocious scholars on either side,” he said. “Why should the A.H.A. become a venue for political fights about Israel? Scholarship about Israel, of course should be something the AHA cares about, but that’s not what this is about.”
Joan W. Scott, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and a supporter of the resolutions, said it was unfortunate they had been introduced too late to be on the official agenda.
The issues they raised “are really important to historians and a legitimate concern for a professional organization,” she said after the vote.
Mr. Gosse called the effort “a good start,” saying that he and his colleagues would discuss whether to introduce similar resolutions at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in April. “This is just the beginning,” he said.
Issues relating to Israel and the Palestinians will almost certainly get a hearing at the next A.H.A. convention. After the vote, the outgoing president, Jan E. Goldstein, announced that her successor, Vicki Ruiz, had already committed to holding several academic sessions on the issue at the 2016 meeting.
James Grossman, the group’s executive director, called that decision fitting.
“Our role is to provide a forum for historians to discuss historical context,” he said in an interview. “And whatever happens with these kinds of resolutions, obviously the conflict in the Middle East isn’t going away.”
