University President Lee Bollinger said he opposes a recent boycott of Israeli universities by the American Studies Association in a statement released Friday. “I reject the ASA’s position which would compromise an essential value of universities in an increasingly global…
read moreDozens of college and university presidents have released statements condemning the American Studies Association’s vote to boycott Israeli universities, but professors at one institution have penned their own letter saying that the president does not speak for them. In a letter released on…
read moreAs the shouting following the American Studies Association’s decision to boycott Israel starts waning, it may be time to settle down and ask ourselves what we’ve learned from it. There’s little else to say about the boycott itself—thankfully, many, from members…
read moreThe American Studies Association’s endorsement this month of a boycott of Israeli academic institutions continues to stir passions, with four colleges and universities announcing their withdrawal from the association, a second leading higher-education association denouncing the boycott and a rising tide of…
read moreThe American Studies Association’s declaration that it is joining the academic boycott of Israel did not stir a big row. The mistaken notion that the ASA is an insignificant organization and that this boycott has no practical implications left us indifferent. But there is no greater…
read moreThe decision last week by a US organization of scholars to boycott Israeli academic institutions has ignited debate on college campuses around New England and beyond about academic freedom, the role of politics in scholarly life, and US support for…
read moreSeeming to give credence to Orwell’s wry observation that “there are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them,” the fatuous members of the American Studies Association (ASA) passed a December 15th resolution to institute an academic boycott…
read more“Have we indeed sinned more than any other nation?” —Chaim Kaplan, The Warsaw Diary (September 10, 1939) “In the modern world, the Jew has perpetually been on trial; still today the Jew is on trial, in the person of the Israeli—and…
read moreFor the last several years, elite universities around the world have been roiled by anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian demands to boycott Israel’s academic institutions. This month, a major American scholarly body, the American Studies Association (ASA), has voted to endorse the…
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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