U.S. scholars are misguided in boycotting Israe

THE AMERICAN STUDIES Association, a group of about 5,000 scholars devoted to the interdisciplinary study of U.S. culture and history, has called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The association held a vote on a resolution seeking the boycott as a way to protest Israeli “state policies that violate human rights” of Palestinians, including academic freedom for scholars and students. The resolution drew support of two-thirds of the 1,252 association members who voted. The boycott is largely symbolic; it’s also terribly misguided.

The most difficult thing to swallow about the resolution is how utterly narrow-minded it seems. Was the resolution written on a computer manufactured in China, one of the most repressive regimes on the planet? Did its authors pause to consider China’s incarceration of writers and scholars who dare to think and speak out for freedom, or the ethnic groups in China persecuted for refusing to heel to the Beijing masters? Did they give any thought to what’s happened lately to freedom in Russia, won at enormous cost in a Cold War that lasted more than four decades? Does it disturb the scholars that in today’s Russia, members of a girl band performing a protest against the Kremlin could be thrown into a cold and miserable prison for two years, or that civil society organizations are being systematically shuttered?

(2013-12-23/washingtonpost)