AAA Pushes for a Boycott of all Israeli Academic Institutions

Last month at its annual conference in Denver, the American Anthropological Association (no relation to the AAA auto club) overwhelmingly passed a resolution of censure [1040 to 36] that calls for the boycott of all Israeli Academic Institutions.

In April, 2016, it will be presented for final approval to the group’s full membership numbering about 12,000.  The proposal calls on members “to officially adopt a boycott to refrain from formal collaborations with Israeli academic institutions, though not of individual academics.”

The resolution fails to explain the paradoxical distinction which it strikes between “Israeli academic institutions” and its members, seeming not to take into account that one cannot exist without the other.

This move is largely the result of efforts by Palestinian groups including the “Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors” and other Palestinian organizations that “have called for an international boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

The action is also “backed by BDS, a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement” which “aims to protest Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, but which Israeli Universities accuse of spreading lies and slander about the country.”
Not unexpectedly, this proposal by the American Anthropological Association has been strongly condemned and rebutted by the Anti-Defamation League, and at least two writers for the Washington Post.
 
They consider it to be a one-sided, hostile, and academically punitive measure aimed at Israeli universities.  ADL calls it “a deeply misguided attack on academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas.”

The resolution is tough reading:
 
It is a legally crafted document full of heavily pedantic language containing too many “Whereas” clauses followed by even more “Be it resolved” and “Be it further resolved” proposed punitive measures aimed at disabling Israeli Academic Institutions.

Curiously, the American Anthropological Association may not have fully researched the potentially negative impact upon itself of this ill-advised proposal, claims Eugene Kontorovich, writing in the Washington Post:

He points out that the AAA might not have adequately assessed the potential risk to itself from at least two sources:  Namely, Intel and Yahoo Labs, both of which maintain major presences in Israel and who are also major financial contributors that help fill the coffers of the American Anthropological Association

In that regard, Kontorovich poses this fundamental question:  How is it “that the AAA does not mind getting funding from companies that, by the AAA’s logic, help to maintain (and) perpetuate the occupation (of Palestinian territory).”
 
He brings to mind that “Two of the group’s most significant donors are Intel and Yahoo Labs,” implying – my emphasis – that there is not only a contradiction of self-interest in the AAA’s thinking, but also a great ethical dissonance.

Given all of the oxygen that’s been soaked up by the presidential debates and by recent RIT (radical Islamist terrorist) attacks in Paris and on the U.S. homeland, I don’t think that the issue has been given sufficient media attention in America.

Nor do I like the incessant, unbalanced anti-Israeli clamor emanating from the United Nations, the few Christian denominations which cry out for sanctions against Israel, and from neo-elites in academia.  The result of their initiatives spills bad blood onto campuses throughout America and infects the minds of impressionable college youth.

I don’t like it any more than I like the anti-Christian, anti-Yazidi cleansing that is going on in Iraq, in other parts of the Middle East, and which remains ignored by Washington’s political leaders. 
Where does the American Anthropological Association stand on that issue?
 
The undetectable pitch of its voice has caused me to buy a pair of hearing aids so that I may begin searching for it.

Thanks for checking in, and remember to take care of yourselves out there.