The American Anthropological Association (AAA) has voted to adopt a boycott of Israeli academic institutions over “discrimination of Palestinians”, Middle East Eye reported on Monday.
AAA President Ramona Pérez called the vote “contentious” but said the associations had made a “collective decision and it is now our duty to forge ahead, united in our commitment to advancing scholarly knowledge, finding solutions to human and social problems, and serving as a guardian of human rights”.
The vote took place by electronic ballot between June 15 and July 14 and resulted in a landslide in favor of a boycott, with 71 percent voting yes and 29 percent voting no, according to Middle East Eye.
Voter participation was relatively low, with just 37 percent of eligible members in the association casting a ballot, about 3,000 members, the report noted.
Jessica Winegar, a sociocultural anthropologist at Northwestern University, told Middle East Eye the resolution was “a meaningful demonstration of solidarity” with Palestinian Arabs against what she described as “Israel’s racist, discriminatory policies and brutal military rule”.
The resolution is a symbolic shift for the AAA, marking the first time the organization has supported a boycott of a country's academic institutions.
In May, a letter signed by over 100 Jewish and pro-Israel organizations demanded that university heads reject the AAA boycott proposal.
A previous resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions by the membership of the AAA was voted down in June 2016 after a nearly four-year campaign by BDS supporters within the organization pushing for a boycott.
In recent years there have been a number of initiatives for academic boycotts of Israel.
In 2014, the UK's Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) announced that it would push for an international boycott of the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA).
Britain's Minister of State for Universities and Science at the time, David Willetts, rejected initiatives for an academic boycott of Israel.
In December of 2018, the Student Government Assembly (SGA) at New York University (NYU) voted in favor of a BDS-type resolution calling for the divestment of companies that do business with the IDF.
In early March of 2019, the student government at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania voted to approve a resolution calling on the school to divest from companies that do business with Israel related to Judea and Samaria.