A coalition of groups supporting academic freedom and opposed to the BDS movement have called on a dozen universities to withdraw from the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) over its recent endorsement of an academic boycott of Israel.
In letters sent to the universities, the coalition of four organizations – the Academic Engagement Network, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and the AMCHA Initiative – addressed campus officials whose Middle East studies programs and foreign language instruction have received four-year federal grants of between one and two million dollars.
“An academic boycott of Israel, if implemented, would seek to derail the academic opportunities of students and faculty who desire to study in and about Israel, end the many formal partnerships your university has with educational and training institutions in Israel, and thwart extensive faculty research initiatives and collaborations at Israeli institutions and with Israeli scholars,” the letter said.
“All of these boycott-compliant actions would directly and substantively harm your university’s students and faculty.”
In March, MESA members voted 768-167 in favor of a pro-BDS resolution “endorsing the Palestinian call for solidarity in the form of boycotts, divestment and sanctions.” The resolution called for an “academic boycott” of Israeli institutions, including universities.
“Our members have cast a clear vote to answer the call for solidarity from Palestinian scholars and students experiencing violations of their right to education and other human rights,” the group’s president, Eve Troutt Powell, said in a statement. “MESA’s Board will work to honor the will of its members and ensure that the call for an academic boycott is upheld without undermining our commitment to the free exchange of ideas and scholarship.”
The four organizations pointed out in their letter that the guidelines of the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) – endorsed by MESA – reject “the normalization of Israeli in the academy… [and] also encourages the censuring, denigration, protest and exclusion of pro-Israel individuals.”
“Recent studies have shown that these PACBI-compliant behaviors are strongly linked to acts targeting Jewish and pro-Israel students for harm – including assault, vandalism, harassment and suppression of speech – and that the presence and number of faculty who support academic BDS are strongly correlated with every measure of campus anti-Semitism,” they wrote.
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law called for each university to publicly acknowledge the dangers of an academic boycott of Israel and the fact that it would single out Jewish students and faculty.
“In addition to urging the universities to sever ties with MESA, [Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law] and these likeminded groups recommend each university publicly acknowledge and denounce the direct harm that an academic boycott of Israel would cause students and faculty on their own campuses and provide assurances that they will not allow their faculty to implement an anti-Israel academic boycott," the Louis D. Brandeis Center said.