Members of the American studies association (ASA) have voted in favor of endorsing the academic boycott of Israel in response to its racist policies against the Palestinian academics and students and their institutions.
The boycott step made the ASA the second major US scholarly association, after the association for Asian American studies, to do so.
Of the 1,252 votes cast, 66.1 percent of members endorsed the boycott, 30.5 percent rejected it and 3.4 percent abstained.
Members of the ASA who voted in favor of the boycott say they are seeking to increase the academic freedom of Palestinians.
The boycott resolution approved by a plurality of ASA members cites as a rationale the lack of "effective or substantive academic freedom for Palestinian students and scholars under conditions of Israeli occupation", and calls on the association to boycott Israeli higher education institutions, which are described as being "a party to Israeli state policies that violate human rights and negatively impact the working conditions of Palestinian scholars and students."
"I think what the vote indicates is that people recognize the illegal occupation of Palestine as one of the major civil rights issues of our time globally," said Bill Mullen, a professor of English and American studies at Purdue university and a member of the ASA’s caucus on academic and community activism.
"American scholars now understand the physical violence that is part of the Israeli occupation; they understand the massive restrictions on academic freedom for Palestinian scholars that is part of living under an illegal occupation. These facts are now irrefutable to so many people that the vote indicates a kind of coming to consensus around the illegitimacy of Israel’s occupation of Palestine," Mullen added.
