At the annual convention of the Modern Language Association held here earlier this month, the MLA’s delegate assembly passed a resolution critical of Israel for its visa policies. The resolution urges the U.S. State Department to challenge Israel’s “denials of entry to the West Bank by U.S. academics.”
None of this usually attracts much outside attention, but the session “Academic Boycotts: A Conversation About Israel and Palestine” had generated quite a bit of controversy. Coming just weeks after a smaller group, the American Studies Association, made news by passing an academic boycott of Israeli universities, this panel—as some MLA members noted—had a decidedly lopsided character. It didn’t look like there was anyone on it who might make a case against a boycott.
So I didn’t hear what the pro-boycott panelists had to say. I did, however, catch an unofficial, open-to-anyone alternative panel, “Perspectives Against Academic Boycotts,” that same afternoon. Led by Stanford University professor and former MLA president Russell Berman, it included Northern Michigan University professor Gabriel Brahm, who said the ASA resolution is an “academic boycott of the only robust democracy in the Middle East.” “The real harm of BDS is on U.S. campuses,” he said, where it’s been able to influence “uninformed undergraduates.”
Resolution 2014-1 will now go to the MLA executive council, which will decide in February whether it merits being put to the entire membership for a vote that could take place in the spring.
