http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/12/kangaroo-boycott/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=f924263a6f-Mosaic_2013_12_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-f924263a6f-41165129
By a two-thirds margin of the third of its 5,000 members who cast ballots, the American Studies Association (ASA) has passed a “Resolution on Academic Boycott of Israel,” joining the Association for Asian American Studies as the second U.S. academic professional association to boycott Israeli academic institutions for their complicity in the “Israeli occupation of Palestine” and various injustices related to it. Next up the Modern Language Association. The ASA has made its decision, to paraphrase that great perpetrator of American-settler colonialism, Andrew Jackson, and now Israeli universities need to figure out what just what exactly they can do so that the ASA might one day rescind its enforcement.
Unfortunately, the ASA provides little clue. Though its members would presumably object to a system of crime and punishment that delineates neither the terms of the crime, nor the length of the punishment, nor the means to achieve restitution for it—indeed, presumably that’s one of the many features of the “occupation” the ASA finds objectionable, as well it should—they have nevertheless enacted a measure that does just that.
“What is required for an Israeli university to no longer be subject to the boycott?” Well that, the ASA’s response begins, is a “difficult question to answer.” More difficulty ensues. “The boycott is designed to put real and symbolic pressure on universities to take an active role in ending the Israeli occupation and in extending equal rights to Palestinians. The international boycott, divestment, and sanctions [BDS] movement has called for a boycottto be in effect until these conditions are met.”