What Harriet Sherwood Forgot to Mention About the ASA ‘Boycott’
by Adam Levick
Though Guardian Jerusalem correspondent Harriet Sherwood consistently either ignores or plays down Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens, she rarely misses an opportunity to provide free PR for even the most marginal BDS and delegitimization campaigns targeting the Jewish State. Indeed, in December she of course found time to write an 800 word feature on a largely symbolic boycott resolution by a small number of American academics.
In attempting to impute significance to the motion, Sherwood wrote the following:
A prestigious US academic body has joined a growing movement to boycott Israel in protest at its treatment of Palestinians, in a move both welcomed and condemned in a bitterly divisive international arena…The American Studies Association (ASA), which has more than 5,000 members, is the most significant US academic organisation to back a boycott of Israeli educational institutions following a two-thirds majority vote.
Sherwood further contextualized the boycott motion as a victory amid the ongoing “international boycott drive against Israel.”
However, days before the ASA boycott vote was even cast, a more sober assessment on the potential anti-Israel resolution was published at this blog.
In his CiF Watch guest post on December 15, Jon (from the blog DivestThis!) argued that the ASA was setting itself up for failure, and that if the vote was to pass, “it will be a vote of an organization that has discredited itself, even before the rest of the academy marginalizes them still further by pointing out that…an academic boycott is the opposite of academic freedom“.
Then, following the vote, an interesting thing occurred: A remarkably large segment of American academia indeed took steps to marginalize the ASA and stand up for the principles of academic freedom threatened by the boycott resolution.
Thanks in part to the dogged efforts of tireless activists such as William A. Jacobson, the following is a current list (per Avi Mayer) of institutions whose presidents or chancellors have publicly rejected the ASA’s academic boycott of Israel:
- American University (President Cornelius M. Kerwin)
- Amherst College (President Carolyn A. Martin)
- Barnard College (President Debora Spar)
- Birmingham Southern College (President Charles C. Krulak)
- Boston University (President Robert A. Brown)
- Bowdoin College (President Barry Mills)
- Brandeis University (President Frederick M. Lawrence)
- Brooklyn College, CUNY (President Karen Gould)
- Brown University (President Christina Hull Paxton)
- Carnegie-Mellon University (President Subra Suresh)
- Case Western Reserve University (President Barbara R. Snyder)
- City University of New York (Interim Chancellor William P. Kelly)
- Colgate University (President Jeffrey Herbst)
- College of Charleston (President P. George Benson)
- Columbia University (President Lee C. Bollinger)
- Cornell University (President David Skorton)
- Dartmouth College (President Philip J. Hanlon)
- Dickinson College (President Nancy Roseman)
- Drexel University (President John A. Fry)
- Duke University (President Richard H. Brodhead)
- Emory University (President James Wagner)
- Florida Atlantic University (Interim President Dennis J. Crudele)
- Florida International University (President Mark B. Rosenberg)
- Fordham University (President Joseph M. McShane, S.J.)
- Franklin & Marshall College (President Daniel R. Porterfield)
- George Washington University (President Steven Knapp)
- Georgetown University (President John J. DeGioia)
- Goucher College (President Sanford J. Ungar)
- Hamilton College (President Joan Hinde Stewart)
- Harvard University (President Drew Gilpin Faust)
- Haverford College (President Daniel Weiss)
- Indiana University (President Michael McRobbie)
- Johns Hopkins University (President Ronald Joel Daniels)
- Kenyon College (President Sean M. Decatur)
- Lafayette College (President Alison Byerly)
- Lehigh University (President Alice P. Gast)
- Loyola University Maryland (President Rev. Brian F. Linnane, S.J.)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (President L. Rafael Reif)
- Michigan State University (President Lou Anna K. Simon)
- Middlebury College (President Ron Liebowitz)
- New York University (President John Sexton)
- Northwestern University (President Morton O. Schapiro)
- Ohio State University (President Joseph A. Alutto)
- Pennsylvania State University (President Rodney Erickson)
- Princeton University (President Christopher L. Eisgruber)
- Purdue University (President Mitch Daniels)
- Ramapo College (President Peter Philip Mercer)
- Rhode Island College (President Nancy Carriuolo)
- Rutgers University (President Robert Barchi)
- Smith College (President Kathleen McCartney)
- Stanford University (President John L. Hennessy)
- State University of New York (Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher)
- Swarthmore College (President Rebecca Chopp)
- Trinity College (President James F. Jones, Jr.)
- Tufts University (President Anthony P. Monaco)
- Tulane University (President Scott S. Cowen)
- University of Alabama (Chancellor Robert E. Witt)
- University of California System (President Janet Napolitano)
- University of California, Berkeley (Chancellor Nicholas Dirks)
- University of California, Davis (Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi)
- University of California, Irvine (Chancellor Michael V. Drake)
- University of California, San Diego (Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla)
- University of California, San Francisco (Chancellor Sue Desmond-Hellmann)
- University of Chicago (President Robert J. Zimmer)
- University of Cincinnati (President Santa J. Ono)
- University of Connecticut (President Susan Herbst)
- University of Delaware (President Patrick T. Harker)
- University of Florida (President J. Bernard Machen)
- University of Illinois System (President Robert A. Easter)
- University of Illinois at Chicago (Chancellor Paula Allen-Meares)
- University of Illinois at Springfield (Chancellor Susan J. Koch)
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Chancellor Phyllis Wise)
- University of Kansas (Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little)
- University of La Verne (President Devorah Lieberman)
- University of Maryland, Baltimore County (President Freeman Hrabowski)
- University of Maryland, College Park (President Wallace D. Loh)
- University of Miami (President Donna E. Shalala)
- University of Michigan (President Mary Sue Coleman)
- University of Minnesota (President Eric Kaler)
- University of Pennsylvania (President Amy Gutmann)
- University of Pittsburgh (Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg)
- University of Rochester (President Joel Seligman)
- University of Southern California (President C. L. Max Nikias)
- University of Texas, Austin (President William C. Powers)
- University of Vermont (President Tom Sullivan)
- Washington University in St. Louis (Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton)
- Wesleyan University (President Michael S. Roth)
- Willamette University (President Stephen Thorsett)
- Yale University (President Peter Salovey)
- Yeshiva University (President Richard M. Joel)
Additionally, the following institutions’ American Studies programs have formally withdrawn their membership in the American Studies Association (ASA) following the boycott vote:
One of the most eloquent denunciations of the boycott was issued by the President and Dean of Faculty of Trinity College in Connecticut:
To The Immediate Attention of the President of the American Studies Association:
Our Dean of the Faculty, Thomas Mitzel, and I wish to go on record renouncing the boycott of Israel on the part of the ASA.
Trinity once years back was an institutional member (we were then advertising for an open position), and apparently some members of our faculty are individual members. Were we still an institutional member, we would not be any longer after the misguided and unprincipled announcement of the boycott of the only democracy in the Middle East. The Dean and I oppose academic boycotts in general because they can so easily encroach upon academic freedom.
In this strange case, why the ASA would propose an academic boycott of Israel and not, for example, of Syria, the Sudan, North Korea, China, Iran, Iraq, or Russia escapes rational thought. Trinity has participated in the Rescue Scholar program since its inception; we have welcomed scholars from some of the most repressive countries on the planet, and it is inconceivable to us that we would ever be welcoming a Rescue Scholar fleeing Israel for political reasons.
As President of the ASA, you have tarnished a once distinguished association.
Moreover, there doesn’t seem to be a single university or major academic group in the U.S. supporting the boycott. Indeed, anyway you parse it, if the goal of the ASA – and its anti-Zionist supporters – was to create momentum for the boycott movement, they’ve clearly failed miserably at their task.
You can chalk this up as yet another major BDS Fail.
Adam Levick is the managing editor of CiF Watch, an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).