(Wall Street Journal Europe) Jonathan Marks - The national council of the American Studies Association (ASA) voted unanimously to endorse a resolution to boycott Israel and send it to the full membership for a vote. On Monday the ASA announced that 66% of its members voted in favor of the boycott. It is heartening that eight past presidents of the American Studies Association, along with more than 50 other members, signed a letter calling the resolution "discrimination pure and simple." We can expect to continue to be distracted from the profound problems facing American higher education by the attempts of a determined minority to ensure that scholars who have no special knowledge of or insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict put their credentials in the service of the anti-Israel fringe. The writer is a professor of politics at Ursinus College.
2013-12-17 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive