(Commentary) Martin Kramer - As an Israeli educator, I'm strongly opposed to the academic boycott of Israel, especially by American academic associations. But there's one exception: the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), whose conference I attended last week. MESA has mostly become a pro-Palestine political society whose members just happen to be academics. If MESA were to decide in favor of an academic boycott, I'd have a field day, since I've been asserting for many years that MESA isn't what it claims to be (a "non-political association" according to its bylaws). So when MESA plunged into boycott politics before and during its annual conference in Washington, I figured it was a win-win. Boycott defeated? Win for Israel and scholarly freedom. Boycott adopted? Vindication of MESA's critics, myself included. People in the know have told me that the resolution that was adopted would be still worse were it not for the heroic, behind-the-scenes efforts of MESA's current president, Nathan Brown, a George Washington University political scientist. He's said to have steered a compromise: a resolution that the BDSers can cite as progress, but which falls short of endorsing a boycott.
2014-12-05 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive