(JNS) Menachem Wecker - The membership of the American Anthropological Association voted 71% to 29% on July 24 to boycott Israeli academic institutions, referring to Israeli "apartheid" and Israeli universities' "complicity in violating Palestinian rights." Just 37% of the membership voted, with 2,016 approving the resolution and 835 opposing it. According to the new resolution, the AAA will no longer list Israeli academic institutions in its published materials nor allow Israeli institutions to interview job candidates at association facilities. It also will bar journals owned by Israeli institutions from republishing AAA-published materials and will prevent the institutions from participating in AAA conferences and events. Sergei Kan, professor of anthropology at Dartmouth College, told JNS, that "the association has been increasingly hijacked by the radical... Israel-haters." Don Seeman, an anthropologist and associate professor of religion and of Jewish studies at Emory University, said, "When policymakers and ordinary people increasingly mock or ignore the insights of professional anthropology, the profession need look no further than this sort of rank politicization to understand why. We have become an echo chamber of the most extreme and insupportable views....The continual singling out of Israel from among every nation on the planet - including those with far more despicable human rights records - is, despite all protestations to the contrary, an expression of antisemitism."
2023-07-27 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive