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For about a year, the American Studies Assn. has been offering a very public object lesson in how to destroy a scholarly organization. Ostensibly devoted to the study of all things American, the 5,000-member academic cohort has ventured outside its natural borders and into the crossfire of Israeli-Palestinian politics by voting to bestow pariah status on Israel. The decision to morph from a scholarly association into a political action committee has proved disastrous for the group and the discipline it purports to represent, undermining its credibility, alienating many of its practitioners and betraying what should be a bedrock commitment to the American values that used to define the field.
Here's the back story. Last November, the ASA put forward a motion to its membership, backed unanimously by its national council, "to honor the call of Palestinian civil society for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions." Instigated by activists rallying under the BDS banner -- boycotts, divestment and sanctions -- the resolution was part of a coordinated international movement dedicated to isolating Israel economically and culturally.
The BDS campaign has made serious headway into the academic precincts of Europe, a region with a richer tradition of anti-Israel, not to say anti-Semitic agitation, than the United States, but it had lacked a major beachhead on this side of the Atlantic. What the...