How the American Studies Association shot itself and the BDS movement in the foot
Greetings from Boston, where I am working for the next week or so.
The US House and Senate passed and sent to President Obama on Wednesday Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) which constitute by far the most effective way of combating BDS: They
bar trade agreements with countries that boycott Israel. That's you, Europe!
Congressman Peter Roskam (R-IL), who has been instrumental in anti-BDS legislation, issued the following statement today:
Today, Congressman Peter Roskam (IL-06), co-chair of the
House Republican Israel Caucus, released the following statement after
House and Senate passage of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation,
which includes bipartisan language Roskam authored to combat the
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. These
provisions, which were originally introduced as Roskam’s H.R. 825, the
U.S.-Israel Trade and Commercial Enhancement Act, were unanimously
adopted into the House and Senate versions of TPA in April.
“Today, for the first time in nearly four decades, Congress sent
legislation to the President’s desk to combat efforts to isolate and
delegitimize the State of Israel. The recent wave of boycotts
originating in Europe, including French telecom company Orange’s
decision this month to sever ties with Israel, demands a robust response
from the United States. This is that response. The bipartisan TPA
provisions I authored are simple: if you want free trade with the United
States, you can’t boycott Israel. After today, discouraging economic
warfare against Israel will be central to our free trade negotiations
with the European Union. Congress will not be complicit in the
marginalization of our ally Israel by watching these attacks from the
sidelines. Instead, we have decided to fight back against the BDS
movement and ensure the continued strength of the U.S.-Israel
relationship.”
Those trade provisions, however, did not just happen.
The Jerusalem Post
accurately traces the passage today of trade legislation with strong
anti-boycott language directly to the ASA boycott (emphasis added):
“Four decades have passed since Congress last agreed on a
law pushing back against boycotts of Israel worldwide. That streak was
broken by the Senate Wednesday, at a moment perhaps prescient, as
European capitals consider new measures to highlight and punish Israel’s
continued “occupation” of the West Bank….
TPA, which passed through the Senate and landed on the president’s
desk, includes roughly 150 trade negotiating objectives – requirements
of the president, as mandated by Congress, to raise specific US
priorities in its negotiations.
One of those objectives is to push back against efforts within the EU
to sponsor the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement
against Israel….
The process began
with a December 2013 op-ed in Politico Magazine written by Michael Oren,
then Israel’s ambassador to the United States, which challenged
Congress to respond to the American Studies Association’s decision to
boycott Israel – by no means the first protest of its kind, but an early sign of what was to come from similar organizations based in Europe.
A letter of support circulated around Capitol Hill, signatures were
collected, and a bill was ultimately passed reinforcing Congress’s
commitment to academic freedom. But the concern lay in the tactic.
What if measures taken by ASA were used by other organizations
against Israel as a form of economic warfare? Several congressmen,
including Roskam, made note that the first free trade agreement signed
by the US was with Israel. They sought a legislative solution with
teeth: a bill that would establish any future trade pact with foreign
nations boycotting Israel as being in direct contravention of the
existing US-Israel Free Trade Agreement.
That’s right folks, the ASA boycott may not have hurt Israel much,
but it led directly to the trade legislation which has dealt a damaging
blow to the BDS movement.
For more on the ASA's pivotal role in this legislation,
read the whole thing.
Labels: American Studies Association, BDS, boycott divest sanction, boycott Israel, epic fail, free trade
#BDS_Fail: American Studies Association drops boycott of Israel, claims there never was one
As you might recall, in December 2013, the American Studies Association
adopted a boycott of Israel. They have now dropped that boycott. In fact, they have gone so far as to claim that
it never existed.
What is clear is t[h]at the ASA decided, in a widely-publicized move, to discriminate against some Israeli academics. Now, the ASA says it will not discriminate against any Israeli academics. The Conference is open to “everyone,” the group says, even, as the ASA’s executive director explained to me, “representatives of Israeli institutions.”
That is a clear revision of the original boycott action. Indeed, as David Bernstein noted at the time,
the boycott was always narrow potentially to point of irrelevancy;
narrowing it further constitutes a complete retraction of the boycott as
applied to academics. The remaining portion of the boycott bars formal
relationships with Israeli institutions, which required no change in the
group’s action – the boycott is a null set.
But the ASA does not
just say that they’ve jettisoned their discrimination against Israeli
academics. Worried about potential civil rights litigation threats from
the intrepid American Center for Law and Justice, they claim there never was any boycott
of any Israelis at all. As evidence of this, the say no one falling
within the parameters of the boycott tried to participate in the conference, and thus no one was subject to national origin discrimination.
This
argument is beyond silly. When one hangs a sign on the door, “No Blacks
Allowed,” or in this case, “Entry by Israelis Restricted,” it is not a
defense to a civil rights action that none ever try to get in. The
purpose of the policy is to turn them away before they even knock. The
deterrent effectiveness of their policy does eliminate its
discriminatory nature.
The ASA also says that even its original
ban on Israel academic “representatives and ambassadors” was quite
narrow. This would not be clear to an outside observer. Academics
typically go to conference as representatives of their schools – going
to conferences is part of their job. The institution’s name appears on
their name tag. People who are not at schools may be identified as
“independent scholars,” but people who are at an institution are not
independent, they are with that institution.
Much of the credit for the boycott being dropped goes to Cornell Law Professor Bill Jacobson, who has been all over the ASA since the beginning through his blog,
Legal Insurrection.
Labels: academic boycott, American Studies Association, BDS
LA hotel won't exclude Israelis in compliance with academic boycott
As you might recall, the American Studies Association has
implemented an academic boycott of Israelis. The group is holding its annual meeting at the Los Angeles Westin Bonaventure Hotel and the Washington Post reported last week that, in compliance with the group's wishes, the hotel planned to
exclude Israelis from staying at the hotel during the meeting.
In early November, the American Studies Association will be having
its annual meeting at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. Per
the ASA’s recently adopted policy, Israeli academics will be subject to
unique exclusionary restrictions based on their national origin.
The use of a public accommodation for such a discriminatory event has led a civil rights group to warn the hotel that hosting the conference could violate California’s civil rights laws.
The Unruh Civil Rights Act provides that “no business establishment of
any kind whatsoever shall discriminate against, boycott or blacklist, or
refuse to buy from, contract with, sell to, or trade with any person in
this state on account of” national origin and other characteristics. It
also extends liability to those who “aid or incite” a denial or rights
under the law.
I am not an expert on the application of
California’s anti-discrimination laws, but the notion that a public
accommodation cannot host an event that itself violates the law would at
least seem consistent with the text of the statute. I also happen to generally disfavor anti-discrimination laws
on, among other things, First Amendment (free association) grounds, but
unfortunately for the ASA, these arguments do not fare well in courts.
The
ASA’s argument that it does not bar Israelis, but only Israelis who
attend as representatives of their academic institutions, will not
likely help them much, as the normal way for academics to attend
academic conferences is as representatives of their institutions. In any
case, this argument amounts to saying the ACA is not discriminating as
much as they could have, which is not an advisable defense in
discrimination cases.
But even the International Tennis Federation
eventually got it. And
so did the ASA. They've backed off.
Professor Kontorovich’s blog post apparently got under the skin of
the ASA, as it wrote to Prof. Kontorovich claiming that there was no
boycott of any individuals whatsoever, as Prof. Kontorovich describes in
a follow up post, ASA pretends to partially drop Israel boycott:
The ASA’s executive director, John Stephens, wrote to me
demanding a correction, claiming that my description of their policy was
entirely “false.” Stephens claims that despite the boycott
Our conference is open to anyone, including Israeli
academics and non-academics. If someone were to register for the
conference as a representative of an Israeli institution, he or she
would not be turned away.
* * *
Stephens went on to write that:
[The ASA] does not bar Israelis, it does not bar Israeli institutions. Prime Minister Netanyahu can attend if he wants to.
But their very own policy makes clear that it excludes Israeli
institutions and their “representatives,” as well as those of the
“Israeli government,” of which Netanyahu would be a prime example.
As Prof. Kontorovich further demonstrates, since the ACLJ letter, the ASA has added language to its policy (indicated by an asterisk):
Heh.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: American Studies Association, BDS, constitution, Los Angeles
American Studies Association President-elect holding 'secret' anti-Israel conference at NYU
If you're not busy this weekend, Lisa Duggan the President-elect of the American Studies Association, is holding a 'secret' anti-Israel conference, the agenda of which she published (above) on her Facebook page.
But the most curious part is that this conference is supposed to be a
secret....
And for those of you - like me - who are solicited multiple times each year for donations to NYU, the university is apparently sponsoring this conference.
It is unclear whether this conference is officially sponsored by NYU itself. The registration webpage
says all questions should go to NYU, implying that this is an official
university event and not just part of the American Studies Program.
Keep that in mind the next time they ask you to whip out your checkbook.
Labels: American Studies Association, anti-Israel obsession, BDS
If you can't respond, smear
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone from Boston.
I've talked many times about my college alma mater, Bir Zeit on the Hudson. But I haven't talked much about the place that turned me into a political conservative - uber Leftist New York University. I went to law school at NYU from 1980-84 (I was JD/MBA - hence the extra year), and during the 1980 Presidential campaign - in which I backed Ronald Reagan against the Jew-hating Jimmy Carter - I became a political conservative because of the complete tone-deafness of NYU's 'liberal' atmosphere to anything that wasn't the party line.
The driving forces behind the American Studies Association's
boycott of Israel are apparently all at NYU. Richard Behar tried reasoning with them.
This was the response he got.
Five hours after my piece appeared online I received an email from
that person. It was not what I expected. Here it is, in its entirety.
“Curtis Marez does not teach at UC Davis,” Prof. Duggan’s email
began, in a reference to the outgoing ASA president. “Our conference,”
she continued, “was not held in San Diego.”
When I read this, I was mortified. Stupid, piddling errors like these
don’t belong in an article. But I had already made the corrections long
before her email. (In the first case, the link to the college
where Marez teaches was correct, but not his school’s name. In the
second matter, I had incorrectly placed the conference in the city where
Marez, the boycott resolution’s spokesperson, works and lives.)
OK. What else did I get wrong? The rest of the email said as follows:
“I could go on. But the number of errors in your obsessive screed are so numerous…. [ellipses in original].”
Wait a minute. Two minor errors, fixed hours before her email, she
points out to me, but there were “numerous” other errors that she can’t
bring herself to articulate? What were those errors?
Was my article an “obsessive screed?” I suppose that’s a value
judgment, though I feel it’s a little harsh. But as I continued to read
the email, that was a compliment compared to what came next:
“Do you realize that you sound, well, unbalanced? Which is a shame
because I hear you wrote some really great pieces about Scientology! I
hope you can take xanax and relax a bit?”
When you can’t refute the facts, smear and insult, I guess. (I responded
in kind, for which I immediately apologized. There was no reciprocity.)
Read the whole thing. Some academic discussion....
Labels: academic boycott, American Studies Association, boycott Israel
