The American Anthropological Association (AAA) voted to reject a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions, Inside Higher Ed reported on Tuesday.
A little more than half the 9,359 voting members of the association participated in the vote, with 2,423 members voting against the boycott measure and 2,384 supporting it.
The AAA voted at its annual meeting last November to put a boycott resolution for a vote before the full membership. The earlier vote represented a little more than one-eighth of the organization’s total voting membership.
In big upset, @AmericanAnthro rejects #Israel boycott. To put this in context, they've voted to boycott Arizona. https://t.co/NjYZXEn1ve
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) June 7, 2016
Legal scholars Eugene Kontorovich and Steven Davidoff Solomon argued in The Wall Street Journal after the initial vote that anti-Israel boycotts usually violate the charters of the academic associations, thereby opening themselves up to lawsuits. As they observed when analyzing American Historical Association, which voted down a boycott resolution earlier this year:
[The association’s] constitution—a corporate charter—states that its purpose “shall be the promotion of historical studies” and the “broadening of historical knowledge among the general public.” There’s nothing in this charter that would authorize a boycott. And an anti-Israel boycott will do nothing to promote “historical studies” or broaden “historical knowledge.”
Michael B. Poliakoff, the Vice-President of Policy for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, wrote in The Tower in April that academic boycotts of Israel have “crossed too many lines of academic freedom and declared war on the free exchange of ideas and scholarship.”
[Photo: American Anthropological Association / YouTube ]