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| The Grand Turk |
| American Studies Association discussing possible academic boycott of Turkey |
| 2016-07-22 |
| [LI] Yesterday I asked the question, in light of the academic purge in Turkey, Will anti-Israel academic boycotters now also boycott Turkish universities? As noted in that post, over 250 university presidents and major university associations have condemned the academic boycott of Israel. In particular, the December 2013 adoption of the academic boycott of Israel by the American Studies Association was condemned as violation of academic freedom. Read the dozens and dozens of statements describing how the ASA has violated academic freedom here. The American Association of University Professors, which has acted at the unofficial authority on academic freedom since the early 1900s, came out against the ASA’s academic boycott of Israel because it views any systematic academic boycott as destructive: The Association recognizes the right of individual faculty members or groups of academics not to cooperate with other individual faculty members or academic institutions with whom or with which they disagree. We believe, however, that when such noncooperation takes the form of a systematic academic boycott, it threatens the principles of free expression and communication on which we collectively depend.... We understand that threats to or infringements of academic freedom may occasionally seem so dire as to require compromising basic precepts of academic freedom, but we resist the argument that extraordinary circumstances should be the basis for limiting our fundamental commitment to the free exchange of ideas and their free expression. The ASA was unmoved. To the contrary, it doubled down on the academic boycott of Israel by threatening to bar representatives of Israeli academic institutions from attending its 2014 annual meeting in California. Only after threat of legal action under California’s anti-discrimination laws did ASA relent, and announced that even Bibi Netanyahu was welcome. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 hypocrisy: noun, plural hypocrisies. 1. a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess. 2. a pretense of having some desirable or publicly approved attitude. |
| Posted by: Blossom Unains5562 2016-07-22 22:31 |