IU responds to Israeli education boycott

IU President Michael McRobbie has withdrawn the University from the American Studies Association in response to the group’s recent endorsement of a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

Participants in the boycott are protesting Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, specifically regarding their academic and political freedoms.

McRobbie said in a press release he believes the boycott has a “chilling effect” on academic freedom.

“Indiana University values its academic relationships with colleagues and institutions around the world, including many important ones with institutions in Israel and will not allow political considerations such as those behind this ill-conceived boycott to weaken those relationships or undermine the principle of academic
freedom in this way,” McRobbie said in the release.

More than 90 other universities have spoken out against the boycott, including Purdue University and Northwestern University.

However, IU is among just a few schools to withdraw from the American Studies Association so far.

The ASA is the nation’s oldest and largest association devoted to the interdisciplinary study of American culture and history, according to its website. It has almost 5,000 members.

ASA’s boycott is part of a global justice movement involving human rights and international affairs.

“The academic freedom of Palestinian academics and students is severely hampered, if not altogether denied, by the Israeli state and its complicit institutions, including universities and research centers,” its website states.

The academic boycott honors the wishes of the Boycott, Divisions and Sanctions Movement, it adds.

According to the BDS Movement website, it aims to “end Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights.”
 
The Association of American Universities also spoke out against the boycott.
 
In a press release, representatives said it goes against the academic freedom not only of Israeli students, but also of American students who comply with the boycott.

“IU strongly supports the rights of individual faculty members to belong to the scholarly organizations of their choosing, but the University feels the boycott runs counter to IU’s institutional values,” said Mark Land, associate vice president of University Communications.

Land said IU’s withdrawal from the ASA will not affect students in any way, including study abroad opportunities in Israel.

“The boycott is inconsistent with IU’s many agreements with universities in Israel,” Land said.

This is not the first time a boycott has been called for.

In 2002, two university professors in the U.K. published an open letter in the Guardian calling for a boycott, and throughout the 2000s, there were similar
incidents. 

Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren called for a ban on academic boycotts against Israel in an article in Politico Magazine on Dec. 20.
“Such outrage sounds notes of moral clarity, even sanity, in a biased and dysfunctional academic environment,” Oren said.


— Sara Boyle