US Universities Rejecting Academic Boycott of Israel

Called for by the American Studies Association

Dozens of American colleges and universities are rejecting an academic boycott of Israeli universities recently approved by the academic American Studies Association, the nation's oldest and largest association devoted to the interdisciplinary study of American culture and history. And a few schools said they are withdrawing from the organization.

The association's membership — or, rather, 66.05 percent of the 1,252 votes that came in from the group's 5,000 members — approved the boycott last week over the objections of numerous former presidents of the organization and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who angered activists by saying that he does not support a boycott of Israel (though he does support a boycott of Israeli products in the occupied territories).

Schools including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Princeton and Boston universities and the Universities of Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Texas at Austin  and others have slammed the boycott, issuing statements similar to one by Harvard President Drew Faust that said that academic boycotts "subvert the academic freedoms and values necessary to the free flow of ideas, which is the lifeblood of the worldwide community of scholars."

Comments

[Sevo]

..."academic boycotts "subvert the academic freedoms and values necessary to the free flow of ideas, which is the lifeblood of the worldwide community of scholars.""

Uh, the Association is "academic" in the way victim studies are "academic".
From Wiki: "in the last decade the American Studies Association has reflected the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of the field, creating particularly strong connections to other interdisciplines such as ethnic studies, gender studies, cultural studies and post- or de-colonial studies."
It's doubtful that these people are really not interested in any new developments; this is pity-party 24/7/365.
Why anyone pays attention to them is a mystery to me.