Thursday, April 21, 2016

Penn State, Rutgers Profs Sue ASA over Israel Boycott

Several faculty members who belong to the American Studies Association have filed a lawsuit against their professional organization over ASA’s resolutions and actions to support a boycott of Israel. The lawsuit is framed along narrow lines, in order to improve its odds of winning. The gist is to claim that anti-Israel activists in ASA have acted outside the stated goals of the organization's official charter, which is filed with the IRS as a non-profit corporation.  Plaintiffs seek an injunction and damages in excess of $75,000. Details of the complaint are here.

No one will sue BDS activists for being hypocrites; but the point of the picture is that boycott activists should stop using Google for their boycotting activities after the Internet firm bought the most popular mapping app from an Israeli developer, Ehud Shabtai, for more than $1 billion. More fundamentally, BDS’s advocacy for boycotting Israeli universities is contrary to the academic norm of promoting the free exchange of ideas among scholars.


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