After members of the American Studies Association voted in December to institute a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, numerous academic institutions have denounced the action.
They include the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the president and provost of Lawrence University in Appleton.
On Jan. 10, UW Chancellor Rebeca Blank on her blog issued a statement saying, “I disagree strongly with the ASA boycott approach. Political disagreements with the government of a country should not limit our ability to reach out to and collaborate with academic institutions and scholars from that country on projects that we consider valuable. Here at UW-Madison, academic freedom continues to be our tradition and one of our defining values.”
On Jan. 7, Lawrence University President Mark Burstein and the Provost and Dean of the Faculty David Burrows issued a joint statement on the topic.
“Whatever our political commitments, whatever the nature of any government’s policies, no boycott should interfere with this freedom of academic discourse either here or at universities elsewhere in the world,” they wrote.
“So we have joined the officers of other American universities, the American Association of University Professors, the Executive Committee of the Association of American Universities, and the President of the American Council on Education — all of whom oppose the call by the Association of American Studies to boycott Israeli academic institutions,” they wrote.
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