The ASA has about 5000 members. of these only 16.5% voted for the resolution.
Calling this a democratic decision is a distortion of the concept of democracy. At best this ASA decision to support a boycott of all Israeli Universities was reached by a small cabal, empowered by lack of interest by the majority of ASA members. All the more reason I am proud that a few days ago THE Ave Committee on Academic Awards* awarded its first Knowsitall Award to the American Studies Association for their position paper.
The award pointed out several examples where this position paper showed a starling departure from normal standards of academia by claiming to speak for an amorphously described set of Palestinians, blaming the problems in Israel Palestine on the false notion that Israel has a state religion, and asserting that Israel is racist because a small ultra religious town in Israel is not recruiting students from Palestine to the local college. If you want to read more about this, here is the ASA document with my comments.
I especially wonder how the ASA feels about the Israeli families who witnessed Israel’s release today of 26 Palestinian murderers? Will these families’ anger be assuaged by the ASA scholars’ calling them racists? However much we at TA want peace, this kind of pronunciation qualifies more for agitprop than anything one might expect from responsible academics and diminishes the credibility of the entire community of scholars who really do want peace.
Using their credentials as scholars in support of this sort of name calling is worthy of the arrogance award we gave them.