Anthroplogists Vote to Boycott Israeli Academic Institutions with Nadia Abu el-Haj and Dan Segal

<p>In this podcast, SWANA Region Radio covers the American Anthropological Association’s ongoing vote on a referendum to boycott Israeli Academic Institutions, which continues through July 14: <a href="http://anthroboycott.org" target="_blank">anthroboycott.org</a>. With some 10,000 members, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) is one of the largest scholarly associations in the country and Anthropology is regarded as “a core discipline”. Since the scholarly organizations that have previously endorsed the academic boycott—for example, the Association for Asian American Studies, The American Studies Association, the National Women’s Studies Association, and recently the Middle East Studies Association—have often been tendentiously dismissed by opponents of the academic boycott as marginal or insignificant, AAA’s passage of this measure would be an important milestone in the continuing effort to get US higher education to engage in divestment from Israel’s apartheid and settler colonial regime. </p> <p><br></p> <p>Israeli academic institutions have been shown time and again not only to be complicit with but actually to be integral to the establishment and maintenance of Israel’s supremacist domination of Palestine, from the occupation of Palestinian land to the development of weapon systems, surveillance technology and military doctrine. No Israeli university or even faculty body has expressed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for human rights, let alone for liberation. At the same time, Israel continues its assault on Palestinian institutions of higher education, from military incursions on campuses and physical destruction of infrastructure to isolation and harassment of scholars and students alike. In the context of Palestinian civil society’s virtually unanimous call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] against Israel, the international movement for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel—as with South Africa decades ago--continues to be a key element in the struggle to end apartheid