The French organization AURDIP (Association des Universitaires pour le Respect du Droit International en Palestine) has recently released the report of a delegation to Palestine of 8 academics from 5 European countries.  The full report on conditions for Palestinian scholars, teachers and students under occupation and blockade is available he…[Read more]

Guest Editors: Dr. S. Shankar, Department of English, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, USA, and Dr. Charu Gupta, Department of History, University of Delhi, India.

Submit: 400-word abstracts to S. Shankar (subraman@hawaii.edu) and Charu Gupta (charu7@hotmail.com) by September 15, 2015

Life Narratives (biographies, autobiographies, Fa…[Read more]

The MLA Executive Council has issued a statement against the censorship of controversial speech and reaffirmed its endorsement of academic freedom.

http://www.mla.org/ec_censorship_controversial

This brief essay by Talal Asad gives a very economical account of the rationale and necessity of academic boycott:

Talal Asad: Why do I support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement?

See the ACLA website for the State of the Discipline Report, which includes an entry on “Academic Boycott” in the Ideas of the Decade section.

http://stateofthediscipline.acla.org/entry/academic-boycott

For anyone who doubts the apartheid nature of the Israeli occupation, this documentation from the respected Israeli Human Rights organization B’Tselem makes for disturbing viewing and reading.  http://www.btselem.org/hebron/20150401_separation_fence_in_hebron

In discussions of the boycott’s potential impact on “academic freedom”, one thing that is consistently ignored is the impact of occupation and colonization on Palestinian academics and students.  This report outlines some of the conditions in which they struggle to maintain the basic functions of a university.  As it remarks, “The grim realities e…[Read more]

Joining the Executive Committees of the West Asian Literatures Discussion Group, the Arabic Literature Division’s , and the Division on Marxism, Literature, and Society, the MLA’s Division on Ethnic Studies in Language and Literature Executive Committee has voted to support the resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. MLA Members for J…[Read more]

http://www.salon.com/2015/02/25/its_ugly_it%E2%80%99s_vicious_it%E2%80%99s_brutal_cornel_west_on_israel_in_palestine_%E2%80%94_and_why_gaza_is_the_hood_on_steroids/