The series of votes at the Delegate Assembly at the MLA convention in Vancouver showed some significant weaknesses to BDS and limits to its support. It’s important to look at the results closely and draw some conclusions.

Five votes deserve scrutiny: the initial vote to adopt the Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee (DAOC) two-year moratorium…[Read more]

The recent Delegate Assembly meeting in Vancouver included a robust discussion on a set of issues, prompted by the clash of two different proposed resolutions–one supporting academic boycotts, one opposing them. The Delegate Assembly Organizing  Committee has wisely created space for discussion of these matters (an agreement that included a…[Read more]

Call for Papers Special Issue of American Jewish History dedicated to Material Culture

American Jewish History is currently seeking submissions for a special issue on material culture, guest-edited by Laura Leibman (Reed College).  The journal offers articles on every aspect of the American Jewish experience and is the most widely recognized…[Read more]

Call for Submissions: In geveb, a Journal of Yiddish Studies
We are proud to announce In geveb, a new online journal of Yiddish Studies. In geveb is an open-access digital forum for the publication of peer-reviewed academic articles, the translation and annotation of Yiddish texts, the presentation of digitized archival documents, the exchange of…[Read more]

Individual MLA members willing to help promote a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be interested in joining the One Voice Movement: http://www.onevoicemovement.org

This is “an international grassroots movement that amplifies the voice of mainstream Israelis and Palestinians, empowering them to propel their elected re…[Read more]

This roundtable reopened a longstanding debate on the place of the author, the function of authorship, and the challenge of competing literatures in an expanding literary canon, one that seeks to include global Englishes, world literatures, and multiple perspectives (animal studies, ecological studies, disability studies, etc). Prompted in large…[Read more]

The DAOC program involves an extended, two-year  discussion of topics relevant to the boycott–in order to explore their complexity and in order to inform the membership. These would seem to be desirable goals.

A disheartening outcome of the DA was that, in the initial vote as to whether to accept the DAOC proposal, about one third of the DA…[Read more]

The Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee has initiated a series of venues (including this commons group) to discuss issues around BDS. In particular, it dedicated much of the open discussion section of the DA meeting to this: these are opportunities to get insight into the various opinions at stake.

One key take-away for me from the DA…[Read more]

What happened at the Delegate Assembly meeting?