NYTimes | A
movement to pressure and isolate Israel gained further ground among
American academics on Saturday, when the Modern Language Association
took a step toward approving a resolution calling on the State
Department to contest what it characterized as Israel’s discriminatory
“denials of entry” to American scholars seeking to visit the West Bank
to work at Palestinian universities.
After
nearly three hours of fractious debate and procedural maneuvering, the
group’s delegate assembly voted 60 to 53 to adopt the resolution, which
will be submitted to the group’s nearly 28,000 members after review by
its executive council. If it is approved, the Modern Language
Association would be the fourth, and by far the largest, such group to
endorse a measure critical of Israel in the past year.
The travel resolution did not call for a boycott like the one announced last month by the American Studies Association, which has prompted a backlash, including statements from more than 100 university presidents criticizing boycotts as a threat to academic freedom.
The
group’s delegate assembly also voted against considering a second
resolution, introduced by its Radical Caucus, to condemn the “attacks on
the A.S.A.” and defend the right of individual scholars and groups to
“take positions in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against
racism.”
But
among partisans on both sides, the debate on the resolution was seen as
an important skirmish in the larger battle over the international boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, known as B.D.S.
“The
main goal of the process is raising awareness of egregious and
decades-long complicity of Israeli institutions in the regime of
occupation, colonialism and apartheid,” Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian
founder of B.D.S., said on Thursday after participating in a round-table
discussion of academic boycotts.
