Thanking the Critical Ethnic Studies Association and the African Literature Association for Endorsing the Academic Boycott of Israel!

USACBI Congratulates and Thanks the Critical Ethnic Studies Association and the African Literature Association for Endorsing the Academic Boycott of Israel!

The US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) congratulates both the Critical Ethnic Studies Association (CESA) and the African Literature Association (ALA) following their recent, respective announcements to heed the call from Palestinian civil society and endorse the academic boycott of Israel.

As Palestinians residing in Gaza are faced with yet another brutal Israeli war that has killed than 500 Palestinians dead, and amidst the ongoing dispossession and erasure of the Palestinian people within historic Palestine and the Shatat, the international community must raise their voices and take action to pressure Israel.

We thank the membership of the African Literature Association, who passed a resolution endorsing the boycott at their 2014 meeting in Johannesburg. Their eloquent statement extends the spirit of the past boycott of Apartheid South Africa to highlight the many ways in which Palestinians and Palestinian students and academics are impacted by ongoing dispossession, racism and colonial violence.

We thank the ongoing engagement of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, which produced this resolution in support of academic boycott. The robust CESA statement lifts up various questions at the core of  Ethnic Studies scholarship about decolonization and liberation.

In response to the Palestinian call for the international community to engage in and utilize the tactics of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, US-based academics and student organizers have brought critical discussions on Palestine, Israel and US complicity to campuses across the country through boycott and divestment resolutions.

These historic motions follow other associations -

• The American Studies Association membership endorsement of a boycott resolution in December 2013
• The Native American and Indigenous Studies Association endorsement of a boycott resolution in December 2013
• The Association for Humanist Sociology endorsement of a boycott resolution in October 2013
• The Arab American Studies Association support of boycott and the ASA
• The Association of Asian American Studies endorsement of a boycott resolution in May 2013

As well as

• the withdrawal of keynote speakers from various Israeli conferences
• Stephen Hawking's refusal to participate in a conference hosted by president Shimon Peres
• Numerous student divestment resolution passed in Illinois, Connecticut, Florida and through-out California.

We encourage others to continue to organize within their academic institutions at this critical moment and to join more than one thousand academics in endorsing the academic boycott of Israel by signing on to USACBI.

*The US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) has organized to challenge growing ties between Israeli and US academic institutions and to challenge the Brand Israel project of normalizing Israel through cultural events.