“Academic Freedom” at American Universities: The ASA Boycott and Bard College
By Amith Gupta (Amith Gupta graduated from Bard College in 2012, and currently works as the Communications Officer for the Tadamon Council in Egypt.) This is the second piece about the American Studies Association’s academic boycott of Israeli institutions which I have had the displeasure of writing. My previous piece, submitted as a rebuttal to American Interest in response to a Bard College professor’s fairly slipshod commentary about the boycott, has not yet been published anywhere officially. You can find a copy of it here. I feel compelled to write this second piece based on my experiences at Bard College, which I believe to be a fairly typical small liberal arts college. I found out earlier today that Bard College President Leon Botstein, closing ranks with other college presidents, has condemned the ASA boycott of Israeli institutions. When I arrived as a student at Bard College in the fall of 2009, I had just finished a nearly month-long visit to occupied Palestine as an International Solidarity Movement volunteer. I remembered quite vividly that the ISM organizers in Palestine did not consider visiting Palestine briefly to be a successful form of solidarity activism. Hisham Jamjoum, the ISM trainer in Ramallah, commented, “this is only 20% of the work. 80% is when you go back to your home countries.” I interpreted this as a call to found an ISM chapter at Bard College, both to do Palestine solidarity-oriented student activism and as a means of training any locals who had any intention of going to Palestine to participate in non-violent activism. full: http://louisproyect.org/2014/01/05/academic-freedom-at-american-universities-the-asa-boycott-and-bard-college/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
