Amid the clamor over the American Studies Association’s resolution endorsing the boycott of Israeli universities, the Middle East Studies Association has been more or less silent. The association’s Committee on Academic Freedom last weighed in on the subject of academics boycotts in 2005, issuing a letter opposing them after Britain’s Association of University Teachers approved a resolution to cut off academic cooperation with Haifa and Bar-Ilan Universities. “We find thoroughly objectionable the call of the AUT to refrain from any and all scholarly interaction with the entire professional staff of two universities because of the policies of the state in which they are situated,” the committee wrote then.
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