This forum has been created to enable full discussion of a resolution calling on the MLA to honor the Palestinian civil society call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions until Israel respects its obligations towards the Palestinian people under international law and norms of human rights. The resolution will be debated publicly at the MLA conferences in 2015 and 2016 and is scheduled for a Delegate Assembly vote in 2017. This will enable members to inform themselves on the issues and arguments and to engage in exhaustive deliberation on the issue. We encourage free and open discussion on this forum, though expect that the normal rules of etiquette will be respected by all contributors, despite the controversial nature of the topic.
The discussion in the group is open to all readers, but only logged-in MLA members may contribute. Please see also the discussion taking place in the group Scholarship, Censorship, Exclusion.
[Avatar used by permission of PACBI.org.]
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Hania A.M. Nashef deposited Suppressed Nakba Memories in Palestinian female narratives Susan Abulhawa’s The Blue Between Sky and Water and Radwa Ashour’s The Woman from Tantoura in the group
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 5 months, 1 week agoIsraeli officials have long denied that rape was used as an instrument of war against Palestinians. Most of the files relating to the expulsion of Palestinians during the Nakba in 1948 and its aftermath remain sealed in Israeli archives and have been reclassified as top secret. Palestinian oral narratives have long been considered a poor…[Read more]
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Hania A.M. Nashef deposited Virtual Space: Palestinians Negotiate a Lost Homeland in Film in the group
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 1 year, 6 months agoIn his seminal study, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, Eyal Weizman argues how the Israeli occupation has forced a new imagined space to emerge, which is at once confining to the Palestinians and increases their sense of marginalization and loss. Changing the landscape through imposing architecture construction is a way to…[Read more]
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Hania A.M. Nashef deposited Palestinian Culture and the Nakba: Bearing Witness in the group
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 2 years, 10 months agoThe Nakba not only resulted in the loss of the homeland, but also caused the dispersal and ruin of entire Palestinian communities. Even though the term Nakba refers to a singular historic event, the consequence of 1948 has symptomatically become part of Palestinian identity, and the element that demarcates who the Palestinian is. Palestinian exile…[Read more]
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Hania A.M. Nashef deposited A dialogue beyond the nation-state: Darwish’s Mural and Shehadeh’s A Rift in Time: Travels with my Ottoman Uncle in the group
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 3 years, 7 months agoEven though postcolonial theory has helped in the critique of non-western texts, it has for the most part failed to engage with the Arab region and its literatures in spite of Edward Said’s seminal book, Orientalism. Robert Young argues that postcolonial theory since its inception has been concerned with the politics of invisibility, striving to m…[Read more]
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David C. Lloyd started the topic BDS and the Inversion of Victimhood in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 8 months agoSubmitted by faculty members in MLA-related fields at Israeli universities
This statement, at MLABoycott’s website, is presented anonymously by Israeli academics who support the boycott of Israeli universities. The faculty are forced to sign anonymously because of a 2011 law passed by the Israeli parliament that prohibits support for BDS among I…[Read more]
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David C. Lloyd started the topic Judith Butler and Ariella Azoulay on the logic of the academic boycott in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 8 months agoBoth Judith Butler and Ariella Azoulay have recently posted at MLABoycott’s site, articulating their rationale for supporting the boycott of Israeli academic institutions at this time.
“The boycott targets the Israeli regime, not Israeli citizens, unless they act as representatives of the regime. What, then, is the position of…[Read more]
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David C. Lloyd started the topic Jeff Sacks responds to Anthony Appiah in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 8 months agoThis open letter by Jeff Sacks, in response to Anthony Apia’s recent blog on the Commons, appeared in the online journal Jadaliyya: http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/25811/an-open-letter-to-kwame-anthony-appiah-president-o
Sacks writes:
With all of the talk about academic freedom, what is this “freedom” that we are talking about, if it is n…[Read more]
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Hatem Akil started the topic Invitation to the sessions of the Forum on Global Arab/ Arab American Literature in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 8 months agoHello everyone,
We hope you will join us for the following panels organized for the 2017 MLA by the Global Arab and Arab American Literature Forum. They are as follows (sorry for cross-posting)
Session 200: States of In/Security: Global Palestine in Literature, Culture, Art, and Activism<b>
</b>Friday, 6 January, 8:30–9:45 a.m., 104B, Pe…[Read more] -
David C. Lloyd started the topic John Berger (1926-2017): critic, essayist and BDS advocate in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 8 months agoWe have received the sad news that the great essayist and art critic John Berger died today, January 2, at age 90. He was a principled supporter of BDS. In 2006 he wrote what is referred to as The Berger Letter, endorsing the cultural boycott of Israel institutions. It reads in part:
“As Nelson Mandela has pointed out, boycott is not a…[Read more]
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David C. Lloyd started the topic Statements from academics and students in Palestinian higher education in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 8 months ago<div class=”entry-content”>
Objections to the MLA Boycott resolution uniformly focus on its supposed abridgement of academic freedom to individual scholars in the US or in Israel without any concern for the educational rights of Palestinians. Purposefully obfuscating the case, critics of the boycott resolution brush past the resolution’s de…[Read more]
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David C. Lloyd started the topic Daniel Boyarin on the boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 8 months agoJewish Studies scholar Daniel Boyarin has issued the following statement about academic boycott:
“I am on record, even on Israeli television, as a supporter of BDS and of a limited academic boycott as well. By limited boycott I mean that I do not countenance boycotts of individuals (Let he who is sinless cast the first stone) but of institutions…[Read more]
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David C. Lloyd started the topic Jacques Lezra and Tim Reiss respond to Anthony Appiah in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 8 months agoIn a recent blog issues in his capacity as MLA President, Anthony Appiah addressed the current debate around justice and academic freedom for our Palestinian colleagues.
MLA Colleagues Bill Mullen, Jacques Lezra and Tim Reiss respond here:
Bill Mullen
As a supporter of the MLA resolution to boycott Israeli universities, I would like to make…[Read more]
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David C. Lloyd started the topic Cary Nelson's Support for Boycott of Academic Institutions in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 8 months agoThe following extracts are from an in-depth report on Cary Nelson’s shifting and often inconsistent pronouncements on academic freedom and boycotts that appeared in Mondoweiss in 2014. It is gratifying to know that Nelson supports and participates in academic boycotts, if under conditions of his own choosing.
Boycotting universities for labor…[Read more]
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David C. Lloyd started the topic Brandeis Center: another nuisance suit threatened in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 8 months agoThe Brandeis Center, notorious these days for launching efforts to censor other people’s freedom of speech, has just threatened the MLA with a lawsuit if it passes the boycott resolution. For responses to this clumsy effort at intimidation, see David Lloyd at:
Threat of Legal Action Against MLA
and…[Read more]
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Margaret W. Ferguson started the topic MLA Session with Presidents of Sister Organization on BDS in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 9 months ago<p>MLA Sessions in 2017 Related to BDS–please add to this list and check the first entry out out if you are coming to the Philadelphia MLA Convention! Early and important is Session 53, “Association Presidents’ Perspectives on Boycott,” with speakers from our sister organizations that have strenuously debated and voted in favor of supporting the…[Read more]
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David C. Lloyd started the topic Another IDF Invasion of a Palestinian Campus in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 9 months agoThis report comes from our Palestinian colleagues at Birzeit University.
http://www.birzeit.edu/en/news/israeli-occupation-continues-strangle-palestines-education
In continuation of its barbaric aggression on our people and national institutions, the Israeli occupation forces stormed Birzeit University’s campus in the early morning hours of W…[Read more]
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David C. Lloyd started the topic New Items at MLA Boycott site: David Palumbo-Liu and Candice Fujikane in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 9 months agoA new report by MLA members who traveled to Palestine this summer to explore conditions for Palestinian professors and students in universities and colleges is now available at: https://mlaboycott.wordpress.com/2016/12/06/report-on-mla-members-trip-to-the-west-bank-and-israel/
Additionally, there are a number of new items, including these…[Read more]
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David C. Lloyd started the topic Responding to the Call (to Endorse the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions) in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 9 months agoRebecca Comay and David Lloyd explain the importance of the academic boycott resolution that they have submitted to the MLA for a vote at the Delegate Assembly when it meets on January 7 in Philadelphia. The op ed encourages MLA members to “respond to the call” of Palestinian civil society and endorse the boycott of Israeli academic inst…[Read more]
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David C. Lloyd started the topic Higher Education in Palestine: A Report by MLA Members in the discussion
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 9 months ago
In June, 2016 a group of six MLA members traveled together to the West Bank and Israel to find out what it was like for Palestinian academics and students trying to study, teach, and research at universities in the occupied territories and within Israel itself. In addition to learning about academic conditions under occupation, the group al…[Read more]
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David C. Lloyd uploaded the file: 2017:2 Resolution to Boycott Israeli Academic Institutions: Evidence to
MLA Members for Justice in Palestine on MLA Commons 4 years, 9 months agoThis is an updated document containing evidence for each clause of the resolution, a slightly updated version of which is included in the document.
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