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The American Studies Program at Middlebury College has issued a different kind of letter in response to the American Studies Association’s recent vote to boycott Israeli universities. In addition to stating its opposition to the resolution, the letter goes further to encourage the association to revisit its constitution and mission statement to consider the appropriate role of political action and to develop a mechanism whereby institutional members of the association (as opposed to just individual members) can vote.
“As an institutional member, our program never dreamed that we would be spending so much of our time and energy being asked by our administration, alumni, colleagues, students, and the media to support, explain, defend, or denounce an ASA resolution on which we had no right to vote. In this way, the boycott resolution has worked very much against ‘the encouragement of research, teaching [and] publication’ given emphasis in the organization’s constitution,” the letter reads.
The letter is signed by Middlebury's American studies program director and seven other faculty members. “Our longer-term membership in the ASA is by no means a foregone conclusion, because we do not have a full understanding of the association’s purpose," they write. "If we find no constructive engagement on the effort to define more clearly the ASA’s mission, we will, with regret, leave this long-valued institution.”
More than 100 college presidents have gone on record opposing the ASA boycott, as well as several major higher education associations; at least five universities have withdrawn or plan to withdraw as institutional members of the association.
