It has been exactly a week since the American Studies Association ratified its vote to boycott Israeli academic institutions. Since that vote, an ever-growing number of individual professors, American Studies departments, academic associations and universities have come out with statements rejecting the ASA boycott.
Within a day of the ratification, the American Studies Departments of both Penn State University and Brandeis University announced their intent to withdraw from the ASA because of the boycott vote.
Since that time, the Association of American Universities, the umbrella organization for 62 major universities and university-systems, and the Association of American University Professors, which has multiple chapters in more than 35 states, have both firmly rejected the boycott.
In addition to those academic institutions, an additional 23 universities have officially rejected the ASA boycott.
Professor William A. Jacobson, clinical professor at Cornell Law School, has been collecting the information at his website, Legal Insurrection. He has been covering the ASA boycott extensively and continuously. His site is the virtual treasure trove of information regarding responses to the ASA boycott. He gives the reason for his focus in a poignant note he posted on Dec. 17, calling for a boycott
The schools joining Penn State and Brandeis include Harvard University, Princeton University, New York University, Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Jacobson notes that neither he nor anyone else has been able to find a single institution of higher learning in the United States which has endorsed the ASA’s boycott of Israeli academic institutions.