The loss of membership and the launching of a competitor association, along with the legal challenge to the ASA’s tax-exempt status, may be the only real legacy of the ASA’s boycott of Israel.
And wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony? Rather than actually causing any harm to Israel, the decision of the American Studies Association to stray so far afield from its mission as to focus, literally, on a different continent, will only harm the American Studies Association itself.
The ideologues who have begun deploying American academics on the battlefield to destroy the Jewish State may begin to receive chillier receptions when the academic institutions and departments leave that battlefield on stretchers and life support.