It takes a lot for the Association For Asian American Studies to make international headlines. The AAAS is a group of academics within the fields of Asian and Asian-American Studies who work to advance the fields of Asian Studies and Asian-American Studies. Not exactly the kind of organization regularly covered by CNN. A quick Google search of that organization, however, turns up myriad articles from the past few weeks. Last month, they became the first academic organization in the United States to endorse an academic boycott of Israeli universities — and they did so unanimously.
We have a few questions:
- Why is an organization whose mission is to promote better understanding of “Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Hawai’ian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Pacific Islander, and other groups,” according to their website, taking a stance on Israel-Palestine?
- How did a large group of scholars unanimously agree on anything, let alone something so controversial?
- And how does the AAAS reconcile support for “the protected rights of students and scholars everywhere to engage in research and public speaking about Israel-Palestine” with advocacy work making that engagement more difficult for students and scholars in at Israeli universities (which, last we checked, are part of “everywhere”)?
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