Anthropologists Against Academic Boycotts

In 2016, the AAA membership wisely voted down a divisive resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. 

Now, a new boycott resolution is up for a vote, but the principles at stake are unchanged, and cutting off relationships with Israeli universities is more ill-advised than ever. 

  • "If we are to look at Israeli society, it is within the academic community that we've had the most progressive pro-peace views and views that have come out in favor of seeing us as equals… If you want to punish any sector, this is the last one to approach."

    Dr. Sari Nusseibeh
    Al-Quds University, Former President

  • "I'm against the boycott in general.... We need more dialogue with the other. That's why I believe that you should not have a general boycott against Israel, or a boycott against Israeli universities. If you want to boycott anyone, target those universities that are calling for occupation or are supporting the continuation of the occupation...don't target those Israelis and those universities and those institutions which actually are your partner."

    Dr. Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi
    Political Scientist and Peace Activist

  • "As anthropologists, we're trained to pay attention to the human effects of institutional processes. Indeed, that's our stock-in-trade. Boycotting an institution means, by definition, boycotting the individuals who work for that institution. Such a boycott would turn our colleagues into non-persons, as far as our social universe is concerned. What sense does this make as a way to engage with our scholarly colleagues, and how would it possibly further the cause of Palestinian rights? By tarring a group of scholars with the same brush, we also essentialize people by reference to their nationality. Surely, that's a move that we anthropologists have been at the forefront of opposing in so many important contexts."

    Dr. Alma Gottlieb
    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Emerita)
    Brown University

  • "What I do find completely unacceptable is the attempts to boycott, divest and sanction Israel. The strategy of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel “doesn’t fit with the idea of the two-state solution. It doesn’t recognize that Israelis are a very textured community. Among them, there are many who are pro-peace and there are many who are partners [of peace-seeking Palestinians]. And if we treat them all as one, and if we sanction them all as one, and if we treat an extremist the same way as a peace-seeking individual, we drive those who want peace into the same camp as the others. We disempower them. We empower the extreme voices. We empower the voices that say that Palestinians are not interested in a two-state solution."

    Ghaith al-Omari
    Senior Fellow, The Washington Institute

  • "Israeli anthropologists, anthropology departments, and universities are our natural allies because they are on the forefront of the struggle for social justice and democracy. If we believe in those causes, now is precisely the moment to support them."

    Geoffrey E. Braswell
    UC San Diego

  • "Boycotting Israeli universities paves the way to blocking the educational goals of American students. Several humanities professors in the US have already refused to write recommendation letters for semester programs in Israel...personal politics should not be injected into the work of mentoring students. Professors should not use their geopolitical views to stifle their students’ intellectual growth."

    Paul Brodwin
    University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

  • "Peace, mutual respect for human rights, and an end to suffering will not come about by cutting off dialogue and hardening people's hearts with academic boycotts, or anti-Zionist or antisemitic indoctrination. Certainly, anthropology's mandate is not to reject ongoing conversation and genuine dialogue fully sensitive to the complexities inherent in this conflict. The likely effect of an academic boycott of Israel is that many of us would resign our membership which would be both personally unfortunate and a loss to the association’s standing as a home for all anthropologists."

    Cynthia Saltzman, Ph.D.
    Rutgers University-Camden, NJ

  • Tremendous progress has been made over the last decades in facilitating access to higher education, with special emphasis on the Israeli Arab population.… Calling for Boycott may cause harm to the steady progress that has been made…. To my opinion, academic boycott would not do justice and block the care voices coming from the academia. In addition to our missions as scholars to raise the unheard voices and to advocate on behalf of minorities, we are contributing to the body of knowledge that we are sharing in conferences and publications; boycott will impact this process as well. Because through our academic work we are sharing with you the truth and the reality of minorities people, their economic, social, psychological, educational situation, our research is our weapon; boycott works against what I have mentioned above. Please say no to the boycott and do not stop us from doing our job.

    Alean Al-Krenawi, PhD
    Professor and former Dean, Ben Gurion University, and President of Achva Academic Colleges

Top Four
Things to Know

In addition to undermining educational opportunities for students, researchers, and others, the boycott resolution is…


  • Academic boycotts are antithetical to the core values of academic freedom and open debate to which the AAA is deeply committed.

  • The Resolution will inevitably – and inequitably – result in the exclusion and isolation of Israeli academics.

  • Many Israeli academics object to the Israeli government’s policies and actions. The Resolution paints a picture of a monolithic Israeli academy malevolently hostile to Palestinians when the reality is that there is a wide range of opinions.

  • The Resolution turns the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a caricature. It denies legitimacy to and respect for the valid and widely shared perspectives of most Israelis and Palestinians. Furthermore, It singles out one side for blame and establishes a false binary of oppressor vs. oppressed.

“The Israeli Anthropological Association opposes the boycott of Israeli academic institutions as counterproductive, especially at a time when Israeli academic institutions are at the forefront of the struggle to maintain democracy and equal rights for all citizens...”

Read the full statement.

Saving Anthropology as a Community of Scholars

Voices Opposed to the Revived Call to Boycott Israeli Universities

Make your voice heard.

Faculty, students, and others can sign the petition, “Call on the American Anthropological Association to vote NO on the Resolution to Boycott Israeli Academic Institutions.”