In November the National Council of American Studies Association (ASA), an organization devoted to interdisciplinary study of American history and culture, passed a resolution endorsing a call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The proposal was initiated earlier this year by the ASA’s caucus on academic and community activism in solidarity with Palestinian civil-society organizations that are campaigning for a boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. The ASA put the National Council resolution to a vote by the membership at large. On Dec. 16 the resolution passed, with 66 percent voting yes. The ASA is now the second U.S. academic institution to endorse an academic and cultural boycott of Israel, after the Association for Asian American Studies, which did so in April.

For many, the death of Nelson Mandela — whose anti-apartheid struggle led to international calls for boycotts against South Africa — was a profound reminder of the power of such an act of solidarity. Israel’s segregation of and discrimination against the Palestinian people meets international conventions’ criteria for apartheid. For example, the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines apartheid as a crime against humanity “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups.”

The ASA resolution has become a lightning rod. Scholars of various persuasions have weighed in, and regardless of their positions on the resolution itself, they share the sense that one of the basic principles of academic life — that academic freedom is essential — is at stake. Supporters of the resolution maintain that in addition to academic freedom, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank lack basic liberties such as citizenship, the right to vote, the right to due process and freedom of movement; that these systematic, discriminatory practices are carried out by the Israeli state; and that Israeli academic institutions are complicit. For supporters, this boycott is a strong protest against such institutionalized denials of academic freedom.

Opponents of the resolution say that the ASA’s academic boycott violates the principles of academic freedom by restricting the rights of individual scholars to associate with and have scholarly exchanges with others.

“No scholar should be required to participate in any academic activity that violates his or her own principles,” said the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in an open letter to the ASA. “In seeking to punish alleged violations of academic freedom elsewhere, such boycotts threaten the academic freedom of American scholars to engage the broadest variety of viewpoints.”

When I first heard about the boycott, divestment and sanction campaign, I was skeptical for the same reasons. I felt that universities and colleges in Israel and the Palestinian territories presented the most likely places where free and critical discussions could take place.

Two things changed by mind.

First, conditions in Israel and the Palestinian territories have not improved but deteriorated. As Joan Scott writes in the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom, “If anything, the power of the right and the oppression of Palestinians have increased since 2006 — even the supposed ‘weakening’ of the Netanyahu government has taken place through the strengthening of right-wing parties.” Moreover, with Palestinians’ freedom of speech and assembly widely curtailed, the Likud Party–affiliated Council of Higher Education has selectively “elevated a religious college in the settlements to the status of a university, accredited a neoconservative think tank to grant BA degrees to students and conducted inquisitions among university faculty, seeking to harass, demote or fire dissidents — that is, to silence their speech.” A poll taken last year revealed that “more than two-thirds of Israeli Jews say that 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank should be denied the right to vote if the area was annexed by Israel,” in effect endorsing an apartheid state, according to an opinion poll reported in Haaretz. Three-fourths are in favor of segregated roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, and 58 percent believe Israel already practices apartheid against Palestinians, the poll found.

In addition, a third of those polled want Arab citizens in Israel to be barred from voting in elections to the country’s parliament. Almost 6 out of 10 say “Jews should be given preference to Arabs in government jobs.” The poll reveals the depth and nature of the prejudice Palestinians face in academia and the state. In sum, long-standing discussions within the ASA coalesced into a formal motion these past two years because of a sense of urgency.