It has now been six days since the American Studies Association membership voted for academic boycott of Israel. In reporting the vote as a turning point, Inside Higher Ed has the temerity to ask why the academics voted as they did, and lifts the curtain on Palestinian conditions. That piece also quotes a letter by eight past presidents of the ASA opposing the boycott move, and this statement from Bill Mullen, a Purdue professor and a member of the ASA’s Caucus on Academic and Community Activism:

“I think what the vote indicates is that people recognize the illegal occupation of Palestine as one of the major civil rights issues of our time globally… American scholars now understand the physical violence that’s part of the Israeli occupation; they understand the massive restrictions on academic freedom for Palestinian scholars that is part of living under an illegal occupation. These facts are now irrefutable to so many people that the vote indicates a kind of coming to consensus around the illegitimacy of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.”

More than the New York Times would tell us.

Meantime, Mullen’s Caucus on Academic and Community Activism has released a statement decrying intimidation of the ASA members who voted for the measure.