Members of the American Anthropological Association overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions with 71% of voters supporting the measure.

The Palestinian call for BDS is a challenge to colonial infrastructures of knowledge and an invitation to help remake them. This challenge is central to our work as anthropologists in moving past colonial social science.

Eight years since the American Anthropological Association first considered the academic boycott of Israel, conditions for Palestinians have only gotten worse, and Israeli academic institutions are complicit. That is why I am supporting the new boycott resolution.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel salutes all the members of the American Anthropological Association who voted in favor of a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. The resolution was narrowly defeated by a margin of 39 votes, 2,423:2,384. Prof. Haidar Eid, a PACBI Steering Committee member who teaches literature in Gaza, said: “At a time when New York Governor Cuomo is passing anti-democratic, McCarthyite executive orders to ban boycotts of Israel, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, is making pronouncements against the movement, the high support for the academic boycott of Israel at the AAA shows that supporters of Palestinian rights are not deterred and no longer afraid to speak out publicly. The tide is clearly turning.”

On Friday, the American Anthropological Association will consider a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. Laurie King writes in favor of boycott. “A boycott of Israeli universities (not individuals) would show Palestinians that they are not forgotten, that their suffering has not gone unnoticed or unanalyzed, that they are still considered fully human, while encouraging Israeli society to confront the discrimination and structural violence implicit in Zionism as it now is manifest in Israeli governmental, military, economic, and social policies.”

Last Friday, the American Anthropological Association’s annual business meeting in Washington, DC was packed with more members than any other time in recent memory – over 700. On the agenda was a proposed resolution against boycotting Israeli academic institutions. The atmosphere in the room was electric, as anthropologists from across the profession discussed the boycott and the ongoing violations of Palestinian academic freedom and human rights. Of the 24 members who spoke, three-quarters opposed the resolution, arguing that it was an attempt to shut down a crucial debate. In the end, the effort to prevent the boycott discussion backfired spectacularly: members present overwhelmingly voted down the measure, which mustered a mere 52 supporters.