New York University enters the year 2014 with a dubious distinction.
While the university president and provost have written to the executive committee of the American Studies Association labeling its call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions a threat to academic freedom, one of its own professors is set to become the ASA’s new president.
Far from disavowing the ASA boycott, Lisa Duggan, a professor in the department of social and cultural analysis, is all for it.
In an e-mail to The Post, Duggan told us she is “fully supportive of the [ASA] boycott of Israeli academic institutions. We are not boycotting individuals, but only institutions . . . [to protest] the discriminatory treatment of Palestinians by Israeli academic institutions that aid and support the illegal occupation.”
Now ASA membership is not decided by the university. It’s decided at the department level. So while a number of American colleges and universities have departments that have now severed their ties with the ASA, the director of NYU’s American Studies program, Andrew Ross, has given no sign he has any intention of withdrawing his department.
That leaves the school to have it both ways. On the one hand, the administration can tell people upset by the ASA boycott that the university has officially condemned it. On the other hand, one of its professors is the ASA president-elect, who makes perfectly clear she fully supports this boycott.
However you want to spin it, that leaves one undeniable fact: NYU’s name remains prominently associated with this boycott. And that’s an outrage.