The faculty of UNC’s Department of American studies is meeting today to reconsider its participation in the national American Studies Association.
The organization, which publishes materials on American studies and includes scholars from across the country, drafted a resolution to support a boycott of Israeli higher education institutions Dec. 4. The boycott, called for over what the ASA sees as concerns for Palestinians’s human rights, asks universities to not participate in international exchange with Israeli schools.
UNC administrators responded with a rejection of the boycott.
Chancellor Carol Folt and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Jim Dean released a statement Dec. 31 that said the University has a 200-year history of promoting access and international collaboration in higher education — arguing that the ASA’s resolution directly opposes that concept.
Bernie Herman, chairman of UNC’s American studies department, said this will be the first time faculty members have had a chance to discuss what — if anything — they want to do in response to the boycott.
Herman said the meeting would be closed to the public to allow faculty a chance to speak freely. He said many UNC professors have been or are currently actively involved in the association.
He said he personally felt the issue was not about politics.
“It comes down to a question of academic freedom, and I will go to my grave protecting academic freedom,” Herman said. “It is antithetical to the values of a public institution.”
Curtis Marez, president of the ASA, said in an open letter to the association’s members that its offices have received threatening phone calls and emails since the resolution was written — some have been targeted at specific schools’s programs. Marez said the resolution is protected by the First Amendment.
