Education

Now America’s Most Pointless, Useless Professors Threaten Academic Boycott Of Israel

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Professors of anthropology, the most pathetic college major that doesn’t end in the words “studies,” have voted overwhelmingly against a resolution voicing opposition to a possible boycott of Israel.

The vote happened on Friday during the annual business meeting of the American Anthropological Association. Just 52 of the group’s 700 members who appeared at the meeting voted to oppose a boycott, Inside Higher Education reports.

Also, there is such a thing as an annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. This year, the meeting occurred Wednesday through Saturday at the Marriott Wardman Park, a “grand,” “well-appointed” 3.5-star hotel with grounds “truly worthy of a national park.”

In addition to soundly defeating a resolution against an Israel boycott, several of the group’s members ventured to the hotel lobby on Friday to participate in a “die-in.” The professors got down on the ground and pretended to be dead to protest refusals by grand juries to indict police officers who killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner in Missouri and New York, respectively. (RELATED: Watch These College Students CHECK THEIR PHONES During Ferguson Die-In)

Friday’s measure urging members of the American Anthropological Association not to boycott Israel had contended that “a resolution supporting a boycott of Israeli academic institutions is negative in its aims,” according to Inside Higher Ed.

The authors of the resolution urged “broader understanding enabling a constructive reformation of Israeli and American policies toward Palestinians” and suggested that a boycott “would not achieve anything.”

Supporters of the anti-boycott resolution had resigned themselves to losing before the vote took place.

“I thought the resolution that we were involved in should be presented,” lead sponsor Paula G. Rubel of both Barnard College and Columbia University told Inside Higher Ed. “If it was going to go down, it was going to go down.”

The resolution to oppose an Israel boycott is a response to the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement, which seeks to force a change in Israeli policy by economically isolating the country and turning it into a pariah. The BDS movement is growing by leaps and bounds in certain backwaters of academia.

The American Studies Association voted in favor of a boycott last year. (RELATED: American Studies Association Backtracks On Israel Boycott)

Also, last January, the Modern Language Association, America’s primary professional association for literature and language scholars, became the subject of major controversy after the group considered a resolution condemning Israel and calling on the U.S. State Department to “contest Israel’s denials of entry to the West Bank by U.S. academics who have been invited to teach, confer, or do research at Palestinian universities.” (RELATED: Modern Language Association’s Fascist Douchebags Outlaw The Daily Caller From Convention)

Over 1,000 anthropology professors and anthropologists have signed a declaration endorsing a boycott of Israeli universities. Some 400 anthropologists have signed a declaration against such a boycott. (Anonymous signatures, whatever those are, appear on both sides.)

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Eric Owens