Sunday, November 22, 2015

American Anthrolopgists Opt for BDS

No doubt about it--Marxism warps the brain (my bolds):
DENVER, Nov. 20 — In a historic vote Friday night, the American Anthropological Association at its annual business meeting resoundingly approved a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions by a vote of 1040-136. The resolution will now be forwarded to the full membership for a final vote by electronic ballot in the coming months. 
The resolution enjoins the Association not to enter into any formal collaborations with Israeli academic institutions. Individual Israeli scholars may continue to participate in AAA conferences and publications. Moreover, individual AAA members will remain free to determine for themselves whether and how to apply the boycott in their own professional practice. 
As heirs to a long tradition of scholarship on colonialism, anthropologists affirm, through this resolution, that the core problem is Israel’s maintenance of a settler colonial regime based on Jewish supremacy and Palestinian dispossession. By supporting the boycott, anthropologists are taking a stand for justice through action in solidarity with Palestinians. ...
Wrong, stupid scholars. The core problem is that Israel's very existence is a rebuke to Islamic doctrine, one which Arabs and other Muslims are unable and unwilling to countenance. Were the issue really one of "supremacy" and "dispossession," you "justice"-mongers would be concerned about all the Muslim nations of world where democracy and minority rights are in extremely short supply and all the Jews dispossessed from Arab lands. But since those items aren't even on your GPS, your concern must be a function of something else--like, say, your Marxist ideology.

1 comment:

Carlos Perera said...

Darn! That's about 8:1 in favor of the resolution. Having interacted with a few anthropologists--and even more people (like, I am ashamed to say, my younger daughter)--with an utterly unmarketable anthropology degree I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but still . . . one would think that social "scientists" who purport to take an objective and dispassionate view of other cultures must count a higher proportion of rational thinkers among them. I find it depressing that people like these get to set the tone for how the West's cognitive "elites" think about matters like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

P. S.: In all fairness to the subset of the profession made up of _physical_ anthropologists, they are a different species from the _cultural_ variety . . . and truly fascinating to talk to about the work they do, e.g., deducing what a human being did for a living from small peculiarities in the tuberosities of his/her centuries-old skeleton.