The MLA membership ratification vote on Resolution 2017-1 opened on April 19 and will close on June 1, 2017. From the very moment that the MLA announced that members will be voting on a resolution calling on the association to “refrain from supporting the boycott” of Israeli academic institutions, many scholars and students expressed opposition to what is unabashedly a pre-emptive attempt to protect Israel from future criticism within the MLA. The Delegate Assembly’s marginal vote in favor of Resolution 2017-1 has caused many scholars and students to question their future membership in a professional association that has been taken over by a group of pro-Israeli ideologues who are prepared to repress members’ rights in the interest of defending Israel.
In an article titled “The Palestine Exception,” which appeared online in Jacobin, David Palumbo-Liu, the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor at Stanford University, presented the MLA membership vote on resolution 2017-1 in these terms:
One of the world’s most important academic organizations [the MLA] has a choice: uphold academic freedom, or provide cover for Israel’s crimes.