The Modern Language Association’s refusal to allow a boycott, divest, and sanctions resolution to be debated by its members has caused a stir within the group — and demonstrated the chilling influence of anti-BDS laws nationwide.
The nonprofit’s executive council, which acts as fiduciaries, determined that letting its members endorse the call to boycott Israel could jeopardize its contracts with public, state-funded libraries. Twenty-seven states have laws or executive orders that prohibit state entities from having contracts with companies that engage in or advance boycotts.
Institutional subscriptions, including with public libraries, make up two-thirds of the MLA’s operating budget, said Paula M. Krebs, executive director of the MLA. “The sole consideration of this is the endangering of the contracts,” Krebs said. If these laws were not in effect, she said, the resolution would have been approved by the council to proceed to a vote.
Supporters of the resolution pointed to other humanities organizations that have endorsed BDS calls, like the American Studies Association, the American Anthropological Association, and the Middle East Studies Association. Krebs said the MLA’s financial portfolio differs from its peers in that the sale of products like the MLA Handbook, bibliography, and journals sustain the organization.
The resolution stated that members of the MLA, not the organization itself, endorse the 2005 Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS against Israel. Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, said she doesn’t think a resolution expressing members’ sentiments toward BDS would violate anti-boycott laws, but that “doesn’t mean that you won’t see blowback.”
Folks who are behind these laws, to some extent, are counting on [organizations] not being willing or able to defend their free-speech rights in court.
Friedman said these contract laws are weaponized by lawmakers to impose a chilling effect on companies. “Folks who are behind these laws, to some extent, are counting on [organizations] not being willing or able to defend their free-speech rights in court,” she said.
Krebs said the executive council worried that state legislatures wouldn’t split hairs over whether the organization or its members endorse the call. They also thought states would have a low threshold for what “support” of BDS meant. “Our lawyers said that you cannot predict the way a state legislature would read [the resolution].”
She also said that the executive-council members’ personal beliefs about BDS may not align with the decision they made as board members who have the task of mitigating the organization’s financial and legal risks. “I saw a lot of anguish in that room,” she said.
Krebs herself spoke critically of anti-boycott measures. “It’s important that people recognize the insidious nature of these laws in producing a chilling effect on speech by way of our contract law.”
Neelofer Qadir, an assistant professor of English at Georgia State University, helped organize the motion. She wishes the MLA would let the courts decide whether or not public libraries would have to cut ties with its products.
“To suggest that we don’t have a responsibility and capacity to push back against this oppressive legislation that exists across many states in the U.S. is deeply problematic,” Qadir said. “It doesn’t bode well for the other commitments to social justice and academic freedom that the MLA continuously makes.”
David Palumbo-Liu, a professor of comparative literature at Stanford University, described the council’s decision as an abandonment of its own principles. “When the most powerful organization in the humanities in the world is acting like a scaredy-cat and like it can’t withstand scrutiny, that sends a horrible message to the professoriate that you can’t count on the MLA to protect your free speech.”
Krebs said she understands why members think not getting to vote on the resolution is a restriction of free speech, but she pointed to the governance processes that the executive council must follow. The council told members that there would be dozens of panels about Palestine at the upcoming convention.
The resolution was submitted by Anthony C. Alessandrini, a professor of English at Kingsborough Community College and of Middle Eastern studies at the City University of New York Graduate Center. While a nearly identical proposal was rejected by members in 2017, Alessandrini was hopeful this resolution would pass because the climate around discussing Palestinian rights had changed. The death of more than 40,000 Palestinians since the war in Gaza began last year has made academics, even younger scholars without tenure, less fearful to openly discuss Palestine.
“I think there are people who have just been afraid to talk about it and are not afraid anymore,” he said. “Or other things have become more important than the fear.”
Palumbo-Liu thought the American Association of University Professors’ new stance on academic boycotts would also change the attitude of MLA members toward a BDS call. In August, the AAUP said that academic boycotts, meaning the refusal to work with certain scholars or institutions, is a legitimate way to protest institutions that violate academic freedom.
The resolution would have been voted on at the association’s convention in New Orleans this January. Organizers plan to protest the decision in the following weeks and at the annual meeting. “The noisier, the better,” Palumbo-Liu said. “It’s not going to be quiet.”
