Critical Ethnic Studies Association endorses the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and honors the call of Palestinian civil society with the passage of a Resolution on the Academic Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions.

We recognize that conditions of colonialism and apartheid in Israel/Palestine are not separate from our intellectual and political work inside and outside the academic industrial complex, and that the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions is a call to organizations like ours.

Whereas the Critical Ethnic Studies Association is an organization that aims to develop an approach to scholarship, institution building, and activism that is animated by the spirit of the decolonial, antiracist, and other global liberationist movements that enabled the creation of Ethnic Studies and that continues to inform its political and intellectual projects, and to produce critical engagement about white supremacy, settler colonialism, capitalism, heteropatriarchy, militarism, occupation, indigeneity, neocolonialism, migration, and anti-blackness in order to expand the conceptual parameters and transformative capacities of ethnic studies;

And

Whereas Arab and Muslim, Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latin@, and LGBTQ communities, students, activists, and scholars have been subjected to profiling, surveillance, and state violence that have circumscribed their freedom of political expression, particularly in relation to the issue of human rights in Palestine and the state of Israel;

And

Whereas the Critical Ethnic Studies Association seeks to foster scholarship on colonialism, racism, heteropatriarchy, and the colonial gender binary, and that engages conditions of migration, the displacement, ethnic cleansing or transfer, and eradication of peoples, and of the lives of people in zones of war and occupation;

And

Whereas the Critical Ethnic Studies Association seeks to advance a critique of U.S. empire, opposing US military occupation in the Arab world and U.S. support for Israeli settler-colonialism, occupation and racism;

And

Whereas the Critical Ethnic Studies Association seeks to advance the critique and abolition of settler colonialisms in solidarity with indigenous peoples globally;

And

Whereas Palestinian universities and schools have been periodically forced to close as a result of actions related to the Israeli occupation, or have been destroyed by Israeli military strikes and expansion, and Palestinian students, activists, and scholars face restrictions on movement and travel that limit their ability to attend and work at universities, travel to conferences and to study abroad, and thereby obstruct their right to education;

And

Whereas the State of Israel engages in ongoing practices of dispossession, population transfer, illegal settlement, and political incarceration, in the context of continuing settler-colonialism occupation and the blockade of Gaza;

And

Whereas the state of Israel engages in systematic discrimination against both its Palestinian citizens and against migrant workers and refugees of color;

And

Whereas the Israeli state and Israeli universities directly and indirectly impose restrictions on education, scholarships, and participation in campus activities on Palestinian students in Israel;

And

Whereas Israel imposes severe restrictions on foreign academics and students seeking to attend conferences and do research in Palestine, as well as on scholars and students of Arab/Palestinian origin who wish to travel to Palestine and the state of Israel;

And

Whereas Israeli institutions of higher education have not condemned or taken measures to oppose the occupation and racial discrimination against Palestinians in Israel, but have, rather, been directly and indirectly complicit in the systematic maintenance of the occupation and of policies and practices that discriminate against Palestinian students and scholars throughout Palestine and in Israel;

And

Whereas Israeli academic institutions are deeply complicit in Israel’s violations of international law and human rights and in its denial of the right to education and academic freedom to Palestinians, in addition to their basic rights as guaranteed by international law;

And

Whereas the Critical Ethnic Studies Association highlights how systematized oppression provokes a multitude of practices that resist these systems, and recognizes the Palestinian movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions as such a practice of solidarity and resistance;

And

Whereas the Critical Ethnic Studies Association supports research and open discussion about these issues without censorship, intimidation, or harassment, and seeks to promote academic exchange, collaboration and opportunities for students and scholars everywhere;

Be it resolved that the Critical Ethnic Studies Association endorses and will honor the call of Palestinian civil society for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

Be it also resolved that the Critical Ethnic Studies Association supports the protected rights of students and scholars everywhere to engage in research and public speaking about Palestine and the state of Israel and in support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.