In a widely predicted move, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) has now joined the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) in adopting a boycott of Israeli universities. It represents a turning point in the discipline of anthropology and a milestone in the fall of American academia as a whole.

The resolution, which was adopted by a large margin of its members, prohibits Israeli universities from advertising in AAA journals and participating in other organizational activities. It does not, however, prevent Israeli anthropologists from presenting at AAA meetings or publishing papers in AAA journals.

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After months of waiting, the Biden administration finally released its "National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism." A close look at the document gives the impression that the strategy as a whole is designed to appear to be "doing something" to combat antisemitism while not alienating the party's intersectional base.

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Israel in 1948 was a manifestation of an ideal at the time it was created. Namely, this meant Jewish self-determination in their ancient homeland, a nation-state like all others, brought about by a liberation movement that worked with and ultimately against the world's greatest imperial power, and which was the culmination of decades of patient organizing and building, all set against the horrific backdrop of the Holocaust.

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Few trends in academia are more depressing than the continued domination of Middle Eastern studies departments by postcolonial professors whose shtick involves recycling cliched attacks on the United States as the "Great Satan" and Israel as the "Little Satan." The results of this trend are evident in faculty antipathy toward Israel, which is increasingly playing out in their support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

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Language, culture and politics are the ingredients of society; how they are mixed determines the kind of society we create. In his succinct essay Politics and the English Language George Orwell wrote, "the words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there is no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning."

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