Dear members of the UCB Academic Senate: We would like to express our deep concern about and strong opposition to the proposed bill under consideration by the UC Berkeley ASUC that rejects the academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions and denounces the “International Day of Action on College Campuses for Palestine.” As supporters of the academic boycott, we affirm the academic freedom of professional academic associations to take a public stance on matters of public and global concern, and in support of human rights for all, including Palestinians in West Asia/the Middle East. The endorsement by the Association of Asian American Studies of the boycott is a response to the call for boycott from Palestinian civil society, including academics, as a collective form of international opposition to Israel's numerous human rights violations. The boycott is an expression of our solidarity with Palestinian scholars and students who suffer from the violent degradation and deprivation of their academic freedom, and also human freedoms.

Modeled on the global boycott and divestment movement that opposed apartheid in South Africa, the BDS movement is an antiracist, nonviolent movement that is a direct response to the call from those who suffer from a regime of illegal occupation, militarization, displacement, dispossession, surveillance, racial discrimination, and restrictions on movement and livelihood. All of these are made possible by unconditional U.S. political, economic, and military support of the Israeli state, an exceptional alliance with a state that received more U.S. aid than any other nation in the world. We note that this aid is being given despite the massive crisis in public higher education in the U.S. today, so our funding of Israeli human rights violations is at the expense of U.S. students in public universities, including at UC Berkeley. We also strongly support the right of scholars and students in all fields to endorse the boycott, without interference, intimidation, and harassment. The Asian American Studies Association, American Studies Association, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, and the African Literature Association, among others, have already endorsed the academic boycott. We want to note that many scholars in these associations support the boycott as an extension of their commitments to ending occupation, warfare, settler colonialism, imperialism, and racism. Supporting the boycott is a logical and indeed necessarily element of our ethics as ethnic studies scholars. We are also disturbed that this bill is being proposed in the wake of the most recent Israeli war on Gaza, in which over 2000 Palestinians were killed, including approximately 500 children, and in which schools and universities have been bombed and lives destroyed. The call to support BDS from Gazan and Palestinian civil society is more urgent than ever. The proposed bill, including in its very title, wrongly characterizes the academic boycott as stifling open exchange of knowledge and academic freedom. In fact, the academic boycott movement has opened up debate and the exchange of ideas in the face of well-funded, national campaigns that have defamed and blacklisted scholars of conscience who dare to criticize the Israeli state. The proposed bill would reinforce the disciplining and intimidation of those who have individually and collectively expressed support of Palestinian freedom by adopting academic boycott resolutions. Thus, it is the proposed bill that would stifle academic freedom. Furthermore, the academic boycott guidelines make a careful distinction between Israeli academic institutions and individual Israeli academics (see: http://www.usacbi.org/pacbi-faqs/ ). The boycott in no way impinges upon the freedom of individual U.S., or Israeli, scholars to engage in intellectual exchange and scholarly collaboration, if this does not entail official sponsorship by Israeli academic institutions that are public institutions complicit with

the illegal occupation and violations of human rights laws. Several reports have by now documented the collusion of Israeli universities with the state’s military and intelligence apparatuses and the repression and surveillance of, as well as racist assaults on, Palestinian students at Israeli universities (see: http://www.usacbi.org/reports-and-resources/). Furthermore, Israeli academics who support BDS are also subject to campaigns of demonization and harassment. The academic boycott is thus a movement that enlarges the academic freedom of all, including Israeli and Jewish scholars.

The AAAS resolution is based on the premise that academic freedom is indivisible. To cite the statement from the Asian American Studies Association: “Specifically, the Resolution to Support the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions . . . aims to enhance academic freedom for all scholars and would broaden the application of the principles of academic freedom and social justice in which the AAAS upholds. The AAAS is opposed to all forms of discrimination, including anti-Semitism, and remains committed to human rights and social justice.” (For the full text of the resolution and AAAS statements, see: http://aaastudies.org/content/index.php/about-aaas/resolutions). We urge you to oppose this bill that seeks to counter antiracist solidarity and academic freedom, and to join the movement to refuse complicity with racism and occupation. Signatories,

Lucy Burns, Associate Professor, Asian American Studies, UCLA (member of the American Studies Association and Asian American Studies Association)

Rajini Srikanth, Professor, English, University of Massachusetts Boston Sunaina Maira, Professor, Asian American Studies, University of California Davis David Palumbo-Liu, the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, Professor, Comparative Literature,

Stanford University Susette Min, Associate Professor, Asian American Studies, University of California Davis Anna Guevarra, Associate Professor and Director, Asian American Studies, Affiliated

Faculty, Gender and Women's Studies and Sociology and Honors College Faculty Fellow, University Illinois at Chicago

Cathy Schlund-Vials, Associate Professor, English, University of Connecticut Candace Fujikane, Associate Professor, English, University of Hawai’i Manoa. Ph.D.,

English, UC Berkeley, 1996 Jason Magabo Perez, Graduate Student, Ethnic Studies and Communication, University of

California, San Diego Grace Hong, Associate Professor, Gender Studies and Asian American Studies, UCLA Laura Kang, Associate Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies, University of California,

Irvine Tracy Buenavista, Associate Professor, Asian American Studies, California State

University Northridge Helen Heran Jun, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Departments of English and African American

Studies, University of Illinois, Chicago Jonathan Y. Okamura, Professor, Ethnic Studies, University of Hawai'i Junaid Rana, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies, University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign Aneil Rallin, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies, Soka University of

America Eve Oishi, Claremont Graduate University Sarita Echavez See, University of California Riverside Gina Velasco, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Women's and Gender Studies, Keene State College

Vijay Prashad, George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History, Professor, International Studies. Columnist, Frontline (Chennai, India)

Dr. Jasbir K. Puar, Associate Professor, Graduate Program Director, Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University

Martin F. Manalansan IV, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Bhaskar Sarkar, Associate Professor, Vice Chair, Film and Media Studies, UC Santa Barbara Jigna Desai, Professor and Chair, Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, Asian American

Studies, University of Minnesota -- Twin Cities Dorothy Wang, Associate Professor, American Studies Program, Williams College (U.C.

Berkeley Ph.D. in English, 1998) Thuy Linh Tu, Associate Professor, Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU David Eng, Professor, English, University of Pennsylvania, PhD, Berkeley (Comparative

Literature, 1995) Rachel Lee, Associate Professor of English and Gender studies, UCLA Keith Camacho, Associate Professor, Asian American Studies, UCLA Ian Barnard, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition, Chapman University,

and Professor Emeritus of English, California State University, Northridge Mark Chiang, Associate Professor, Asian American Studies and English, University of

Illinois at Chicago Joyce Lu, Assistant Professor, Pomona College Gary Y. Okihiro, Columbia University Nikhil Singh, Associate Professor, New York University Daniel Y. Kim, Associate Professor, Brown University Christine Bacareza Balance, Assistant Professor, Asian American Studies, UC Irvine.

B.A. Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley (1999) Grace Chang, Associate Professor, Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara Karen J. Leong, Arizona State University Nadine Suleiman Naber, Associate Professor, Gender & Women's Studies and Asian

American Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago Karen Su, Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago Josen Masangkay Diaz, Postdoctoral Fellow Nerissa Balce, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies, State University of New York

at Stony Brook Christine Hong, Assistant Professor, Literature, UC Santa Cruz Lisa  Lowe,  Professor  of  English  and  Studies  in  Race,  Colonialism  and  Diaspora,  Tufts    

University