MLA Members for Palestine Protest Denial of BDS Vote at National Assembly

"The more they try to silence us, the louder we will be!"

That was the message that protesters at the Modern Language Association Delegate Assembly in New Orleans wanted to send Saturday after the executive council of the MLA—the preeminent U.S. professional group for scholars of language and literature—blocked them from holding a member vote on a resolution endorsing the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.

Like the resolution recently passed by the American Historical Association, the declaration issued by MLA Members for Justice in Palestine accuses Israel of committing scholasticide in Gaza, where—in addition to killing over 46,000 Palestinians, wounding nearly 110,000 others, and displacing around 2 million more—15 months of relentless Israeli onslaught has obliterated the embattled enclave's education infrastructure.

The MLA resolution—which supports the initial 2005 BDS call issued by Palestinian civil society groups—also acknowledges that international law experts accuse Israel of genocide and that the International Court of Justice, which is weighing a genocide case against Israel, has "determined that Israel is maintaining a system of apartheid."

"The MLA's commitment to 'justice throughout the humanities ecosystem' requires ending institutional complicity with genocide and supporting Palestinian colleagues," the statement asserts. "Therefore, be it resolved that we, the members of the MLA, endorse the 2005 BDS call."

Karim Mattar, an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder, took part in Saturday's demonstration, during which supporters of the resolution staged a die-in and walkout, chanted slogans, and held a banner that read, "MLA Is Complicit in Genocide."

"I consider the executive council's decision to be a cowardly one," Mattar told Common Dreams. "The MLA is a humanities advocacy organization, and by repressing a membership vote, a democratic process to deliberate on the necessity of institutional divestment with companies that profit from genocide, it's actively contributing to the problem."

"I think it's a fundamental contradiction in the MLA's values between these stated values and principles of advocacy for the humanities and the blocking of a mechanism by which such advocacy might be facilitated," he added.

Mattar—who is Palestinian American and whose relatives were among the more than 750,000 Arabs ethnically cleansed from Palestine during the Nakba, or "catastrophe" that was the creation of the modern state of Israel—said Saturday's protest brought tears to his eyes.

"To see this protest, this movement emerging at the MLA, to see this national and international movement of solidarity with Palestine to emerge in the last year, has been incredibly moving for me," he said.

Protest co-organizer Neelofer Qadir, an assistant professor of English at Georgia State University, told Common Dreams that protesters "really wanted to draw attention to how institutions are being destroyed, like universities, like libraries, like archives, which makes certain that there is a deep commitment to genocide and why scholasticide is part of genocide because the Israeli government intends to destroy all possible evidence of Palestinian life, past, present, and therefore no longer in the future."

"And we feel that it is our responsibility as the largest North American organization of scholars of literature and language to protest and stand with our colleagues who are being murdered for their existence," she added.

Last month, the MLA executive council explained that while it is "appalled by the continued attack on Gaza," it believed that "supporting a BDS resolution was not a possible way forward for the association to address the crisis" due to "legal and fiduciary reasons."

Qadir dismissed the council's excuse, saying she believes the MLA is "engaged in a formal program of organized abandonment that is part and parcel of fascist and neoliberal governance that's happening in the U.S., Canada, and across the world."

St. John's University associate English professor Raj Chetty, who also organized Saturday's action, told Common Dreams that "whatever the MLA has said about the 'fiduciary concerns' about this, we're like, you're going to find out some other fiduciary concerns as you notice that both intellectual work and membership dues are going to start evaporating."

As part of their effort, MLA Members for Justice in Palestine are urging supporters to not renew their MLA membership "until there's a meaningful substantial change in position," as Chetty put it.

"This [protest] is a real call to humanity, a real call to justice, a real call against complicity, and a real call to support Palestinian life and rail against Israeli actions that are ending Palestinian life in all the ways that Neelofer talked about," he said.