The National Women’s Studies Association is the newest scholarly group to back the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.
In a vote that involved 35 percent of the association’s total membership, 88.4 percent, or 653 individuals, voted in favor of a boycott measure. Members of the NWSA’s executive committee then took their own vote on Friday to approve the membership’s recommendation that the association support BDS.
The NWSA measure does not limit itself to a boycott just of Israeli academic institutions, but rather affirms the association's endorsement of "the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) of economic, military and cultural entities and projects sponsored by the state of Israel."
Simona Sharoni, one of the co-founders of Feminists for Justice in/for Palestine, an ad-hoc group that sponsored the pro-boycott measure, described the NWSA vote in support of BDS as significant in positioning Palestinian solidarity as a “feminist issue.”