Academic Boycott

Salah D. Hassan

Since the 1990s “progressive tendencies” in literary studies have harnessed comparative methodologies to textual analysis of human rights documents, interpretations of geopolitical systems, and critiques of foreign policy. As comparative literature has increasingly engaged in world affairs, comparative critical approaches have influence critical writing on boycotts from the anti-apartheid movement to Palestine solidarity activism. The issue of academic boycott in particular has generated prolific and polarizing public debates among literary scholars, at the center of which is a general question about the place of pro-Palestinian activism in the academy.