Having Failed to Boycott Israel, the American Studies Association Turns on the Media

Last year, the American Studies Association became the only major U.S. academic organization to endorse a boycott of Israel. It has recently backed down from the boycott, but it is now trying to shield its upcoming annual conference from press scrutiny by making the process of getting a press badge “as complicated, arbitrary, and daunting as getting a press pass for the North Korean Politburo meeting.” This reaction, writes Eugene Kontorovich, only shows how much something is wrong at ASA: