Updated: 11 March 2025
The Medieval Academy of America (MAA) has chosen NOT to take down their statement despite our many attempts, privately and publicly, to explain to them that their anti boycott statement supports the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and signals that they will not support disenfranchised communities under attack. Moreover, they also chose to keep concerned Medievalists in the dark about their actions. The Medievalists of Color Steering Committee (MoCSC) sees this as further evidence that the MAA knows they are causing harm, and yet they have chosen to continue supporting scholasticide in Palestine.
In the interest of transparency, we include the complete timeline of our interactions with the MAA following the release of our statement on 29 October 2024:
15 November 2024: Sara Lipton wrote privately to MoCSC asking for different forms of “dialogue” but not offering to take down the statement. They offered a “45-minute slot for a panel discussion [at the Centennial Meeting] on a topic or topics related to the statement.”
19 November 2024: MoCSC responded to the MAA making it clear that we will not engage further with the MAA until “the statement on academic boycotts has been removed.”
23 November 2024: Sara Lipton replied to MoCSC stating that the MAA does not “expect to reach a consensus soon and therefore ask for your patience in waiting for a follow up response.”
12 December 2024: MoCSC was informed that Sara Lipton and Lisa Fagin Davis had asked other members of MoC for its membership list so that they could contact MoC members directly, demonstrating their lack of care for our collective, rules, and values.
7 January 2025: MoCSC was informed that Lisa Fagin Davis had written the following message to concerned medievalists that reached out to the MAA to ask for their response to MoC: “The Council spent quite some time discussion the statement posted by the Steering Committee of the Fellowship of Medievalists of Color and decided to respond privately.”
16 January 2025: MoCSC wrote to the MAA asking that they let us know their decision on the statement by no later than 24 January 2025.
21 January 2025: The MAA Officers and Council wrote that “We acknowledge and regret that we did not reply as promptly as promised. After receiving your message of November 19, 2024, the Council met and had a substantive discussion, and then voted not to retract the statement.”
Original statement: 29 October 2024
The Medievalists of Color condemn the genocide Israel is perpetrating against Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and the Occupied Territories, the incursion into Lebanon, and the projected devastation of Beirut, aided by arms, money, and political support from Western countries, especially the United States. We are horrified by the brutal, and unrelenting program of extermination carried out by the Israeli government and military – which has led to the death of at least forty-two thousand Palestinians, the displacements of millions, and the mass destruction of homes and communities, including schools and hospitals. In December of 2023, preeminent scholars of Holocaust and Genocide studies asked that we join their efforts in not aiding and abetting Israeli mass violence. It has been almost a year since this call, and the violence unfortunately continues.
Action is long overdue. We take that call and others since that have condemned the genocide as an action, and we begin by following the tenets of PACBI, or The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, and separate ourselves from learned societies that support Israel’s attacks against Palestine. We especially cut our ties with the Medieval Academy of America (MAA) which has elected to publicly stand against boycotts and therefore against Palestine.
In June 2024, the MAA released a statement on academic boycotts on the Medieval Academy Newsletter (issue: #300) stating that they oppose “the deployment of academic boycotts to exclude scholars on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, or national affiliation.” Far from the “neutral” position they purport to uphold, The Medievalists of Color find this statement favors a Zionist position, and suppresses the ability of members to voice Pro-Palestinian, anti-genocide opinions. To insist on “neutrality,” especially in the context of boycotts, is to support violence against Palestinians. The Israeli government has a nuclear-armed military largely funded by the United States; Palestine does not, rendering the position of the Medieval Academy of America as an implicit support of Israel’s actions, and it functionally condones the ongoing genocide of Palestinians and the occupation of Palestine.
In response to this intentionally obscured message, several Medievalists of Color reached out to Medieval Academy leadership and urged them to acknowledge the arguments regarding the justification and defense of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which points out specifically that the academic boycott does not function by targeting individuals (a position reinforced by the recent AAUP statement in favor of academic boycotts). However, in response, Sara Lipton doubled down on the Medieval Academy’s objection to academic boycotts by framing that objection as a response to feelings of vulnerability that apparently some individual MAA members felt, though no specific citations of acts of individual professional exclusion were appended.
The Medieval Academy’s actions make clear its lack of commitment to material decolonization despite its opportunistic use of diversity and equity language to conceal its actual politics. We strongly object to the co-optation of DEI language to condone genocide (another example of the ways that academia too often coopts values of generosity for self-serving means). As Medievalists of Color, we are all too familiar with how institutions use elite capture to leverage language about inclusion and diversity in service of their own interests, thereby neutralizing its political, liberatory potential.
As such, The Medievalists of Color break any and all relationship with the Medieval Academy of America and issues this statement as a call to action to our colleagues working across the many disciplines of medieval studies.
Below are a number of actions to express disagreement with the Medieval Academy’s opposition to academic boycotts, and to affirm solidarity with the Palestinian people.
- Quit the Medieval Academy of America – write to Lisa Fagin Davis (cc. Sara Lipton, President of the MAA), and let her know you’re quitting the MAA or alternatively allow your membership to lapse and redirect your dues to the many donation sites set up to aid those affected on the ground.
- Pull out of the upcoming Centennial Meeting of the Medieval Academy (March 20-22, 2025). Panels and participants that opt out of the MAA can request to participate in an alternate online symposium organized by the MoC and co-conspirators that will be free and open to the public. Submit your paper and panel abstract here.
- Encourage other small organizations to support Palestine and condemn Israel’s attacks.
- Vocally and visibly protest the MAA’s policies by encouraging your colleagues to also protest the MAA.
- Contribute your labor to online programing designed to highlight the work and advocacy of Pro-Palestinian medievalists.
Finally, if you are willing to engage in action and disruption to further the cause of Palestinian liberation, consider joining the Medievalists for Palestine Listserv.