A few days ago, a boycott campaign against the forthcoming ISA conference in Rabat, Morocco, was launched by the Moroccan Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel as well as by The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). I was planning to attend the conference, having organised a panel with AbdouMaliq Simone, so the call caught my attention, and that of many other social scientists across the globe.
In the call for boycott, these comrades are urging the ISA to take action regarding the participation of Israeli institutions in the conference, as well as denouncing specific contributions that advance colonial and negationist narratives in relation to the current genocide in Palestine (e.g., https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/forum2025/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/155086). The original full statement of the PACBI can be found here: https://bdsmovement.net/news/pacbi-isa-exclude-israel
A few days after the initial statements, on June 28th, the Global Sociologists for Palestine (GS4P) joined the call for a boycott (https://bdsmovement.net/news/global-sociologists-palestine-join-palestinian-calls-boycott-isa-5th-forum-over-ties-complicit). The GS4P document clarifies the reasons for the boycott and, importantly, opens up venues to connect with local scholars and participate in local actions.
After these important interventions, the ISA’s board responded (https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/conferences/forum/rabat-2025/isa-response-boycott-5th-forum). In my view, that response did not address the core problem. Following what liberal western institutions have been long doing, in that statement, ISA speaks of solidarity with Palestine, without engaging in the concrete actions a boycott demands. In the specific, it does nothing about the Zionist content that has been accepted into the conference, nor about the question of giving visibility to Israeli institutions (which are by default part of the Israeli military-industrial complex) at the event.
A further point of contention highlighted by the GSP4 in their text was related to the Israeli Sociological Society (ISS), a member of ISA. As explained by the GSP4, ISS has never “condemn, or even acknowledge, the genocide unfolding in real time” in Palestine. On this latter point, on June 29th, ISA has decided to take action. They released a new statement (https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/about-isa/isa-human-rights-committee/ec-decision-israeli-sociological-society) in which they announced the suspension of the collective membership of the ISS in the ISA.
I am pleased to see that, thanks to the efforts of PACBI, GSP4, and the Moroccan comrades, some significant results have been achieved. These include raising awareness and creating solidarity across many of us globally, as well as pushing ISA to “suspend” the ISS.
However, I believe what ISA has done is not enough and that more profound action is needed. There are at least three levels, which, by the way, I think should apply to all disciplinary associations engaged in the business of global conferencing (in my field, Geography, this includes the AAG or the RGS-IBG, to cite just two).
First. It is not enough to “suspend” the membership of ISS in ISA. That membership should be revoked, plain and simple. A new application to rejoin could be consider if and when ISS will denounce and take actions upon: i) the settler colonial project of Israel in Palestine; ii) the genocidal war of the State of Israel against Palestinian people, land and history; iii) the academic-military-industrial complex in which every Israeli University is emeshed. Till then, a “suspension” is not enough to satisfy the demands of a boycott within the BDS framework.
Second. ISA needs to expel all Zionist abstracts from the conference program. This means removing the abstracts and their authors from the conference altogether. If there is no mechanism in place to do this, then a problem exists. Allowing this kind of content into a global sociological forum cannot be defended under the banner of “free speech”. Racist and colonial content must not be allowed.
Third. ISA needs to cancel all interventions from scholars presenting under the banners of institutions complicit with the genocide. It is true that in doing the latter, Palestinian scholars working in Israeli institutions will also be affected. Yet, in my view, boycotting those institutions bears prime importance. In BDS the point is never about individuals – being Israeli or Palestinian scholars – but about institutions. Therefore, if I welcome ISA’s point on the ISS as a first partial step, I believe a stronger stance is needed: one that calls for no Israeli institutions at the conference, in any form, even if that form is just an affiliation. The epistemic validation that occurs when accepting such affiliations normalizes the related institutions at a time when they should not be normalized, but rather fully boycotted. Such an action would be coherent with a BDS framework, and was already present in the first call for boycott released by PACBI.
[UPDATE = after publishing this post, I came across PACBI’s latest statement, which is essentially along the same lines as what I have written above: https://bdsmovement.net/news/pacbi-welcomes-isa-suspension-reiterates-palestinian-demands)]
Given all of this, as of today (June 30th), I have decided to fully boycott the ISA event, cancel my registration, and refrain from traveling to Rabat. I do this in full support of PACBI and the Moroccan scholars for Palestine who have initiated the call, whom I thank deeply.
I believe going to Rabat and sustaining the activities of these comrades locally is also an option, as they suggest. If you are considering this, the GS4P website provides a link to a mailing list where you can join to stay informed.
In solidarity.
