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About: Resolutions and Actions
ASA Affirmative Action Reaffirmation
March 1999
At this critical moment in the national debate over equal opportunity, the American Studies Association, a 6,000-member, nonprofit, professional organization of American Studies scholars and educators across the U.S. and the world, wishes to reaffirm its commitment to the principle of affirmative action. We have enjoined the ASA National Council to devise appropriate strategies each year for supporting this principle. ASA has for years sought to promote strategies to advance affirmative action, such as boycotting convention sites in the state of California since 1995. In selecting future convention sites, we will continue to observe our boycott of California, and we are extending that boycott to Washington state in light of the passage of the recent anti-affirmative action initiative. Although we will honor existing contracts, we will not plan ASA conferences in any state that legalizes an anti-affirmative action policy. Moreover, we will seek to reward cities and states that publicly support affirmative action by considering them as convention sites. We will also encourage other professional associations to join us in this effort to fight discrimination and re-segregation, specifically to participate with us in the NAACP Report Card Project on hotels and conventions, which establishes guidelines for labor policies that promote equal opportunity and social justice.
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