2012 APSA Annual Meeting Boycott Debate

An interesting debate is occurring regarding the American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting scheduled for 2012. Some APSA members are arguing for a boycott of this meeting since it remains to be scheduled for New Orleans even though an amendment banning legally recognized relationships for same-sex partners was added in 2004. This becomes important because of APSA contractual language that allows for “termination of this agreement, without penalty or liability, if the government of the city in which the hotel is located establishes or enforces laws that, in the estimation of APSA, abridge the civil rights of any APSA member on the bases of gender, race, color, national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, physical handicap, disability, or religion” (danpinello.com). This issues brings forward many questions: what counts as a human right; can an organization change contractual terms based on rights violations; should same-sex relationship or marriage amendments be considered to be the same sorts of rights concerns as right to life or other “fundamental” rights; who gets to decide if a rights violation has occurred or is occurring; in what ways should a rights violation be addressed (especially by visitors to a place where a particular amendment argued to be a violation was democratically voted into existence); and even whether this sort of an academic organization should take a position on the rights nature of same-sex relationships. After the letter is a list of signatories, some of whom have attached their own statements (http://www.danpinello.com/Additional.htm). Wendy Brown (http://www.danpinello.com/BrownStatement.htm) has interesting points to take into consideration, especially regarding balancing concerns for post-Katrina New Orleans and same-sex partner concerns. This may be a more obscure human rights in the news, but it is an interesting debate going on that shows the difficult rights-related decisions that happen at many levels. It also caputures the ways that different concerns collide.