The Modern Language Association’s Executive Director Paula Krebs stepped forward not one but three times to stumble through confused explanations of a constitutional amendment strengthening the organization’s odd distinction between a motion and a resolution. The amendment was up for adoption at the group’s January 2026 annual meeting, this year in Toronto.  A motion commits the Modern Language Association to take some action. A resolution is merely an express of collective sentiment—a conviction, a wish, a hope, an expression of belief. An aggressively antisemitic resolution (supposedly) doesn’t bind the MLA to antisemitism. It just embraces and channels antisemitism on behalf of all the MLA’s members.

Her awkwardness may well have been performative, expressing her reservations about the distinction she was trying and failing to articulate. Only a day earlier, at an open hearing, she had suggested the lawyers might say the claim an MLA resolution does not certify a commitment is nonsense. Certainly the MLA’s Radical Caucus, which had proposed 2026’s only resolution, gave every evidence the MLA was now committed to an antisemitic declaration: Israel is guilty of genocide. Here is the text of the RC’s resolution:

WHEREAS escalating attacks on academic freedom, free speech, faculty governance, and equity are irreparably damaging education in the United States;

WHEREAS these attacks weaponize allegations of antisemitism and racism to undermine struggles against those real problems, justify massive cutbacks, and silence protest against the U.S.-sponsored Israeli genocide in Gaza;

WHEREAS untenured and adjunct faculty and international students are especially vulnerable to doxxing, firing, and deportation;

BE IT RESOLVED that the MLA condemns these attacks and their specious justifications, and urges all United States educational institutions to join in this opposition.........

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