New Research Study: Faculty Promote Their Anti-Israel Agenda In Classes
AMCHA Initiative: “Distorting and blocking the flow of knowledge is a violation of the norms and standards of scholarly inquiry and undermines the university’s academic mission”
- Study documents correlation between campus anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism
- New study: how anti-Israel faculty increase campus antisemitism
- New study: BDS activists hostile toward Jewish students, not just Israel
- Academic BDS-supporting instructors had an average of 78% of their course readings authored by BDS supporters, whereas non-BDS-supporting instructors had an average of 17% of their course readings authored by BDS supporters.
- The two groups of instructors showed themselves to be qualitatively distinct from one another with respect to the selection of course readings, with almost no overlap of the groups: all of the academic BDS-supporting instructors had a majority of their readings authored by BDS supporters, whereas only 2 of the 35 syllabi of non-BDS-supporting instructors had a majority of their course readings authored by BDS supporters, and none more than 60%. These data demonstrate that the large quantitative difference between the groups is not just the result of a few outliers, but represents a qualitative difference between these two groups of instructors in terms of how they select course readings.
The stark differences between the average percentage of course readings with pro-BDS authors within the two groups leaves little doubt that instructors who support academic BDS make a calculated choice to heavily weight their course materials with readings authored by BDS supporters. These results, in turn, imply that not only are academic boycotting instructors actively including pro-BDS readings, they are also severely limiting or completely excluding readings that would provide a more balanced picture of Israel.AMCHA Initiative fully acknowledges that freedom of speech protects faculty’s right to sign petitions and make extramural statements in support of academic BDS and academic freedom generally protects their right to develop and teach courses as they see fit. However, the report notes the serious and harmful consequences of faculty bringing their support for academic BDS into the classroom.
Distorting and blocking the flow of knowledge is a violation of the norms and standards of scholarly inquiry and undermines the university’s academic mission. Furthermore, faculty who use their classrooms to give academic legitimacy to a wholly one-sided, anti-Israel perspective, in compliance with the guidelines of academic BDS, can engender among their students hostility not only towards Israel, but towards Israel’s on-campus supporters. Such sentiments can easily lead to acts targeting Jewish and pro-Israel students for harm, as AMCHA’s previous research has shown.
AMCHA Study Suggests Pro-BDS Faculty Promote Their Views in Class https://t.co/0uKNZepopz
— The AMCHA Initiative (@AMCHAInitiative) January 13, 2020
But there are ways universities can combat professor-propaganda if they so choose; helpfully, AMCHA’s report includes concrete action items for university leaders to pursue in order to address these problems:
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Release public statement on the harm of academic BDS to U.S. students and faculty: University leaders should publicly acknowledge that while an academic boycott of Israel may ostensibly target Israeli universities and scholars, its implementation directly and substantively hurts students and faculty on their own campus, not only subverting their scholarly and educational opportunities and curtailing their academic freedom, but corrupting the entire academic mission of the university. Recently, chancellors and presidents at the University of California, University of Michigan, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Pitzer College issued strong statements acknowledging the harms of academic BDS for students and faculty, and condemning its implementation on their own campuses.
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Establish policies against using the classroom for political advocacy: Universities should establish and publicly affirm policies that prohibit faculty from using their classrooms for political rather than pedagogical purposes.
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Urge faculty to establish and enforce safeguards against classroom abuse: Faculty should be urged by university administrators to establish their own safeguards against the politicization of the academy. For example, following the refusal of a faculty member to write a letter of recommendation for a student wishing to study in Israel, a University of Michigan panel, appointed by the president, issued a report and recommendations emphasizing that faculty members must make judgments and act based solely on educational and professional reasons, not political motivations.
…it is up to academic departments and faculty senates to determine whether the promotion of one-sided, highly politicized course content is deemed a legitimate use of academic freedom, or an abuse of it. However, given the clear and present harm that such politicization can cause to our schools, our students and society, it is time for tuition and taxpayers, as well as state and federal legislators, to demand that faculty address this question forthrightly, and to hold them accountable for their answer.
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Comments
Hell. You could be taking a class in carburetor repair in a junior college in Kansas and hear more anti-Jew, anti-Israeli, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-white, anti-male, socialist racist tripe than a madrassa in Morocco. That is why they hire these losers. The sole reason they hire these losers. They sure as hell don’t care about educational fluency.
Sadly, you are precisely correct.
as a general rule Jewish kids are at the top of the class and make the schools look good.
i propose a boycott of non Jewish universities as well as research programs.
give our Jewish kids pride in our history and unique ethnicity.
we have enough wealthy Jews who can endow university programs so we do not need to grovel at the feeet of the haters in acadamey.
There’s a lot of Arab money too in our universities. Qatar has heavily funded programs at multiple universities. The Muslim orgs are very subversive, getting student senate resolutions passed at many universities supporting BDS.
Admissions offices seem quite pro-Muslim. They get to make “holistic” judgments with very little apparent oversight. The admissions offices really need a lot of scrutiny.
Is there anyone anywhere who’s surprised by the results of this study?
Sure there are. This no doubt shocks those who believe, despite all the proof to the contrary, that it is the Right, not the Left, that is the source of 95% of the antisemitism in this nation. And those are the same people who claim, again in spite of all the proof to the contrary, that the Right controls the media.
Guarantee you that the VAST majority…if not ALL…of these academics are also Democrats.
My son’s experience at UCSD has been as much the activism of the administration as the professors. He has seen his more sane professors bullied by the administration to tow the activist line. I’m so glad to hear of this going on in the CA system. It is huge, full of activists and I honestly find most people don’t believe my son when he tells them how bad it is. Thank you for highlighting.
If you are a Professor/Teacher and your students know your Political Views ,, THEN YOU HAVE FAILED. He needs to be immediately Fired !!!
Keeping political views private applies to many areas. I mentioned before running a specific interest grass root lobbying interest for over two decades. I had to keep peace between people affiliated with all sorts of political beliefs, this wa necessary to keep them focused on our specific narrow issue.
It was amazing how fast these issues would create ill will and refusal to cooperate. Whatever my original political views were, I discovered that there were honest and dishonest people in every faction.
This is but the tip of the iceberg. These indoctrinators, posing as teachers, start their vile brainwashing in elementary school and it culminates in college. I have long ago lost respect for the bulk of these vermin.
What is needed is a comprehensive list of the guilty faculty so that we can institute a counter boycott–legal insurrection should take uproot of providing the names
Create a hall of shame.
This is not actually hard to do. Include this information on ratemyprofessors.com .
Out here in the real world — where you have to do actual work — an employee who decides to push a political agenda with co-workers is likely to get fired. And if the co-workers are incensed enough by the content that was pushed on them (particularly if nothing was done after complaining), they will likely sue the company for allowing a “hostile workplace” to exist. Real world; real consequences.
A few well-executed lawsuits should start to change this. But they will need to bring real pain to universities.