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BDS Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 13, 2014 19 Comments
In December 2013, the American Studies Association passed an academic boycott of Israel, the first group of substantial size to do so. That led to a massive outpouring of outrage and rejection by over 250 university presidents and numerous university associations, not to mention the American Association of University Professors. The ASA boycott was passed with less than 20% of the membership voting for it, but so few people participated that it was enough. The anti-Israel political activists who dominated the ASA "activism" caucus and national council used their influence to the utmost, something we have detailed here repeatedly. The opposition to the boycott resulted in the ASA playing victim, claiming that criticism of the boycott and steps by university presidents to reject the boycott somehow was an infringement of the boycotters' academic freedom. As if academic freedom meant freedom from criticism and the ability to politicize an issue only when pro-boycott. But it appears that in the trenches, the attacks on those opposing the boycott have been even more vicious. One such incident involved Fordham professor Doron Ben-Atar, who writes about his experience at The Tablet today, Kafka Was the Rage:
The email arrived on the last Friday afternoon of the spring term shortly before 5:00 p.m. Anastasia Coleman, Fordham’s Director of Institutional Equity and Compliance, and its Title IX Coordinator, wanted to meet with me. “It has been alleged,” she wrote, “that you may have acted in an inappropriate way and possibly discriminated against another person at the University.” ... “Did it have anything to do with a student?” I shot back anxiously, hoping to get a sense of my predicament before the director left for the weekend. I was lucky. Coleman responded immediately. “This does not involve students and is about your behavior regarding American Studies.”

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 07, 2014 2 Comments
We previously mentioned that a pro-Academic Freedom Petition was circulating among faculty and researchers, specifically objecting to the academic boycott of Israel passed by a small number of groups, such as the American Studies Association. The Petition has now passed 1200 signatures, mostly from faculty at universities in the United States, but including some international faculty, researchers and scholars. This is an important development, as some anti-Israel activist groups misleadingly attempt to portray academia as stifling speech hostile to Israel. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, there is a pervasive campus climate of hostility to Israel led by pro-boycott faculty, concentrated in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The anti-Israel academic boycott covers  Israeli institutions of higher education, and demands termination of exchange programs, terms abroad programs in Israel,  academic cooperation, and any attempt at normalization of relations among scholars.  The comprehensive boycott of these institutions by its nature includes a boycott of the faculty and staff at such institutions. In practice, the boycott such as that of the ASA, includes refusing attendance at conferences by the individuals representing such institutions or who carry administrative titles.  It is a boycott of individuals. The faculty supporting the academic boycott of Israel disregard calls by over 250 university presidents, numerous university associations, and the American Association of University Professors, that such systematic academic boycotts threaten the academic freedom of all of us. The anti-Israel boycotters have taken over some professional organizations, where a relatively small number of activists can manipulate key committees and national councils. But the academic boycotters do not represent the majority. This Petition is just a first step in the silent majority in the academic community speaking up -- not to take sides in the Middle East dispute, but to speak out against those who bring the war into the classrooms and hallways regardless of the consequences.  Enough already. The Petition remains open, and more signatures are anticipated as the word spreads. [caption id="attachment_100289" align="alignnone" width="600"]http://facultyforacademicfreedom.org/ (Click on Image to go to Petition page)[/caption] You don’t have to be “pro-Israel” to sign — only pro-academic freedom, pro-fairness, pro-intellectual honesty, pro-education and pro-peace. Here’s an excerpt from the Petition:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 05, 2014 3 Comments
We have posted many times about how the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, through faculty and Students for Justice in Palestine branches, has turned campuses and classrooms into political battlefields in the worst way. When Northeastern University SJP marches to the chant of "Long Live the Intifada," they are celebrating the bloody suicide bombing campaign. When Vassar College SJP pickets a class and forces a professor to walk the guantlet just because the course involved a trip to Israel, and anti-Israel students jeer Jewish students who spoke up for Israel, they are sending a message of continued conflict -- so it was no surprise when Vassar SJP tweeted out a Nazi cartoon. When NYU SJP dorm storms and invades the privacy of students in their dorm rooms to leaflet against Israel, they bring the war into bedrooms. When the faculty members of American Studies Association bring the war to campus through an academic boycott of Israel led by people whose explicit goal is the destruction of Israel, it sends a message to students that to be pro-Israel is to be unacceptable in the classroom. When faculty are willing to destroy academic freedom for everyone in order to hurt Israel, yet play victim when their own academic freedom allegedly is impinged, the argument no longer is over principle but pure power. When conspiracy theories involving Jewish control of the media and the money are central to the arguments of BDS supporters who claim not to be anti-Semitic, anti-Semitism flourishes. When a central thesis of the student, faculty and off-campus leadership of the BDS movement on campuses is that Zionism is the cause of anti-Semitism, and even Naziism, anti-Semitism is rationalized. When stoking and exploiting racial tension is a common tactic used to increase hatred of Israel, and BDS refuses to allow Arab and Jewish students to interact for fear of "normalization," BDS tears campuses apart. When making it costly to be pro-Israel on campus is the major achievement of student BDS activists, discussion is impossible. When BDS banners and messages are at the front of Jew-baiting crowds in Europe, Boston and Miami, it's clear what BDS is about.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 28, 2014 3 Comments
The fight over the academic boycott of Israel in the United States mostly is confined to professional associations in the Humanities and Social Sciences, where anti-Israel activist faculty have some ability to rig the system in their favor through control of key committees and programs. Unlike in the real world at universities, the faculty who take control of professional organizations are not counterbalanced by the faculty as a whole, students, administrators, trustees, parents and alumni.  Professional organizations are the perfect vehicle for anti-Israel activists for this reason. The activists have the ability filter the debate and tailor the information provided to membership so as to provide a one-sided view. That's what happened at the American Studies Association, which passed a boycott resolution but refused to distribute to the membership materials requested by the pro-Israel side. The resolution passed with less than 20% of the total membership voting for it, because of low overall participation.  Since then the ASA has turned into a full-time boycott entity, with its executive board calling for a complete boycott of Israel in all aspects, and an entire day of boycott organizing scheduled alongside its Annual Meeting. At the Modern Language Association debate last January on a resolution critical of supposed Israeli travel restrictions on academics, the panel discussion at the annual meeting was limited to anti-Israel activists. At the house of delegates, pro-Israel faculty did get a chance to argue against the resolution, and with that the resolution -- which had been expected to pass easily -- barely passed, and only after the language was watered down. When put to the entire membership, the resolution failed to gain the needed votes, and failed. Rigging the debate appears to be happening now at American Anthropological Association for an upcoming debate, as Haaretz reports, U.S. academics bemoan 'rigged’ fight in battle against BDS:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 27, 2014 2 Comments
We preciously covered the "blood bucket challenge" carried out by Ohio University student senate president Megan Marzec, in which she hijacked the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in order to bash Israel. [caption id="attachment_98557" align="alignnone" width="550"]Ohio U. Student Senate President Megan Marzed "Blood Bucket Challenge) (Ohio U. Student Senate President Megan Marzec anti-Israel "Blood Bucket Challenge")[/caption] Marzec's politicization of a charity fundraiser meant to raise research funds for an incurable disease sparked widespread outrage, and protests on campus. One of those protests was at a student senate meeting where Marzec had protesters arrested by campus police when the protesters insisted on being able to present their objections outside the allotted speaking time.  The protesters continue to face criminal charges for "disrupting a public meeting."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 26, 2014 9 Comments
Brian Leiter is the pugnacious U. Chicago philosophy and law professor, whose claim to fame is his blog ranking of philosophy departments, and to a much lesser extent, law schools.  We touched on Leiter before with regard to his attacks on Prof. Glenn Reynolds and other "right-wing" law professor bloggers with whom Leiter politically disagrees. An interesting side-light is that Leiter has been one of the most vocal supporters of Steven Salaita, the anti-Israel professor whose anti-Israel, and arguably anti-Semitic, tweets caused the University of Illinois Board of Trustees to deny him a tenured position. Among other things, Leiter wrote a blog post at Huffington Post that got a lot of attention because Leiter declared that UI-UC had repealed the First Amendment.   There are important issues that a court may have to sort out, but to proclaim the university's concerns a repeal of the First Amendment is pure hyperbole. In a further post at his own blog, Leiter opined that Salaita had a strong "promissory estoppel" claim, because some unnamed professors told him so at lunch. I guess the legal argument in court would go something like this: Your Honor, you must ignore the contingent provision in the offer requiring Board approval because that's what some people told Brian Leiter at lunch. Leiter announced on his blog that he was boycotting UI-UC:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 22, 2014 5 Comments
You need no better proof of how the anti-Israel Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement poisons everything it touches than the story of how anti-Israel activists turned a once-respected medical journal, The Lancet, into a BDS platform. Just like Ohio University student senate president Megan Marzec hijacked the purpose of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to bash Israel, so too a handful anti-Israel physicians, including the notorious Dr. Mads Gilbert, corrupted the purpose of Lancet by publishing an anti-Israel screed in the journal. That was bad enough, and caused substantial protest against the biased politicization of a medical journal . Then, NGO Monitor, a group that investigates the anti-Israel Non-Governmental Organization industry, uncovered that two of the physicians involved peddled anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and circulated a David Duke video. The Telegraph in Britain reports:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 21, 2014 7 Comments
We have covered the anti-Israel academic boycott movement so many times, the easiest way to come up to speed is to scroll through the American Studies Association Tag starting at the earliest date. The short version is that anti-Zionist, anti-Israel academic activists for years have maneuvered to take over professional organizations in order to bring the war against Israel home to campuses. Their biggest success to date is the ASA, but they continue their efforts elsewhere. The loudest mouths get all the attention, while the majority of people in academia who do not support academic boycotts (of Israel or any other nation) mostly go about their business and watch from the sidelines. There have been strong institutional expressions against academic BDS, most prominently by over 250 university presidents, the American Association of University Professors, and numerous higher education associations. Now, a Petition is circulating that gives individuals on campus an opportunity to go on record against the academic boycott of Israel.   [caption id="attachment_100289" align="alignnone" width="600"]http://facultyforacademicfreedom.org/ (Click on Image to go to Petition page)[/caption] You don't have to be "pro-Israel" to sign.  You only need to be pro-academic freedom, pro-fairness, pro-intellectual honesty, pro-education and pro-peace. The Petition quietly went live online last week, and already has over 500 signatures, including some very prominent academics from a wide variety of academic disciplines: International Petition to Oppose Boycotts of Israel's Academic Institutions, Scholars and Students. Legal Insurrection reader crowdsourcing was critical in responding to the ASA boycott.  We can do it again by spreading the word as to the Petition on Facebook, Twitter and by personal contacts. Here's an excerpt from the Petition:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 18, 2014 14 Comments
It's a good thing we still have scientists who refuse to accept settled science and scientific consensus, and keep on digging and questioning prevailing wisdoms. It seems that many of such scientists are in Israel, perhaps because politicized scientific conformity is not as prized in the "start-up nation" as it is in Euorpe and the U.S. One example from Israel we reported on previously was Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded scientific denier:
Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman won the 2011 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for his discovery of quasicrystals, a mosaic-like chemical structure that researchers previously thought was impossible. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Shechtman’s discovery in 1982 fundamentally changed the way chemists look at solid matter. It initially faced strong objections from the scientific community, and even got him kicked out of his research group in the United States.
Now another, from AFP via Times of Israel, Sweeteners boost diabetes risk, Israeli study finds:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 12, 2014 23 Comments
[Featured Image credit: Kaitlin Owens video] We covered the incident the other night where the anti-Israel Student Senate President Megan Marzec at Ohio University had campus police arrest four pro-Israel students who were protesting the "blood bucket challenge" performed by the Marzec. Marzec came under heavy criticism, including from the Student Senate itself, for her hijacking of the charity fundraising effort for research into an incurable disease, in order to attack Israel. Is there anything the anti-Israel crowd will not make a political battleground? One of the students, Rebecca Sebo, was arrested while reading a Legal Insurrection blog post that collected university president statements against the academic boycott of Israel. [caption id="attachment_99193" align="alignnone" width="575"]http://www.thepostathens.com/news/article_e5def6ee-3940-11e4-9d06-0017a43b2370.html?mode=video (Rebecca Sebo, Ohio University)(photo credit: Kaitlin Owens video)[/caption] As of now, misdemeanor charges of disrupting a public meeting remain pending and have not been dropped:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 11, 2014 27 Comments
The University of Illinois Board of Trustees just voted on the recommendation of a tenured position for Steven Salaita. The issue became highly controversial when UI at Urbana-Champaign Chancellor Phyllis Wise first declined to forward the recommendation to the Board. Salaita's tweets about Jews, Israel and Gaza caused a wide-ranging debate on social media and among academics. Our prior posts are under the Steven Salaita Tag. After weeks of protest and threats of a lawsuit, the recommendation was forwarded for vote today. There were several editorials from major Illinois publications in the past week supporting Wise and arguing that Salaita's tweets crossed a line, including the Urbana News-Gazette, Chicago Tribune, and Chicago Sun Times. The Tribune Editorial Board wrote:
Salaita was dumped because his tweets crossed the line from caustic commentary to hate speech. Some of his remarks come uncomfortably and irresponsibly close to endorsing violence against individuals or groups of people. Some are racist. At the very least, they would create a hostile environment in which others must work or study.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 10, 2014 33 Comments
[Featured Image credit: Kaitlin Owens video] [Note: The title of this post and Featured Image were changed once I obtained the video which demonstrated that the student leader arrested was reading a Legal Insurrection blog post when arrested.] We previously covered how Meghan Marzec, the President of the Ohio University student Senate, hijacked the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to bash Israel with a Blood Bucket Challenge. It reflects the nature of the anti-Israel movement on campus that they would politicize a charity fundraiser for an incurable disease. What kind of people do such things? Anti-Israel campus activists, that's the type of people. At a Student Senate Meeting tonight, pro-Israel students protested this abuse and, according to reports, several of the pro-Israel students were escorted out and arrested by campus police, via the student newspaper, The Post, Four students arrested at Wednesday's Student Senate Meeting:
Ohio University Police Department Chief Andrew Powers told The Post that four students were arrested at Wednesday night's Student Senate meeting in Walter Hall. OUPD officers escorted Bobcats for Israel President Becky Sebo out of the Student Senate meeting Wednesday night. Rabbi Danielle LeShaw, who went with the arrested students to OUPD's station, told The Post they were charged with a fourth degree misdemeanor for disturbing a lawful meeting.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 05, 2014 8 Comments
I know readers probably are skeptical when I constantly tell you how pathological the hatred of Israel is among many Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) supporters on campus. I am not exaggerating. At all. Israel hatred consumes their lives such that everything is politicized and used as an excuse to attack Israel. Even ordinary foodstuffs like hummus, coffee or couscous, are turned into political weapons. It's all about their politics -- they feel no compunction about dominating student government and trying to turn assembly and senate meetings into tools in the war against Israel, and to dominate campus discussion to the exclusion of all other issues. (language warning) (Related Post) They proudly proclaim that even when they lose a divestment vote, they won because they forced student government to spend hours or days talking about how bad Israel supposedly is. One of the most egregious examples was the student senate President -- yes, President -- at Ohio University, Megan Marzec, who used the ALS ice bucket challenge to bash Israel.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 04, 2014 7 Comments
In opposing the anti-Israel boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses, it's natural to frame the argument as opposition. Campus BDS is aggressive, and may get even more so this year (although there is one counter-indicator). Whether it's divestment initiatives, or attempts at academic BDS, the campus war on Israel never rests. While opposition is important and necessary, it's not the complete answer. The other half is continuing to build academic ties with Israeli academic institutions and individuals. The Times of Israel reports that expanding ties are taking place despite boycott calls, Universities profit from ignoring Israel boycott:
Anti-Israel activity and especially boycott drives make considerable noise on university campuses, but the record shows that schools that ignore or reject the pressure can profit from relationships with Israeli institutions of higher learning — and not just academically. Cleveland State University recently signed an agreement with the University of Haifa to “develop joint learning opportunities between the two universities,” an official memorandum of understanding (MoU) said. This is CSU’s first academic agreement with an Israeli university The agreement was signed by CSU President Ronald Berkman and University of Haifa Rector David Faraggi, who was in Cleveland for a two day visit. The MoU, said CSU Communications Director Kevin Ziegler, “provides an affirmation from both sides that we’re going to work together to make this happen. It’s [a way] of saying we’re serious. That we’re going to treat each other like partners on this and make things happen.... Another university already partnering with Israel is Texas A&M, which in 2013 signed a deal with to open a new campus in Nazareth. Texas A&M already has a facility in Israel; the US institution has been working with Ben-Gurion University for several years, and runs an R&D lab with BGU in Beersheba.
The Tower further reports:
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