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BDS Tag

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things, Leiter wrote a blog post at Huffington Post that got a lot of attention because Leiter declared that UI-UC had repealed the First Amendment.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:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 02, 2014 12 Comments
I have noted before the disturbing trend of anti-Israel Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) supporters blaming Israel and/or Zionism for the recent outbursts of anti-Semitism around the world. I first noted the issue in connection with a tweet from Professor Steven Salaita, where he tweeted that "By eagerly conflating Jewishness and Israel, Zionists are partly responsible when people say antisemitic shit in response to Israeli terror." [Salaita's tweets became a big issue, although that tweet has not receive a lot of attention.] In that post, I noted that Salaita was far from alone. There has been a trend to use the "Zionism causes anti-Semitism" verbiage as a way of deflecting the grossly anti-Semitic BDS-led protests seen around the world under the guise of protesting the Gaza conflict. Fast forward to last week at Cornell, when Students for Justice in Palestine held what was to be a mobilization rally on campus related to Gaza. Casey Breznick is Editor-in-Chief of the conservative Cornell Review undergraduate journal. Casey also writes for Legal Insurrection (posts here) and College Insurrection (posts here), sustaining our long history of providing conservative Cornell undergraduates with a platform.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 22, 2014 11 Comments
Prior to a few minutes ago, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign had not commented publicly about the reasoning behind the decision not to complete the hiring process for Professor Steven Salaita. There was a lot of protest, including a petition and academic boycotts, meant to pressure the university into changing its mind.  That does not appear to be happening, from the latest news report. That, of course, does not preclude some sort of financial settlement, which might take into account that Salaita resigned his prior tenured position at Virginia Tech before learning his contingent offer from UI-UC would not be approved. The Urbana-Champaign News-Gazette now reports that Chancellor Phyllis Wise has sent a campus-wide email:
In her first public statement about Professor Steven Salaita, University of Illinois Chancellor Phyllis Wise said her decision to not forward his appointment to trustees for formal approval was not influenced by his criticism of Israel. The university, she said, cannot tolerate “personal and disrespectful words or actions that demean and abuse either viewpoints themselves or those who express them.” “We have a particular duty to our students to ensure that they live in a community of scholarship that challenges their assumptions about the world but that also respects their rights as individuals. A Jewish student, a Palestinian student, or any student of any faith or background must feel confident that personal views can be expressed and that philosophical disagreements with a faculty member can be debated in a civil, thoughtful and mutually respectful manner. Most important, every student must know that every instructor recognizes and values that student as a human being. If we have lost that, we have lost much more than our standing as a world-class institution of higher education,” Wise sent in a mass e-mail to the campus community Friday afternoon.
(Update) In addition, later in the afternoon, the Board of Trustees, the Chancellors of the Chicago and Springfield campuses, numerous university senior officials, and the President of the Faculty Senates, issues a statement supporting the decision. The full Chancellor email, as reprinted by the News-Gazette, is as follows (added -- original email here):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 21, 2014 26 Comments
When I told you on July 16 that I was Expecting anti-Israel violence on campuses this fall, you might have thought I was needlessly worried. But I have observed over the past academic year the increasing fury and frustration of the campus BDS movement -- and that was before Gaza. So in my post I predicted:
Merely unhinged BDS on campus will be the good old days.
And it may already have come true, just as most universities are seeing students return to campus for the fall semester. Via Truth Revolt, Temple Univ. Jewish Student Punched In Face And Called ‘Kike’ In Anti-Semitic Attack:
A Jewish student on the campus of Temple University was assaulted on Wednesday afternoon and called “kike” and “baby killer” by members of the anti-Semitic student group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). [Name removed on request], a Camera on Campus fellow and a member of the Jewish fraternity AEPi, was punched in the face by a violent member of the anti-Israel organization SJP at “Templefest” which is organized for students on campus to gain new information about campus clubs a week before the start of classes.[name removed on request] is a managing information systems major at the Fox School of Business at the university.....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 20, 2014 5 Comments
We have seen how on Twitter, and on the streets of Europe and elsewhere, the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement tells us how they really feel. And how they really feel is that Israel must be destroyed. That's not, of course, what they and their compatriots as groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, tell gullible students on campuses. On campuses, they talk about ending the "occupation," but what they don't say is that they consider all of Israel (not just the "West Bank") to be occupied territory. In Oakland, BDS protesters tried to stop a ZIM line ship from unloading. ZIM is associated in the public mind with Israel, but it's only one-third owned by Israelis. J.E. Dyer at Liberty Unyielding has excellent background, Anti-Israel BDS nuttery at the port of Oakland on the people involved and the futility of the protests. And yes, there is a heavy socialist-communist element: Oakland Block the Boat socialist banner In this case, after a delay, the ship was unloaded anyway. But not before dockworkers let it be known how they felt about these protesters interfering:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 09, 2014 13 Comments
If reports are true, Steven Salaita's horrific and bizarre Twitter feed cost him a job offer at U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As of this moment, the reason behind the denial of a position is not known, but that hasn't stopped Salaita's supporters from portraying the denial as based on Salaita's anti-Israel views. As if there is some new blacklist against anti-Israel views, despite the fact that so many faculty members are anti-Israel and proud to express those views. One thing about Salaita's tweets -- he said how he feels. And how he feels is that Israel should be destroyed ("decolonized" in his lingo). That's what the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement really is all about -- it's struggle until Israel is gone. There are some naive dupes who actually believe that academic boycotts are about changing Israeli policies, but the leadership knows that it's about destroying Israel. The reaction to the denial of an offer to Salaita has been furious. One supporter of the academic boycott of Israel now wants a boycott of UI-Urbana-Champaign. Another professor is refusing to show his film there. The American Association of University Professors has weighed in against the denial, although it admits "a number of facts concerning this case remain unclear." There has been an attempt to portray Salaita as a world-reknowned scholar, but that's an exaggeration. Most of his work was simply devoted to bashing Israel in a now-typical melding of political activism and academics. Whether Salaita's initial selection was political to begin with is being questioned. Much of the organizing has been focused on a Petition for Corrective Action on Change.org posted by Rima Merriman: Salaita Change.org Petition Rima Merriman

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 08, 2014 12 Comments
For background on the controversy surrounding Steven Salaita, who was denied a job offer at U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign allegedly due to his tweets, see my prior posts: No one knows for a fact why his job offer was denied at U. Illinois, but the presumption is that it concerned his bizarre, vulgar and unhinged tweets. His defenders try to portray this as viewpoint discrimination, as if he lost out just because he criticized Israel; at this point that is entirely speculative as to the basis for the university's actions. For more background see arguments for the denial of a job offer, and against the denial of a job offer. [See video discussion here, couldn't be embedded due to formatting problems][new embed code added - thanks to commenter] The whole thing may come down to contract law.
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