3,000 Academics Denounce Boycotts of Israel in New Letter

Nearly 3,000 scholars have signed an open letter which condemns academic boycotts of Israel and calls on university officials to protect the academy from the caprices of politics.

Circulated by several higher education nonprofits, the letter comes amid anti-Zionist students and faculty clamoring for universities to sever ties with Israel and adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS), a demand that was at the center of an explosion of “encampment” protests which roiled campuses across the country at the end of spring semester.

Formally launched in 2005, the BDS campaign opposes Zionism — a movement supporting the Jewish people’s right to self-determination — and rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nation-state. It seeks to isolate the country comprehensively with economic, political, and cultural boycotts as the first step toward its eventual elimination.

Official guidelines issued for the campaign’s academic boycott state that “projects with all Israeli academic institutions should come to an end,” and delineate specific restrictions that adherents should abide by — for instance, denying letters of recommendation to students who seek to study in Israel..

An overwhelming majority of Middle East scholars support boycotting Israel, according to a survey published in November 2022, which found that 91 percent of 500 responding experts from the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and the American Political Science Association (APSA) “support at least some boycotts” of Israel.

The new letter says such an action would sanction discrimination against Israelis and undermine the university’s mission to foster viewpoint diversity.

“Pressure from anti-Israel protests and the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement has already led to pervasive exclusion of Israeli scientists and students,” it says. “Recently, over 60 Israeli academics from various disciplines have testified to an ‘unprecedented global boycott,’ including canceled invitations to lectures, rejections of scientific papers on political grounds, the freezing of collaborative research projects, disrupted guest lectures, withdrawn co-authorships, and more.”

It continues, “We urge faculty-facing organizations in our countries, including the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), the National Conference of University Professors (NCUP), the German Association of University Professors and Lecturers (DHV), and other groups committed to an open academic community, to assist us in this effort and to forcefully denounce pernicious trends that are undermining the bedrock principles of the academy.”

The letter has been signed by professors from several prominent universities, including Yale University, Columbia University, University of Maryland, Stanford University, and Northwestern University.

“We believe that the academic boycott of Israel, and ostracizing of the country’s scientists and students from international educational spaces, is detrimental to the core values of academic freedom and the open exchange of ideas,” Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network — a higher education nonprofit which endorsed the letter — said in a statement issued on Monday. “Our open letter seeks to address these harmful trends and galvanize support from the scholarly community to uphold the principles that are foundational to scholarly pursuits.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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