Issue: BDS ≠ PeaceRSS feed

Our TTN colleague, David Schraub, a lecturer and researcher in law at the University of California-Berkeley and the California Constitution Center, wrote this opinion piece in The Forward: “Why People Who Oppose BDS Should Oppose Anti-BDS Laws, Too.” A liberal opponent of the anti-Israel BDS campaign, he nevertheless cites examples of how state politicians, university administrators and bureaucrats apply […]

The following are abridged excerpts from an article in the Jewish Journal (“Judith Butler Plans a Stealth MLA Presidency”) by Cary Nelson, the Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a colleague at The Third Narrative and the Alliance for Academic Freedom. We begin with his introduction: The Modern Language Association […]

The Struggle for the Heart of the Left: Israel, Palestine and BDS It’s no surprise that the Democratic Socialists of America, endorsed a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) policy at its recent membership convention. Disheartening, yes, but today’s DSA, though calling itself the ‘largest socialist organization in America’ is not the DSA that was founded […]

What follows is an abridged version of a statement written for the “Inside Higher Ed” website by eight members of the Alliance for Academic Freedom — David Greenberg, Rebecca Lesses, Jeffry Mallow, Deborah Dash Moore, Sharon Musher, Cary Nelson (chair), Kenneth Stern and Irene Tucker: Everyone Lost at Dartmouth In May 2017, N. Bruce Duthu, an associate dean and […]

We were advised on June 14, by Prof. Cary Nelson, that the proposal for a boycott of Israeli universities has been defeated at the Modern Language Association (MLA): By a stunning two to one margin, members voted not to endorse a boycott of Israeli universities now or in the future. This sends a message to […]

This links to a post by a J Street U activist who attended the “anti-BDS summit”organized at the UN, and was shocked to find a Republican state legislator attack J Street as anti-Semitic while other participants expressed hatred toward Palestinians and Muslims. Most of J Street’s energy is spent fighting the occupation. Any energy it spends […]

BDS is noxious because it singles out Israel for blame in the ongoing conflict, and it tends to penalize individual Israelis, including universities — the most liberal anti-occupation sector of Israeli society.  Moreover, the official movement headed by Omar Barghouti advocates an unlimited “right of return” by Palestinians to Israel, which would end the right […]