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Professors Who Teach Courses on Israel Endorse Academic Boycott of Israel
freebeacon ^ | March 25, 2022 | Alex Nester

Posted on 03/27/2022 6:29:47 AM PDT by MarvinStinson

The Middle East Studies Association (MESA), which represents hundreds of professors who teach Middle Eastern studies on dozens of American college campuses, passed a resolution endorsing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

The Middle East-centered learning society closed its 50-day voting period for the BDS resolution on Wednesday. More than 80 percent of the organization's voting members, many of whom teach about Israel at U.S. universities, cast ballots supporting the resolution, which accuses the Jewish state of committing human rights abuses against Palestinians and calls on MESA members to boycott Israeli universities.

Left-leaning students and faculty at American universities have in recent years sided with Palestinian activists in their efforts to boycott Israel. While Hamas fired thousands of rockets in May at the Jewish state, student leaders at the University of Michigan endorsed the BDS movement, claiming that Israel commits "apartheid." That same month, the University of Chicago's Undergraduate Student Government released a statement that included an anti-Semitic trope that calls for the elimination of Israel. AMCHA, a nonprofit that documents anti-Semitism on college campuses, documented similar anti-Israel statements from 160 departments at 120 universities released amid the conflict between Hamas and Israel last year.

MESA's resolution targets Israeli universities "for their complicity in Israel's violations of human rights and international law through their provision of direct assistance to the military and intelligence establishments." Israel's alleged human rights abuses include "right to education violations," according to the resolution, such as "restricting freedom of movement for Palestinians," "attacking Palestinian educational institutions," and "harassing Palestinian professors, teachers, and students."

MESA's board of directors, which includes nine professors at American universities such as New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, and George Washington University, are now tasked with finding ways to implement the academic boycott while upholding the group's "commitment to the free exchange of ideas and scholarship," MESA president Eve Troutt Powell said in a statement.

"Our members have cast a clear vote to answer the call for solidarity from Palestinian scholars and students experiencing violations of their right to education and other human rights," Powell said in a statement. "MESA's board [of directors] will work to honor the will of its members and ensure that the call for an academic boycott is upheld without undermining our commitment to the free exchange of ideas and scholarship."

Schools with five or more faculty academic boycotters were nearly four times as likely "to have acts targeting Jewish and pro-Israel students for harm," according to AMCHA's study released earlier this month. Avi Gordon, executive director of Alums for Campus Fairness, said MESA's statement sends a "chilling" message to Jewish college students.

"The endorsement of the discriminatory BDS campaign against Israel sends a clear, chilling message to Jewish students and academics," Gordon said in a statement. "This decision flies in the face of the principles of academic freedom and shows a complete disregard for the safety and well-being of Jews on campus."

A separate resolution MESA passed in 2015, "Regarding the Protection of Free Discussion on Academic Boycott of Israel," laid the groundwork for their latest motion. That resolution permitted members to "discuss, debate, endorse or not endorse" the BDS movement. It also encouraged MESA's Board of Directors "to create opportunities over the course of the year that provide platforms for a sustained discussion of the academic boycott [of Israel] and foster careful consideration of an appropriate position for MESA to assume."

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director of AMCHA, called MESA's move to back BDS "dangerous" and said students and faculty on U.S. campuses will suffer from an absence of Israeli scholarship.

"Although the academic boycott that MESA members voted to endorse seemingly targets only Israeli institutions and scholars, the biggest victims of academic BDS are students and faculty on U.S. campuses," Rossman-Benjamin said.


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: amcha; antiisraelapartheid; bds; boycott; evetrouttpowel; israel; mesa; professor

1 posted on 03/27/2022 6:29:47 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
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To: MarvinStinson

Doing what they do best - teach mush minds to become debt slaves and ideological slaves to authoritarian regimes.


2 posted on 03/27/2022 6:38:30 AM PDT by silent majority rising ( )
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To: MarvinStinson

MESA president Eve Troutt Powel:

"Our members have cast a clear vote to answer the call for solidarity from Palestinian scholars."

3 posted on 03/27/2022 6:40:25 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
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To: silent majority rising

Middle East Studies Association Members Vote (80%) to Ratify BDS Resolution

https://bdsmovement.net/news/middle-east-studies-association-members-vote-80-ratify-bds-resolution


4 posted on 03/27/2022 6:43:24 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
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To: MarvinStinson

5 posted on 03/27/2022 6:44:41 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
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To: silent majority rising
--- "Doing what they do best - teach mush minds to become debt slaves and ideological slaves to authoritarian regimes."

A fine observation. The desire for "Ideological slaves" is what joins together the Left in academia with Islam, reaching for the dream of the authoritarian state. For this is liberty detested by them both.

6 posted on 03/27/2022 6:46:13 AM PDT by Worldtraveler once upon a time
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To: Worldtraveler once upon a time

Subheading: Red Diaper Babies Distressed.


7 posted on 03/27/2022 6:52:53 AM PDT by Bookshelf
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To: MarvinStinson

“… Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews.

But during National Brotherhood Week,
National Brotherhood Week,
It’s National Everyone-Smile-At-One-Another-Hood Week.
Be nice to people who
Are inferior to you...”


8 posted on 03/27/2022 6:58:36 AM PDT by jjotto ( Blessed are You LORD, who crushes enemies and subdues the wicked.)
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To: MarvinStinson
Palestinian scholars

"Scholars"? Like these?


9 posted on 03/27/2022 7:17:08 AM PDT by EinNYC
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To: All
"MESA has no resolution condemning another country"
D Shapiro, "Academic watchdog groups blast MESA for adoption of BDS resolution against Israel," JNS March 24, 2022.
https://www.jns.org/academic-watchdog-groups-blast-mesa-for-adoption-of-bds-resolution-against-israel/
10 posted on 03/27/2022 8:09:05 AM PDT by Conservat1
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To: MarvinStinson; SJackson

Not anti-Semitic prejudices here at all, right?

Just pure, balanced teaching and “scientific” thought!


11 posted on 03/27/2022 8:09:34 AM PDT by Robert A Cook PE (Method, motive, and opportunity: No morals, shear madness and hatred by those who cheat.)
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To: MarvinStinson

We’ve been sounding the alarm bell for several years how the Islamonazis and communists have been taking over our college campuses.
As our soft underbelly — the easiest places to infiltrate and seize power in

Nothing has been done to defend our country and expel, repatriate the Islamics. Nothing. Indeed the current Washington regime (financed by Islamonazi dictators and soroznaxi abd the Chinese Communist Party ..) is busy importing more abs more of them — often hiding them in the middle of the night —and the next morning g they’re right in your street in sea mounes and Abilene and chapel hill


12 posted on 03/27/2022 8:14:50 AM PDT by faithhopecharity (“Politicians are not born. They’re excreted.” Marcus Tillius Cicero (106 to 43 BCE))
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To: MarvinStinson
Isn't it amazing when people's names echo their physiognomy?
13 posted on 03/27/2022 8:24:39 AM PDT by JayGalt (For evil men to accomplish their purpose it is only necessary that good men should do nothing.”)
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If the jews would simply stop being so miserly and having big noses, people would stop hating them overnight


14 posted on 03/27/2022 9:14:50 AM PDT by dsrtsage ( Complexity is just simple lacking imagination)
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To: Bookshelf
--- "Subheading: Red Diaper Babies Distressed."

Indeed. My university sent a fund raising request to which I responded with the publicly available salaries of provost and deans, and the anti-Israel political statements of departments like this.

15 posted on 03/27/2022 12:07:55 PM PDT by Worldtraveler once upon a time
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; Bockscar; BraveMan; cardinal4; ...
Thanks Marv.

16 posted on 03/27/2022 4:10:17 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: All

Writer: ‘I Can’t help but find this morbidly funny. So the plan is to study Israel without Israelis?’ (MESA anti-Israel-apartheid)
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4050860/posts


17 posted on 03/30/2022 5:55:16 AM PDT by Conservat1
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To: MarvinStinson

Nothing new since the 1990s except it seems like more anti-Semites have supported the BDS movement.


18 posted on 03/31/2022 9:19:21 PM PDT by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper (Figures )
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To: MarvinStinson

MESA in 1970: “For those who wish political action, there exist any number of groups”—but not us

MESA in 2004: “no desire on the part of the board to turn MESA into a political organization”

MESA in 2017: deletes “non-political” from mission statement

MESA in 2022: adopts BDS https://t.co/dvrDDVQzwI— Cole Bunzel (@colebunzel) April 1, 2022


19 posted on 04/01/2022 3:10:00 PM PDT by Conservat1
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