Anti-Israel Forces Attempt BDS by Stealth

Having failed in direct votes on even the most ardently anti-Israel campuses, propoents of boycotting, divesting from and sanctioning Israel and its scholars, BDS forces have been attempting to work their will on academia by stealth.

“In 2009, as the University of California was getting ready to reinstate its UC Education Abroad Program in Israel, 130 faculty members in the UC system signed a letter, organized by a founding member of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), demanding that university leaders not reinstate it; the program had been temporarily suspended in 2002 after the U.S. State Department placed Israel on its travel advisory list for safety reasons,” Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Leila Beckwith pointed out recently in a column which appeared in the Jewish News of Northern California. “Similarly, in 2011, as California State University was taking steps to reinstate its study abroad program in Israel, 85 CSU faculty members signed a letter, organized by another USACBI founder, calling for the program to not be reinstated; it also had been curtailed in 2002.”

“In 2012, several Cornell University professors wanted to quash a joint institute of applied sciences between their own U.S. colleagues and scholars at Israel’s Technion University. And 14 months ago, 14 faculty members at Syracuse University encouraged the campus community to resist academic partnerships with Israel and censured a Conflict and Collaboration program at their university because Tel Aviv University was one of the partners.”

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