Many scholars have endured the struggle against rising anti-Israel sentiments on college and university campuses worldwide. This volume of personal essays documents and analyzes the deleterious impact of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on the most cherished Western institutions. These essays illustrate how anti-Israelism corrodes the academy and its treasured ideals of free speech, civility, respectful discourse, and open research. Nearly every chapter attests to the blurred distinction between anti-Israelism and antisemitism, as well as to hostile learning climates where many Jewish students, staff, and faculty feel increasingly unwelcome and unsafe. Anti-Zionism on Campus provides a testament to the specific ways anti-Israelism manifests on campuses and considers how this chilling and disturbing trend can be combatted.
Acknowledgments Introduction and Overview: The Silencing / Andrew Pessin and Doron Ben-Atar I. Scholars' Essays 1. BDS and Self-Righteous Moralists / Dan Avnon 2. Consensus, Canadian Trade Unions, and Intellectuals for Hamas / Julien Bauer 3. Bullies at the Pulpit / Doron Ben-Atar 4. A Traumatic Professorial Education: Anti-Zionism and Homophobia in a Serial Campus Hate Crime / Corinne E. Blackmer 5. Slouching Toward the City That Never Stops: How a Left-Orientalist Anti-Israel Faculty Tour Forced Me to Say Something (Big Mistake!) / Gabriel Noah Brahm 6. On Radio Silence and the Video That Saved the Day: The Attack Against Prof. Dubnov at the University of California San Diego, 2012 / Shlomo Dubnov 7. Fraser vs UCU: A Personal Reflection / Ronnie Fraser 8. If You Are Not With Us : The National Women's Studies Association and Israel / Janet Freedman 9. Rhodes University: Not a Home for All: A Progressive Zionist's Two-Year Odyssey / Larissa Klazinga 10. Loud and Fast versus Slow and Quiet: Responses to Anti-Israel Activism on Campus / Jeffrey Kopstein 11. A Controversy at Harvard / Martin Kramer 12. Attempts to Exclude Pro-Israel Views from Progressive Discourse: Some Case Studies from Australia / Philip Mendes 13. Anti-Israel Antisemitism in England / Richard Millett 14. Conspiracy Pedagogy on Campus: BDS Advocacy, Antisemitism, and Academic Freedom / Cary Nelson 15. When Did We Abandon Academic Integrity for Academic Freedom? / Denise Nussbaum 16. BDS and Zionophobic Racism / Judea Pearl 17. Friday, Nov. 13, 2015 at the University of Texas, Austin: Anti-Zionists on the Attack / Ami Pedahzur and Andrew Pessin 18. Col. Richard Kemp at the University of Sydney, Australia 11 March 2015 / Jan Poddebsky, Peter Keeda, and Clive Kessler 19. ""Oh! Now I've Got You!"": In the Sights of Anti-Israelists at The Claremont Colleges / Yaron Raviv 20. The Magic of Myth: Fashioning the BDS Narrative in the New Anthropology / David M. Rosen 21. Retaliation: The High Price of Speaking Out about Campus Antisemitism and What It Means for Jewish Students / Tammi Rossman-Benjamin 22. A Field Geologist in Politicized Terrain / Jill S. Schneiderman 23. Fanatical Anti-Zionism and the Degradation of the University: What I Have Learned in Buffalo / Ernest Sternberg 24. What is it Like to be an (Assertive) Israeli Academic Abroad? / Elhanan Yakira II. Students' Essays 25. A Wake-Up Call at the University of Michigan / Jesse Arm 26. On Leaving UCLA Due to Hostile and Unsafe Campus Climate / Milan Chatterjee 27. BDS and Antisemitism at Stanford University / Molly Horwitz 28. On Being Pro-Israel, and Jewish, at Oberlin College / Eliana Kohn 29. Battling Anti-Zionism at CUNY John Jay College / Tomer Kornfeld 30. Students for Justice in Palestine at Brown University / Jared Samilow 31. Battling Anti-Zionism at the University of Missouri / Daniel Swindell III. Concluding Thoughts 32. Inconclusive, Unscientific Postscript: On the Purpose of the University, and a Ray of Hope / Andrew Pessin Index
Doron S. Ben-Atar is Professor of History at Fordham University and a playwright. In addition to publishing books and articles about early America, he authored, together with his mother, Roma Nutkiewicz Ben-Atar, What Time and Sadness Spared: Mother and Son Confront the Holocaust. He has, in recent years, turned his attention to the battles over Zionism in the American Jewish community with, among other writings, his satirical play Peace Warriors. Andrew Pessin is Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College and Campus Bureau Editor of The Algemeiner. Author of many academic articles and books, a philosophy textbook, several philosophical books for the general reader, and two novels, his current research is focused on philosophical matters relevant both to Judaism and Israel.
Reviews for Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS
Though these testimonials acknowledge that free academic inquiry can-and should-include criticism of any nation's policies, the writers make a persuasive case that the BDS movement is a dangerous amalgam of speech suppression and thinly veiled anti-Semitism. . . . Recommended. * Choice * Anti-Zionism on Campus is a tour de force. It accurately exposes the depth of anti-Israel bias on campuses (primarily in the U.S., but with several insightful chapters also focusing on the British, Australian, Canadian, and South African campus climate). It also underscores the high price and personal risk that comes with taking on this rising tide of anti-Zionism. * Legal Insurrection *
