US-Based Professors Respond to NYT Ad Accusing Professors and BDS Movement of Inciting Murder of Jewish Children

New Article Submission

Thank you for your interest in Jadaliyya. We welcome all submissions. The most significant requirement is for Jadaliyya submissions to be analytically compelling and offer a perspective or argument that has not been covered at length either on Jadaliyya or elsewhere. Because of the volume of submissions, well-written pieces are prioritized. Length is flexible, 1000 to 2500 words is the average range. However, we will accept longer pieces. Once submitted, several members of the editorial committee will review your piece and one of them will inform you of the decision.
Author Details
Article Details
Select Countries
Select Keywords
Select Topics
Only RTF, Word, and Pages documents accepted.

Recommended image size: 762x800 px

Location of each image should be indicated in the text of the article via a square bracket caption that includes: (1) a description of the image; (2) the photographer/designer and source of the image. Please note we only use images you as the author have the right to use, which usually means those of your own creation or those published under Creative Commons. Alternatively, you need specific permission from the copyright holder.
Please read the Release Form and provide an electronic signature [your full name] below to confirm that you accept its terms
Required
Hyperlink words in your article if they refer to links on the internet. We encourage more, rather than less, links (try to avoid footnotes—embed them as hyperlinks if possible)

Article added successfully.

Pages Menu BETA
Apr 28, 2012 Israel
[New York Times building in New York City. Image by wallyg from Flickr.] [New York Times building in New York City. Image by wallyg from Flickr.]

US-Based Professors Respond to NYT Ad Accusing Professors and BDS Movement of Inciting Murder of Jewish Children

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following letter to the editor was submitted on 28 April, 2012 to the New York Times in response to an advertisement paid for by the David Horowtiz Freedom Center that appeared in the Op Ed section of the 24 April, 2012 edition of the NYT. It was also reproduced here. The advertisement is posted below, after the list of signatories to the letter.]

To the Editor:

We are professors who teach in universities across this country. We are appalled at the advertisement by the David Horowitz Freedom Center (Op-Ed page, April 24, 2012) which compares the international movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel (BDS) to the Holocaust and ancient blood libels. It also asks that professors who support it be “publicly shamed and condemned.” It grossly distorts the statements of such professors, which are publicly available online and can be verified.

The Horowitz Center’s advertisement seeks to shut down informed debate. Free speech and thought was a crucial right at stake in 1930s Germany and it remains so today. The discussion that took place at the University of Pennsylvania did not use any objectionable language, and included many Jewish participants, including rabbis. Your readers can hear for themselves what was said at www.PennBDS.org. It is Horowitz who uses the language of hatred and bigotry. Even those of us who do not support BDS are alarmed at your carrying an advertisement that misinforms and names individuals who do not have the money that Horowtiz has to defend themselves through his chosen medium.

We hope you will publish this letter to make this point.

1. Ania Loomba, University of Pennsylvania
2. Ajay Skaria, University of Minnesota
3. Amy Lang, Syracuse University
4. Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University
5. Anjali Arondekar, University of California, Santa Cruz
6. Ann Pellegrini, NYU
7. Antonio Feros
, 
University of Pennsylvania
8. Boris Gasparov, Columbia University
9. Brian Boyd, Columbia University
10. Bruce Robbins, Columbia University
11. Cesare Cesarino, University of Minnesota
12. Charles Bernstein, University of Pennsylvania
13. Crystal Bartolovich, Syracuse University
14. Daniel Richter, University of Pennsylvania
15. David Delgado Shorter, UCLA
16. David Eng, University of Pennsylvania
17. David Kazanjian University of Pennsylvania
18. David Lloyd, University of Southern California
19. David Pellow, University of Minnesota
20. David Shorter, UCLA
21. Elizabeth Bernstein, Columbia University
22. Ellen Kennedy, University of Pennsylvania
23. Farah Godrej, University of California, Riverside
24. Gary Fields, University of California, San Diego
25. Gillian Hart, University of California, Berkeley
26. Heather Love, University of Pennsylvania
27. Homay King, Bryn Mawr College
28. Howard Winant, University of California, Santa Barbara
29. Indrani Chatterjee, Rutgers University
30. James English, University of Pennsylvania
31. James Schamus, Columbia University
32. Jasbir Puar, Rutgers University
33. Jean Howard, Columbia University
34. Jean Lave, University of California, Berkeley
35. Jennifer Wenzel, University of Michigan
36. Jigna Desai, University of Minnesota
37. Jim Holstun, SUNY, Buffalo
38. Joel Beinin, Stanford University
39. Joel Wainwright, Ohio State University
40. John Mowitt, University of Minnesota
41. Joseph Slaughter, Cornell University
42. Josephine Park, University of Pennsylvania
43. Josie Saldaña, NYU
44. Judith Frank, Amherst College
45. Judith Surkis, Columbia University and the Institute for Advanced Study
46. Kaja Silverman, University of Pennsylvania
47. Katherine Franke, Columbia Law School
48. Kathleen A. McHugh, UCLA
49. Kathy Peiss, University of Pennsylvania
50. Keya Ganguly University of Minnesota
51. Lucy San Pablo Burns, UCLA
52. Manan Desai, Syracuse University
53. Margo Todd, University of Pennsylvania
54. Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University
55. Mark Levine, University of California, Irvine
56. Max Cavitch, University of Pennsylvania
57. Mayanthi L. Fernando, University of California, Santa Cruz
58. Melissa Sanchez, University of Pennsylvania
59. Michael Gamer, University of Pennsylvania
60. Michael Rothberg, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
61. Michelle Clayton, UCLA
62. Najam Haider, Barnard College
63. Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania
64. Natalie Melas, Cornell University
65. Nguyen-vo Thu-huong, UCLA
66. Nikhil Pal Singh, NYU
67. Page Fortna, Columbia University
68. Patricia Morton, University of California, Riverside
69. Persis Karim, San Jose State University
70. Piya Chatterjee, University of California, Riverside.
71. Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, San Francisco State University
72. Raka Ray, University of California, Berkeley
73. Saadia Toor, City University of New York
74. Saba Mahmood, University of California, Berkeley
75. Sabina Sawhney, Hofstra University
76. Sheldon Pollock, Columbia University
77. Shelley Feldman, Cornell University
78. Shu-mei Shih, UCLA
79. Simona Sawhney, University of Minnesota
80. Steve Hahn, University of Pennsylvania
81. Susan Edmunds, Syracuse University
82. Suvir Kaul, University of Pennsylvania
83. Taher Herzallah, University of California, Riverside
84. Tariq Thachil, Yale University
85. Timothy Brennan, University of Minnesota
86. Toni Bowers, University of Pennsylvania
87. Toorjo Ghose, University of Pennsylvania
88. Tsitsi Jaji, University of Pennsylvania
89. Vijay Prashad, Trinity College
90. Viranjini Munasinghe, Cornell University
91. Warren Breckman, University of Pennsylvania
92. Zachary Lesser, University of Pennsylvania
93. Rei Terada, UC Irvine
94. Ravi Palat, Binghamton University
95. Irma T. Elo, University of Pennsylvania
96. Gregory Mann, Columbia University
97. Qadri Ismail, Univerisity of Minnesota
98. Nik Heynen, University of Georgia
99. Shefali Chandra, Washington University St. Louis
100. Jason McGrath, University of Minnesota
101. Ismail Poonawala, UCLA
102. Zohreh Sullivan, UIUC
103. Richard Dienst, Rutgers University
104. Charles E. Butterworth, University of Maryland
105. Gabriel Piterberg, Professor of History, UCLA
106. Jennifer Olmsted, Drew University
107. Katherine C. King, University of California at Los Angeles
108. Dina Rizk Khoury, George Washington University
109. Sondra Hale, Los Angeles (UCLA)
110. Caren Kaplan, Professor, UC Davis
111. Carole S. Vance, Columbia University
112. Karen Brodkin, Professor Emerita, UCLA
113. Lee Zimmerman, Hofstra University
114. Louise Fortmann, UC Berkeley
115. David Klein, California State University, Northridge
116. Barrie Thorne, University of California, Berkeley
117. Ahlam Muhtaseb, California State University, San Bernardino
118. Neil Smith, CUNY
119. Carole H. Browner, UCLA
120. Kamala Visweswaran, University of Texas
121. Guy Pollio, Nassau Community College
122. Mona Mehdy, Univ of Texas at Austin
123. Snehal Shingavi, University of Texas, Austin
124. Tim Corrigan, University of Pennsylvania
125. Paul Saint-Amour, University of Pennsylvania
126. Michael Goldman, University of Minnesota
127. Huma Dar, UC Berkeley
128. Zachary Lockman, New York University
129. Rebecca L. Stein, Duke University
130. Dohra Ahmad, St. John’s University
131. Richard Falk, UCSB
132. Sondra Hale, UCLA
133. Gayatri Gopinath, NYU
134. Shane Minkin, Swarthmore College
135. Lisa Duggan, NYU
136. Hatem Bazian, UC Berkeley
137. Jed Esty, University of Pennsylvania
138. Christopher L. Chiappari, St. Olaf College
139. Aniruddha Das, Columbia University
140. Thomas Pepper, University of Minnesota
141. Helen Scott, University of Vermont
142. Gayatri Chakravoty Spivak, Columbia University
143. Lisa Hajjar UCSB
144. Stephanie McCurry, University of Pennsylvania
145. S. Shankar, University of Hawai’i at Manoa
146. Cindi Katz, CUNY.
147. Nada Elia, Antioch University – Seattle
148. Grace Kao, University of Pennsylvania
149. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, UC Berkeley
150. Bruce Braun, University of Minnesota
151. Katie Kane, University of Montana

Original advertisement by David Horowitz Freedom Center appearing in 24 April, 2012 issue of New York Times:

 \"\"
[Image from electronicintifada.net]

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

    • Harvard AAUP on Termination of CMES Leadership

      Harvard AAUP on Termination of CMES Leadership

      The Executive Committee of AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter condemns the abrupt termination of the leadership of Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES): Professor Cemal Kafadar as Director and Associate Professor Rosie Bsheer as Associate Director. Though both Kafadar and Bsheer will retain their regular faculty positions, this summary dismissal of two leading Middle East scholars from their administrative positions is a political infringement on academic freedom and the autonomy of professors to shape intellectual agendas in their areas of research, teaching, and programming expertise.

    • Long Form Podcast Episode 4: Why the U.S. Media & Democrats Won’t Save Anyone (3 April)

      Long Form Podcast Episode 4: Why the U.S. Media & Democrats Won’t Save Anyone (3 April)

      In this episode of Long Form Podcast, Laila Al-Arian, Assal Rad, and Sana Saeed address the role of corporate media and the Democratic party in enabling Israel’s Genocide and paving the way for many of Trump’s policies. Speakers also address the Democrats’ double standard on ethnic cleansing in Palestine.

    • Teaching Palestine Today: Liberal Arts Context

      Teaching Palestine Today: Liberal Arts Context

      Join our first session of “Teaching Palestine Today” series. This session addresses the “Liberal Arts Context,” with Lara Deeb, Heather Ferguson, Amanda Lagji, and Leila Mansouri, moderated by Bassam Haddad. Four faculty members at the Claremont Colleges, a liberal arts consortium, discuss their approaches to including material on Palestine and Palestinian perspectives into classes in anthropology, history, postcolonial and decolonial literature, and creative writing. Topics addressed include classroom approaches, syllabi scaffolding, and strategies for building support beyond the classroom.
Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412