---
title: "Academic boycott of Israel"
chunk: 5/8
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:17:27.825907+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Others may interpret the boycott differently, but I have no problem collaborating with Israeli scholars and artists as long as we do not participate in any Israeli institution or have Israeli state monies support our collaborative work. The reason, of course, is that the academic and cultural boycott seeks to put pressure on all those cultural institutions that have failed to oppose the occupation and struggle for equal rights and the rights of the dispossessed, all those cultural institutions that think it is not their place to criticize their government for these practices, all of them that understand themselves to be above or beyond this intractable political condition.
Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, is on the advisory board of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel. Dabashi supports boycott efforts targeting both Israeli individuals and institutions:

The divestment campaign that has been far more successful in Western Europe needs to be reinvigorated in North America – as must the boycotting of the Israeli cultural and academic institutions ... Naming names and denouncing individually every prominent Israeli intellectual who has publicly endorsed their elected officials' wide-eyed barbarism, and then categorically boycotting their universities and colleges, film festivals and cultural institutions, is the single most important act of solidarity that their counterparts can do around the world.
Other American academics that have advocated for boycotts against Israel include Andrew Ross and Simona Sawhney.

==== Other groups ====
The Columbia Palestine Forum (CPF), which was formed at Columbia University in March 2009, maintains that Israel is an apartheid state and advocates boycott and divestment efforts against Israel. The group has called for increased disclosure of university finances to establish that Columbia funds are not being used towards "maintenance of the Israeli occupation and human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank", and advocates divestment of university funds from any companies that profit from what it describes as the "continued occupation of Palestinian lands, the maintenance of illegal Israeli settlements and the walls being built around Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem".
CPF outlined its demands to a university representative during a demonstration on 5 March 2009. On the previous day, it held a panel discussion featuring multiple Columbia faculty members who have been supportive of the group. Gil Anidjar, a religion professor, advocated boycott as an appropriate "exercise of freedom", while anthropology professor Brinkley Messick indicated that Columbia President Lee Bollinger had agreed to meet with the faculty to discuss the demands for divestment. One CPF member described the group's goals in a 3 March article for Columbia's newspaper, stating, "by divesting from companies that do business with the occupation, we can put global pressure on the Israeli government to end it."

=== Opposition and criticism of academic boycotts within the U.S. ===
University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann said in January 2012 that the university "has clearly stated on numerous occasions that it does not support sanctions or boycotts against Israel". She said that the school was not a sponsor of a BDS conference taking place on campus in February 2012.
In March 2009, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) reiterated its opposition to any academic boycott of Israel (or any other country) but added that discussion of the Israel-Palestinian conflict should be encouraged. AFT President Randi Weingarten stated that: 

We believe academic boycotts were a bad idea in 2002 and are a bad idea now. Academic boycotts are inconsistent with the democratic values of academic freedom and free expression... We want to make clear that this position does not in any way discourage an open discussion and debate of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or of ways to resolve it. However, we expect that such a discussion would not be one-sided and would consider the behavior of all the relevant actors. An academic boycott of Israel, or of any country, for that matter, would effectively suppress free speech without helping to resolve the conflict.
The Forward published, in January 2012, an article about Jewish presidents of universities, saying, "many college presidents" see BDS as a "red line" and "presidents who were previously disinclined to speak out against anti-Israel activity on campus in the name of preserving open dialogue found themselves publicly opposing the movement."

After fierce debate, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) chose not to endorse any academic boycott of Israel in 2016.  Anthropologist David M. Rosen studied the effects of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on the association.  Rosen's conclusion was: "Had the association joined the BDS boycott, it would have established ... an ideological litmus test for participation in the academy.  Endorsing a political test for speech is a step on a dangerous path for American anthropologists.  As University of Chicago president Robert Zimmer put it, boycotts are an 'assault on the fundamental principles of open discourse ... and free argumentation, principles that lie at the very foundation of the academy and its missions of discovery ... and education.' ... [A]n academic boycott opens the door to the general political suppression of speech in the academy.  ... [I]f academics no longer uphold the principle of free speech in the university, neither will anyone else."

==== Criticism of the ASA ====