Antisemitism

Backlash Against Israel Boycott Puts American Studies Assn. on Defensive

With its recent vote to boycott Israel’s higher-education institutions to protest that nation’s treatment of Palestinians, the American Studies Association has itself become the target of widespread criticism and ostracism. It has gone from relative obscurity to prominence as a pariah of…

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Answering the Academic Boycotters of Israel

Six days after its membership voted to implement an academic boycott against Israeli universities, the American Studies Association’s Caucus on Academic and Community Activism hurriedly issued a defensive appeal for support bemoaning, in the wake of a tsunami of backlash,…

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Defining anti-Semitism in order to fight it

Toward the end of the 19th century, a German publicist remarked: “One cannot today criticize Jews without being called an anti-Semite.” What is most remarkable about these words is the fact that they were uttered by none other than Wilhelm…

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When Did the Quakers Stop Being Friends?

In the summer of 2013 an unusual gathering of students took place in an undisclosed location in upstate New York. Sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) along with Jewish Voice for Peace, the “We Divest Campaign Student Leadership…

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Combatting BDS: A battleplan

The recent Association of American Studies boycott of Israel is the latest chapter of a general campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against the State of Israel. The campaign took off in 2005 with the academic boycott in the…

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Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is ASA

The vote by the 5,000-member American Studies Association to support the academic boycott of Israel, reportedly by a 2-1 margin, has evoked many responses, but none so far has identified the irony at the core of the matter.  To show…

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Israel and the myopic BDS movement

THE BOYCOTT, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS) against Israel, which was recently energized by the decision of the American Studies Association to boycott Israeli academic institutions, is actually making it harder for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to negotiate a…

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Educators’ boycott of Israel provokes backlash

A national education association has called for an academic boycott of Israeli universities, provoking a backlash from dozens of universities around the country. Leaders at the University of Pennsylvania, Haverford College, Princeton University, Lehigh University, Temple University, and Penn State…

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Forget the Anti-Semites—It’s the Idiots We Should Fear

As the shouting following the American Studies Association’s decision to boycott Israel starts waning, it may be time to settle down and ask ourselves what we’ve learned from it. There’s little else to say about the boycott itself—thankfully, many, from members…

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