Dear Colleagues: A week after the attempted coup in Turkey, we are now witnessing Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attempt to consolidate power by launching a massive purge of Turkish institutions and now the government has “issued a blanket travel ban on…
read moreDear Colleagues: As 2015 has come to a close and we enter 2016 we are witnessing a significant rise in BDS proposals among many academic associations and on-campuses in general as we see for example, in the Oberlin alumni letter…
read moreDear Colleagues: As the new academic year gets on its way we are witnessing an increase in BDS related activity as well as more debates regarding anti-Semitism on campus. Positively, the University of California’s regents voted to turn down the…
read moreIt has been a while since the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the largest and most influential professional body for the study of the region, whose 2,700-plus members inhabit departments of Middle East studies throughout the world, dropped its original…
read moreDear Colleagues: It has been four decades since Congress passed a law pushing back against boycotts of Israel globally however, at the end of June, we witnessed a change. We now have two states who passed anti-BDS legislation and others…
read moreDear Colleagues, SPME together with StandWithUS just completed a campus tour on several California campuses including, UC Davis, Pepperdine, UCLA, Claremont, and UC Santa Barbara. Our tour coincided, with several campuses that were marking Israel Apartheid Week (IAW). It is…
read moreDear Colleagues: We recently marked 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz and yet, we are clearly still learning the lessons of the Holocaust with the growth of anti-Semitism worldwide. The recent attacks in Paris are truly emblematic of an…
read moreAs anticipated, the BDS movement has been very active this semester continuing to seek ways to delegitimize Israel while arguing that their views fall under freedom of speech rather than the hate speech they truly represent. At the recent annual Middle…
read moreDear Colleagues: Shana Tova! For starters, we would like to congratulate our colleagues Cary Nelson and Gabriel Noah Brahm on the publication of their new book, The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel, which I and several other SPME members have…
read moreDear Colleagues: During the on-going course of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in Gaza, we have witnessed a surge of anti-Semitic activity worldwide attempting to portray Israel as the “aggressor” while simultaneously advocating for boycotts against the state and its…
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