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Foreword by Natan Sharansky

(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2007)

The new century has seen many attempts to discriminate against Israel, its academic institutions, and its scholars in several Western countries. This includes boycotting Israeli universities and academics as well as calling for divestment from Israeli securities. The campaigns frequently use anti-Semitic motifs and sometimes also involve violent anti-Semitic acts.

These actions should be seen in the context of the much broader, multiple, ongoing attacks against Israel and the Jewish people. These initiatives are part of a postmodern global war and often are directly related to anti-Semitism. This global war is multisourced, fragmented, and often diffuse and discontinuous.

The modern anti-Semitism of the 1930s could be compared to many large, centrally managed factories of a toxin-producing corporation. Its chief executive was Hitler and from its tall chimneys anti-Semitic poison spread in large quantities over a wide area. Postmodern anti-Semitism can be compared to the pollution produced by the millions of cars everywhere. These run on fuel that causes poisonous elements to escape in limited quantities through a large number of exhausts all over the world. Today such poison is spread on many campuses.

The discriminatory actions against Israel prove that in many universities, academic freedom is abused as a subtle device to promote extremist ideologies and protect misbehavior. This is one among many reasons why what happens on campus should be subject to much greater external scrutiny. That would likely lead to a long-lasting general reassessment of issues concerning academia such as free speech, academic freedom, uncontrolled campus extremism including incitement to violence, university autonomy, the politicization of science, and the discrepancy in norm between academia and society at large.

Eighteen essays from four continents discuss a variety of cases of discrimination and how Israel and Jews can defend themselves against such initiatives.

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Contents

Nathan Sharansky: Foreword

Manfred Gerstenfeld: Academics against Israel and the Jews

Rebecca Leibowitz: Defeating Anti-Israeli and Anti-Semitic Activity on Campus -A Case Study: Rutgers University

Noah Liben: The Columbia University Report on Its Middle Eastern Department’s Problems: A Paradigm for Obscuring Structural Flaws

Martin Kramer: Columbia University: The Future of Middle Eastern Studies at Stake

Jonathan Jaffit.Fighting Sheikh Zayed’s Funding of Islamic Studies at Harvard Divinity School

Leila BeckwithAnti-Zionism/Anti-Semitism at the University of California- Irvine

Leila Beckwith, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, Ilan Benjamin: Faculty Efforts to Combat Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israeli Bias at the University of California, Santa Cruz

Edward S. Beck: Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME): Fighting Anti-Israelism and Anti-Semitism on the University Campuses Worldwide

Roz Rothstein: StandWithUs: A Grassroots Advocacy Organization also on Campus

Alain Goldschläger: The Canadian Campus Scene

Corinne Berzon: Anti-Israel Activity at Concordia University

Aryeh Green European Universities and the New Anti-Semitism: Issues, Examples, Prescriptions

Ruth Contreras: On the Situation in Austrian Universities

Ronnie Fraser: The Academic Boycott of Israel: Why Britain?

Manfred Gerstenfeld: The UCU MAy 2007 Boycott Resolution and Its Aftermath

Gavin Gross: Anti-Israeli Activitiy at the School of Oriental and African Studies: How Jewish Students Started to Fight Back

Manfred Gerstenfeld:Utrecht University: The Myth of Jewish Cannibalism, Censorship and Fear of Muslim Intimidation

Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook: Anti-Semitism among Palestinian Authority Academics

Ted Lapkin: Academic Anti-Zionism in Australia