What do attempts to implement an academic boycott of Israel look like? You may be surprised.

In 2009, as the University of California was getting ready to reinstate its UC Education Abroad Program in Israel, 130 faculty members in the UC system signed a letter, organized by a founding member of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), demanding that university leaders not reinstate it; the program had been temporarily suspended in 2002 after the U.S. State Department placed Israel on its travel advisory list for safety reasons.

Similarly, in 2011, as California State University was taking steps to reinstate its study abroad program in Israel, 85 CSU faculty members signed a letter, organized by another USACBI founder, calling for the program to not be reinstated; it also had been curtailed in 2002.

In 2012, several Cornell University professors wanted to quash a joint institute of applied sciences between their own U.S. colleagues and scholars at Israel’s Technion University.

And 14 months ago, 14 faculty members at Syracuse University encouraged the campus community to resist academic partnerships with Israel and censured a Conflict and Collaboration program at their university because Tel Aviv University was one of the partners.

While the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel — which coordinates the academic boycott of Israel as part of the larger, anti-Israel boycott, divestment, sanctions movement — would like you to think its target is Israeli universities and scholars, faculty who implement PACBI’s boycott are actually subverting the educational opportunities and academic freedom of their own U.S. colleagues and students.

Unpeeling the onion reveals that PACBI’s guidelines specify that American faculty “boycott and/or work towards the cancellation or annulment“ of any school activity that involves Israeli academic institutions or their representatives. Faculty boycotters are encouraged and expected to shut downstudy abroad programs in Israel; refuse to write letters of recommendation for students wishing to go on a study abroad trip to Israel; scuttle American colleagues’ research projects with Israeli universities and scholars; and cancel events with Israeli leaders or scholars organized by U.S. students or faculty.

Read More: The Jewish News of Northern California