AMCHA Reports: Faculty support of Israel boycotts on college campuses associated with increased anti-Semitism
Effort by faculty members to promote academic boycotts of Israel in American universities pose a serious threat to the wellbeing of Jewish students, and raise questions about the misuse of classrooms to promote an anti-Zionist political agenda, a campus watchdog group has warned.
In a new report published on Tuesday, the AMCHA Initiative explored why the presence of faculty members who publicly expressed support for academic boycotts of Israel is — according to the group’s past findings — associated with increased incidents of anti-Jewish hostility on university campuses.
AMCHA’s latest research determined that the more faculty boycotters a department had, “the greater the number of outside [boycott, divestment and sanctions] proponents brought to campus by that department.”
Of the nearly 1,000 pro-BDS faculty members included in the AMCHA study, 70 percent were found to be affiliated with either ethnic, gender or Middle East studies departments, programs, centers or institutes.
Ethnic, gender and Middle East studies departments with at least one faculty boycotter were also respectively 10, 12,and five times more likely to sponsor events with pro-BDS speakers than similar departments without faculty boycotters, according to AMCHA.
The study noted “a very strong association” between the number of pro-BDS speakers invited to campus and the frequency of anti-Zionist expression among students, which in turn was strongly linked to “acts of anti-Jewish hostility, suggesting that one way BDS supporting speaker-events contribute to campus antisemitism is by promoting anti-Zionist expression by students.”
Universities with gender, ethnic and Middle East studies academic units that sponsored pro-BDS speakers were twice more likely to have instances of student anti-Zionist expression than schools that did not host those speakers.
In turn, universities with instances of student anti-Zionist expression — including advocacy of BDS — were seven times “more likely to have incidents that targeted Jewish students for harm” than those without such incidents, AMCHA noted.
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, AMCHA’s co-founder and director, told The Algemeiner that “there really is clearly a sort of politically-motivated bias involved in the sponsorship of departmentally-sponsored events.”
She said she hoped the report would prompt faculty members to ask, “Are departmentally-sponsored events that include the promotion of an academic boycott of Israel OK? Are they protected by academic freedom? Are they a form of political indoctrination and, if so, what’s to be done about that by [the] academic senates?”
Read More: Algemeiner
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