Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/email-trail-shows-how-anti-israel-zealots-took-over-a-mild-mannered-scholarly-organization
Washington Examiner
March 25, 2018
In December 2013, the American Studies Association adopted a boycott of Israel. The organization, which says it “promote[s] the development and dissemination of interdisciplinary research on U.S. culture and history in a global context,” banned ties to Israeli educational institutions.
The Israel boycott resolution was first approved by ASA’s leadership, known as the National Council. Then, due to low voter turnout, it was ratified by a mere 20 percent of the organization’s members.
Four distinguished ASA members have since sued the group and certain ASA leaders, claiming that the small turnout invalidated the vote’s result under the ASA’s bylaws and the District of Columbia Nonprofit Corporation Act. The members also claimed that the boycott violated laws barring a nonprofit from acting outside its chartered purpose.
Even apart from these legal defects, the boycott is an embarrassment. It runs afoul of the principle of academic freedom; its adoption was immediately and harshly criticized by the distinguished 62-member Association of American Universities. And the exclusive focus on Israel smacks of anti-Semitism. The ASA has never boycotted any other country, either before or since.
But here’s the really interesting part: During the course of the litigation, lawyers for the plaintiffs uncovered information suggesting that the ASA’s anti-Israel boycott did not arise organically from within the organization. Rather, it resulted from a carefully planned hostile takeover by outside activists eager to use the ASA and its money to advance their hateful agenda.
Emails uncovered during the litigation point to a coordinated action led by organizers of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, working alongside Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the worldwide anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
One of the biggest ironies of the BDS movement is that Barghouti himself studied at Tel Aviv University — an institution he is trying to convince others to boycott — after growing up in Qatar and Egypt and later moving to Israel. He now chooses to live in Israel with his family while calling on the world to boycott his neighbors.
An important player in the effort to hijack the ASA seems to have been Jasbir Puar, an associate professor at Rutgers University. Her book claims that Israel deliberately maims Palestinians in order to control them. Puar has also reportedly peddled vicious lies about Israel stealing Palestinians’ organs for research, echoing the blood libels used to whip up hatred of Jews in the Middle Ages.
Emails disclosed in the ASA case show that Puar, after joining the ASA’s nominating committee, began to stack ASA’s leadership with USACBI supporters. Professor Sunaina Maira, a defendant in the case, wrote in late 2012: “Jasbir is nominating me and Alex Lubin for the Council and she suggests populating it with as many [boycott] supporters as possible.” Puar appeared to confirm the strategy in an email from the same time period: “I think we should prepare for the longer-term struggle by populating elected positions with as [many] supporters as possible.”
By the end of Puar’s term on the nominating committee in 2013, seven of the ASA’s 12 National Council members were USACBI supporters. “In my conversations with Jasbir, it’s clear that the intent of her nominations was...to build momentum for BDS,” wrote Lubin in late 2012.
The emails suggest that secrecy was a key component of this strategy to take over the ASA. As individual defendants were seeking election to leadership positions in late 2012, they discussed over email the need to hide their boycott agenda from ASA’s voters. “I feel it might be more strategic not to present ourselves as a pro-boycott slate,” Maira wrote. “I would definitely suggest not specifying BDS, but emphasizing support for academic freedom, etc,” wrote David Lloyd, a professor of English at the University of California, Riverside.
Only one of those involved in the discussions, New York University professor Nikhil Singh, cautioned against such subterfuge, warning that a secretive attempt to win election and then surprise everyone with a boycott “may well backfire, because it will lack legitimacy.” Singh’s caution went unheeded. Only one USACBI supporter running for an ASA office revealed his support for an Israel boycott, and he lost. The others, who hid their support, won.
BDS leader Barghouti, who seems to have no prior connection to the ASA, appears to have personally guided USACBI efforts from his base in Israel. In the run-up to the boycott vote, the defendants secretly submitted materials for circulation to the membership to Barghouti and other USACBI leaders for their approval. Other emails reveal suggestions by ASA leaders that the boycott’s scope, and when an Israeli institution could be “unboycotted,” should both be determined by USACBI, not the ASA itself.
After USACBI supporters took control of ASA’s National Council, they moved forward with their boycott plans. To ensure things went their way, the defendants manipulated the vote, refusing to give opponents equal time to make their case, rushing to recruit pro-BDS graduate students into the ASA, and then freezing membership rolls to block opponents of the resolution.
All of this cost the ASA real money, discovery documents suggest. To pay for resolution-related expenses, and to offset revenue shortfalls resulting from reputational damage, defendants appear to have improperly invaded the ASA’s trust fund and removed about $300,000. In early March, the court permitted plaintiffs to amend their complaint to add a variety of new claims, including breach of fiduciary duty for misappropriation of assets.
The new evidence serves as a warning to other groups beset by Israel-boycott proposals: they are pushed by activists who happily sacrifice these organizations’ reputations and finances to bash Israel. It also suggests that anti-Israel efforts in academia do not reflect a vast popular movement.
Nor are these efforts a sign of shifting intellectual climate towards Israel in universities. Instead, if the ASA case is representative, BDS in academia is driven by a small group of Israel haters who manipulate and lie their way into positions of power, knowing their cause actually has little support on campus.
Jesse Fried is a professor at Harvard Law School. Steven Davidoff Solomon is a professor at Berkeley Law. Both authors advised the plaintiffs’ counsel in the lawsuit against the American Studies Association.
Publish the Names of Students and Professors Who Support Hamas Lynching and Rapes By Alan Dershowitz
Source: https://dersh.substack.com/p/publish-the-names-of-students-and
OCT 11, 2023
Student groups at many elite universities -- including Harvard, Yale and Columbia, CUNY -- have come out in support of Hamas at a time when its terrorists have raped, murdered and kidnapped women, toddlers, the elderly and other civilians, and have reportedly beheaded babies. The immoral groups that support such atrocities are composed of both students and faculty members. Many of these individuals hide behind their organizations' names and refuse to identify themselves. They do not want to be held accountable in the court of public opinion for their own despicable views.
The open marketplace of ideas, which I support, allows students to hold and express these views, but it also requires transparency so that the rest of us can judge them, hold them accountable and debate them.
There are, of course, rare occasions where anonymity is essential. For example, during the civil rights period of the 1960's, identifying members of civil rights groups endangered their lives. There is, however, no such fear here. Groups that oppose Hamas have not been known to advocate violence against those who support it. To the contrary, it is pro-Israel advocates who have been threatened with and suffered from violence.
The students who anonymously vote to support Hamas' recent attacks need not be fearful of anything but disdain and criticism. They should be willing to subject themselves to the marketplace of ideas. They should not resort to cowardly hiding behind the names of prominent organizations such as "Amnesty International at Harvard" -- one of the groups that said they "hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all" the massacres and rapes. They should be prepared to defend these immoral views.
Some students who belong to these organizations argue that they do not personally support Hamas' recent barbarities. They are free to say so and to dissociate themselves from the groups they voluntarily joined. Silence in this context is acquiescence. So is hiding behind anonymity.
Fellow students, future employers, and others should be able to judge their friends and potential employees by the views they have expressed. Teachers should not grade students based on their views. That is why anonymous grading is widely employed at universities.
As a university professor for 50 years, I would not grade down a student because she supported Hamas atrocities. Nor would I befriend or employ such a student. Freedom of speech is not freedom from being held accountable for one's speech. It is interesting that most of the counter-petitions protesting Hamas's activities contain the names of students and faculty, but that is far less true of petitions that support Hamas's atrocities. That is understandable because there is no reasonable defense for what Hamas has done. Those who support Hamas should be ashamed and shamed, and those who oppose Hamas should be praised. That, too, is part of the marketplace of ideas.
Today, too many students are judged by their "identity." Identity politics has replaced meritocracy. Being judged by one's support or opposition to Hamas barbarity is more justifiable.
Let the student newspapers, many of which are rabidly anti-Israel, publish the names of all students and faculty members who belong to groups that support and oppose Hamas. Hypothetically, if a club were formed at any of these universities that advocated rape or the lynching of African Americans, the newspapers would most assuredly publish the names of everyone associated with such a despicable group. Why is this different? Rape has become a weapon of war for Hamas, along with lynching, mutilation, mass murder and kidnapping. Expressing support for these acts, while constitutionally protected, is wrong. The answer to wrong speech isn't censorship; it is right speech, and transparency.
So let the names be published. Let the despicable students and faculty members who support Hamas stand up and defend their indefensible views, and let the marketplace of ideas decide who is right and who is wrong.
Don’t Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students By Steven Davidoff Solomon: Would your clients want an attorney who condones hatred and monstrous crimes?
Source: https://archive.ph/7Ruos and https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-hire-my-anti-semitic-law-students-protests-colleges-universities-jews-palestine-6ad86ad5
Wall Street Journal
October 15, 2023
PHOTO: SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES
I teach corporate law at the University of California, Berkeley, and I’m an adviser to the Jewish law students association. My students are largely engaged and well-prepared, and I regularly recommend them to legal employers.
But if you don’t want to hire people who advocate hate and practice discrimination, don’t hire some of my students. Anti-Semitic conduct is nothing new on university campuses, including here at Berkeley.
Last year, Berkeley’s Law Students for Justice in Palestine asked other student groups to adopt a bylaw that banned supporters of Israel from speaking at events. It excluded any speaker who “expressed and continued to hold views or host/sponsor/promote events in support of Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine.” Nine student groups adopted the bylaw. Signers included the Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, the Queer Caucus and the Women of Berkeley Law.
The bylaw caused an uproar. It was rightly criticized for creating “Jew-free” zones. Our dean—a diehard liberal—admirably condemned it but said free-speech principles tied his hands. The campus groups had the legal right to pick or exclude speakers based on their views. The bylaw remains, and 11 other groups subsequently adopted it.
You don’t need an advanced degree to see why this bylaw is wrong. For millennia, Jews have prayed, “next year in Jerusalem,” capturing how central the idea of a homeland is to Jewish identity. By excluding Jews from their homeland—after Jews have already endured thousands of years of persecution—these organizations are engaging in anti-Semitism and dehumanizing Jews. They didn’t include Jewish law students in the conversation when circulating the bylaw. They also singled out Jews for wanting what we all should have—a homeland and haven from persecution.
The student conduct at Berkeley is part of the broader attitude against Jews on university campuses that made last week’s massacre possible. It is shameful and has been tolerated for too long.
It’s time for the adults to take over, and that includes law firms looking for graduates to hire. The law firm Winston & Strawn revoked an employment offer for a student at New York University law school who wrote an open letter that pointedly refused to condemn Hamas’s attack. The letter denounced Israel instead and asserted that its “regime of state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary.” The NYU law school dean had issued a tepid response to the massacres, but after the student’s anti-Israel screed caused an uproar, he made a second, more forceful statement condemning Hamas’s attack.
Legal employers in the recruiting process should do what Winston & Strawn did: treat these law students like the adults they are. If a student endorses hate, dehumanization or anti-Semitism, don’t hire him. When students face consequences for their actions, they straighten up.
If you are a legal employer, when you interview students from Berkeley, Harvard, NYU or any other law school this year, ask them what organizations they belong to. Ask if they support discriminatory bylaws or other acts and resolutions blaming Jews and Israelis for the Hamas massacre. If a student endorses hatred, it isn’t only your right but your duty not to hire him. Do you want your clients represented by someone who condones these monstrous crimes?
Mr. Solomon is a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.Appeared in the October 16, 2023, print edition as 'Don’t Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students'.
Harvard must condemn pro-Hamas students — and reckon with its history of antisemitism By Alan Dershowitz
Source: https://dersh.substack.com/p/harvard-must-condemn-pro-hamas-students
OCT 18, 2023
There’s an ongoing debate on university campuses about whether and how to respond to students who support, defend or even praise what Hamas terrorists deliberately did to innocent Israeli children, the elderly and other civilians.
On the one hand, there are free-speech and academic-freedom considerations.
As Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, put it in refusing to condemn the more than 30 student groups who blamed Israel alone for the Hamas horrors: “Harvard embraces a commitment to free expression.”
That would be acceptable if the university had a strict and consistent policy of never taking positions on issues that do not directly involve the university.
The University of Chicago has that policy. Harvard does not.
Former Harvard president Lawrence Summers reminded the current administration the school has forfeited that prerogative — to “pursue a policy of neutrality” — by speaking out on other issues such as the killing of George Floyd.
The testing question would be: What, if anything, would Harvard’s president have said if a group of Harvard clubs blamed the lethal firebombing of a black church on the burned black children or the NAACP?
What if they blamed the shooting-up of a gay bar on the lifestyles of the murdered gays?
Or the lynching of blacks on their “uppity” attitudes?
We know what the reaction of university administrators would have been.
At the very least, they would have exercised their own freedom of expression to condemn these groups in the strongest terms.
So we have two direct questions for President Gay (whom we respect):
- 1) Would you have refused to condemn student groups that took these despicable positions, citing their freedom of expression?
- 2) If you would have condemned such groups (as we’re confident you would have), how do you distinguish these groups from those you refuse to condemn?
Is supporting the mass murder of Jews any less deserving of condemnation than supporting those who burn churches, shoot gays or lynch blacks?
How then can you justify not condemning the Harvard groups?
Is it because you would be criticized for condemning pro-Hamas students but praised for condemning anti-black and anti-gay bigots?
That is not a principled basis for making a distinction. What then is the basis?
Certainly not Harvard’s sordid history, which is rife with racism and antisemitism.
For generations, Harvard excluded or limited the number of black and Jewish students. In the 1930s it honored German Nazis.
As recently as 1964, when one of us (Alan) arrived there, it discriminated against Jews in the selection of presidents and deans.
It welcomed recruitment on campus by corporations and law firms that openly discriminated against Jews.
To its credit, Harvard has tried to reckon with its history of anti-black racism.
It must now reckon with its history of antisemitism and its current application of double standards in tolerating Jew-hatred among elements of its student body, faculty and administrators.
It is no excuse to say the current Jew-hatred is directed at the nation-state of the Jewish people rather than at Jews as a group.
Hamas lynched, raped, beheaded and kidnapped Jews who lived in Israel.
It has murdered non-Israeli Jews in other parts of the world, and its charter is filled with anti-Jewish canards borrowed from the notorious antisemitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
Hamas is a Jew-hating antisemitic terrorist group, and students who support it by shifting the blame from them to the Jews of Israel are complicit in Hamas Jew-hatred and must be held accountable.
Nor is it an excuse or justification that the offending groups comprise young students, some of whom claim they didn’t realize what they signed.
They knew they were signing an anti-Israel petition at a time Israeli Jews were being slaughtered.
The fact some may have signed it without reading it only goes to show the knee-jerk hatred of some students toward anything involving Israel or Jews.
They would never have signed a petition critical of gays or blacks without studying it carefully.
Harvard treats its students — both 18-year-old freshmen and 25-year-old graduate students — as adults, holding them responsible for what they write and sign. It does not excuse plagiarism even if negligent.
There is no basis for an exception here.
Students who supported this and similar petitions should be called out and criticized.
If they want to retract their signatures, they should do so publicly and apologize.
Silence is complicity.
Freedom of expression precludes the power to punish immoral speech.
It includes the right to condemn such speech.
Alan Dershowitz is professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and the author of “Get Trump,” “Guilt by Accusation” and “The Price of Principle.” Andrew Stein, a Democrat, served as New York City Council president, 1986-94.
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