6 February 7 • 2019
jn

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niversity leaders across the 
country must loudly condemn 
faculty who would implement 
an academic boycott of Israel that 
deprives students of educational oppor-
tunities and academic 
rights in the name of 
personal politics.
Opponents of an 
academic boycott of 
Israel owe John Cheney-
Lippold and Daniel 
Segal a debt of gratitude.
Cheney-Lippold is the 
University of Michigan 
professor who agreed to write a letter of 
recommendation for one of his students 
last fall and then reneged after realiz-
ing it was for study in Israel. Segal, a 
professor at Pitzer College and a major 
proponent of the academic boycott of 
Israel, convinced his fellow Pitzer facul-
ty members to shut down the school’
s 
study-abroad program at the University 
of Haifa only months later. These profes-
sors’
 reprehensible behavior has brought 
much-needed attention to how imple-
mentation of the Palestinian Campaign 
for the Academic and Cultural Boycott 
of Israel (PACBI) — long-advertised as 
aimed at academic institutions in Israel 

— in reality directly threatens the aca-
demic freedom and rights of students on 
North American campuses.
Alarmingly, Cheney-Lippold and 
Segal are just the tip of the iceberg.
First, their behavior is not unique. 
They are just two of a growing number 
of faculty who choose to privilege their 
own personal politics above the aca-
demic welfare of their students. In fact, 
shortly after the Cheney-Lippold inci-
dent became public, another Michigan 
student reported that his graduate 
student instructor had similarly refused 
a letter of recommendation for a study-
abroad program in Israel. Ten U.S. 
professors — all outspoken advocates 
of PACBI’
s campus agenda — have also 
pledged their willingness to refuse letters 
of recommendation for students wanting 
to study in Israel and encouraged others 
to do the same. And a petition titled 
“Stand With John Cheney-Lippold” that 
states, “We, too, are supporters of the 
BDS Movement and would not provide a 
letter of support for a student seeking to 
study in an Israeli University,
” has been 
signed by 1,000 individuals.
Second, following the PACBI guide-
lines to a tee, attempts have also been 
made to sabotage student-organized pro-

grams and faculty collaborations related 
to Israel, thereby directly suppressing 
student and faculty free speech and free-
dom of assembly. For example, faculty 
boycotters at the University of California 
Santa Cruz tried to cancel a student-or-
ganized event titled “Queer in Israel” that 
was to take place at the school’
s LGBTQ 
Center. And faculty boycotters at Cornell 
University attempted to block a part-
nership between Cornell and Israel’
s 
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology 
to create a joint institute of applied sci-
ences that would benefit Cornell faculty 
and students.
Third, some academic disciplines, 
particularly in the social sciences and 
humanities departments, have become 
dominated by academic boycotters, 
creating a professional climate that con-
dones, if not encourages, faculty asso-
ciated with those disciplines to support 
the boycott, despite its harmful effects 
on students. A recent study found that 
departments of Middle East and ethnic 
and gender studies with affiliated faculty 
who support academic BDS are five to 
12 times more likely to sponsor Israel-
related events with BDS-promoting 
speakers than similar departments with 
no academic boycotters.

As blatantly antithetical to the mission 
and values of academia as an academ-
ic boycott of Israel may be, individual 
faculty members do have the right to 
express their public support for it. But 
when faculty like Cheney-Lippold and 
Segal go beyond merely expressing sup-
port for an academic boycott and actual-
ly threaten a student’
s right to participate 
in university-approved educational 
programs, they are not only trampling 
on the academic rights of their students, 
they are undermining the academic 
integrity of the entire university. It is a 
serious and growing problem that uni-
versity leaders must face before it spirals 
out of control.
While hundreds of university presi-
dents have condemned academic boy-
cotts, including the heads of Harvard, 
Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, 
Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Brown and 
Dartmouth, thus far only a handful of 
university leaders have recognized the 
importance of opposing attempts to 
implement an academic boycott on their 
own campuses:
• Following an enormous public 
outcry over Cheney-Lippold’
s refusal 
to write a letter of recommendation, 
University of Michigan President Mark 
Schlissel issued a strong statement 
acknowledging that “such actions inter-
fere with our students’
 opportunities, 
violate their academic freedom and 
betray our university’
s educational mis-
sion.
”
• In a speech addressing the faculty 

commentary
University of Michigan and Pitzer College 
Are Just the Tip of the Iceberg

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Tammi Rossman-

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