6 February 7 • 2019
jn
U
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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