A new study released Tuesday by AMCHA Initiative reveals how academic boycotts of Israel pose a serious threat to Jewish students and significantly increase the likelihood of antisemitism on campus.
Much has been written in recent years detailing how academic boycotts, and particularly an academic boycott of Israel, are an assault on academic free expression and ntellectual inquiry critical to academia. Even more alarming is AMCHA’s recent research that found a strong link between the presence of faculty members expressing support for an academic boycott of Israel and the worst form of antisemitism, acts of anti-Jewish hostility.
The study (The Impact of Academic Boycotters of Israel on US Campuses) released by AMCHA Initiative investigates why this is happening. It examined the three disciplines that were responsible for sponsoring close to 90% of anti-Israel events – Ethnic, Gender and Middle East Studies. Data reveals that the greater the number of faculty boycotters in a department, the greater the number of outside BDS proponents brought to campus by that department and the greater the instances of students’ anti-Zionist expression and incidents of anti-Jewish hostility.
The study’s main findings:
The greater the number of faculty boycotters in a department, the greater the number of outside BDS proponents brought to campus by that department Within the three disciplines examined, academic units with faculty boycotters were between five and twelve times more likely to sponsor events with BDS-supporting speakers.
The more BDS speakers, the more anti-Zionist expression among students, and the more anti-Jewish hostility on campus Schools that hosted BDS-supporting speaker-events sponsored by the three disciplines were twice as likely to have incidents of anti-Jewish hostility.
Schools with BDS-speaker events were twice as likely to have occurrences of student-produced anti-Zionist expression. Schools with instances of student-produced anti-Zionist expression were 7 times more likely to have incidents of anti-Jewish hostility.
