Lisa Duggan
Overview
Lisa Duggan is a leader within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. Duggan has personally endorsed the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).Duggan is a professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University (NYU).
Pushing BDS
Duggan is a signator on an online petition demanding that NYU divest from companies doing business with Israel, such as Veolia Environment, Hewlett-Packard, Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and G4S.In February of 2014, Duggan organized a closed event that promoted the academic boycott of Israeli universities at NYU. Duggan wrote in the event’s electronic invitation, "PLEASE DO NOT post or circulate the flyer, we are trying to avoid press, protesters and public attention."
In 2013, Duggan served as president-elect of the American Studies Association (ASA), and sat on the ASA Executive Committee and National Council. In December of 2013, the ASA unanimously adopted a resolution singling out Israel for academic boycott.
In a December 16, 2013 interview, former ASA President Curtis Marez acknowledged that many nations, including many of Israel’s neighbors, are generally judged to have human rights records worse than Israel’s, but claimed, “one has to start somewhere.” Marez also acknowledged the ASA never before called for an academic boycott of any other nation’s universities. No other academic boycott of any other nation has since been introduced at the ASA.
On April 20, 2016, ASA members filed a derivative lawsuit against Duggan and other ASA officers who advanced the anti-Israel boycott. The plaintiffs accused the defendants of hijacking the ASA for personal political purposes and perverting their fiduciary duties as officials of the ASA.
Spreading Incitement
On November 27, 2015, Duggan spread the libel on Facebook that Israel harvested the organs of Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli troops. As proof, Duggan linked to an report attributed to Press TV — an Iranian propaganda channel.On October 17, 2015 Duggan claimed on Facebook that Israel committed “genocide” against Palestinians. Duggan’s post also expressed “solidarity with Popular Palestinian Resistance,” and came during an upsurge in violence across Israel incited by Palestinian political and religious leaders. A wave of stabbings, known as the “Knife Intifada,” saw young Palestinians across Israel stabbing and attempting to stab scores of Israeli civilians.
In 2009, Duggan signed a letter addressed to U.S. President Barack Obama, describing Israel as the perpetrator of “one of the most massive, ethnocidal atrocities of modern times.” The letter was written during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, which Israel launched to stop Hamas rocket fire into Israel, targeting civilians, as well as weapons smuggling into the Gaza strip.
Endorsing Hate Speech
In 2016, Duggan signed a letter to Vassar College President Catherine Bond Hill defending Jasbir Puar, an anti-Israel Rutgers professor who gave a lecture at Vassar College in February 2016 titled “Inhumanist Biopolitics: How Palestine Matters.”Puar began her speech by calling for armed struggle against Israel. She went on to demonize Israel, suggesting that Israelis harvest the organs of dead Palestinians. Puar also claimed that Israel was maiming and “stunting” Palestinians via food restrictions — despite Gaza having one of the highest obesity rates in the world.
Puar also opined that the reason Israeli Jews have not killed Palestinians is “[t]hey need the Palestinians alive in order to keep the kind of rationalization for their victimhood and their militarized economy.”
The letter that Duggan signed slammed the objections to Puar’s anti-Israel incitement as attacks on freedom of speech and the “integrity of an invited guest.”
The letter also cited an October 2015 report by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal that conjured anti-Semitic conspiracies of a powerful Israel lobby controlling the U.S. government and silencing legitimate criticism of Israel. The letter claimed the report revealed “the ways in which ‘a network of lobbying groups... funded by, working in coordination with, and/or staunchly supportive of the policies and practices of the Israeli government primarily drives efforts to silence speech on behalf of Palestinian rights’.”
Defending a Terrorist
On October 24, 2014, Duggan signed a petition defending terrorist Rasmea Odeh titled “Feminist scholars to Obama: End prosecution of Palestinian survivor of sexual torture.”Odeh was a key military operative [00:02:08]with the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1969, Odeh masterminded a PFLP bombing that killed two college students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate.
Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated [00:10:53] Odeh as the mastermind.
In 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States.
On November 10, 2014, a Michigan federal jury convicted Odeh for immigration fraud because she failed to disclose her prior conviction and life sentence on her immigration application. On March 12, 2015, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
In 2017, after an appeal and a lengthy court battle, Odeh admitted to immigration fraud, was stripped of her U.S. citizenship, deported to Jordan and banned from re-entering the U.S.
The petition Duggan signed claimed that Odeh was sexually and physically tortured for 45 days before she confessed.
The petition also stated: “[a]s feminist scholars, we call on the Department of Justice to drop the charges against Rasmea Odeh. We extend our deepest support to Rasmea in the face of injustice. We recognize her as a leader in the international struggle to empower women and end violence against women.”
On October 24, 2015, Duggan encouraged her Twitter followers to sign a petition demanding that all US federal charges be dropped against Odeh.
Endorsing Hate Speech
On September 1, 2014 Duggan tweeted a graduate student petition to reinstate Steven Salaita,In 2014, The University of Illinois (U of I) withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped three teenage Israeli high school students, read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.”
A month later, Salaita tweeted, "Zionists: transforming "antisemitism" from something horrible into something honorable since 1948." On July 8, 2014, he tweeted: "There's something profoundly sexual to the Zionist pleasure w/#Israel's aggression. Sublimation through bloodletting, a common perversion."
U of I defended its decision to withdraw the job offer to Salaita in a January 29, 2015 press release, saying: “These statements [his tweets] and many more like them demonstrate that Dr. Salaita lacks the judgment, temperament and thoughtfulness to serve as a member of our faculty in any capacity, but particularly to teach courses related to the Middle East.”
Pushing BDS
In a November 13, 2014 editorial, Duggan implied that Israel is an “apartheid” state.In the same article, Duggan also maintained that the ASA boycott would not suppress the academic freedom of individual Israeli academic researchers. However, since the ASA boycott took effect, many Israeli academics have been personally shunned by their non-Israeli colleagues and at least one academic journal has refused to publish any article by an Israeli researcher. In addition, two Israeli academics have been removed from the boards of academic journals on the basis of nationality and academic affiliation.
On July 2, 2013, Duggan signed and shared a petition on Facebook demanding that musician Alicia Keys cancel her performance in Israel, writing: “Israel is committing genocide of the Palestinian people on Palestinian land ~ never again Israel? Unless You Are doing it? Alicia, don't reward Israel for mass murder and displacement!”
BDS
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true.
One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”
Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”
In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”
The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.
BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.
The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.
Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.
BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- New-York
- Organizations:
- BDS
- Related Profiles:
- Jacob Remes,
- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
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