Michael Taussig

Overview

Michael Taussig [Michael T. Taussig] has spread anti-Israel conspiracy theories and is an activist with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. In this capacity, he pushed a resolution encouraging the American Anthropological Association (AAA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

Taussig is the Class of 1933 Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University (Columbia).

Anti-Israel Conspiracy Theories

During a visit to Israel in June 2013, Taussig wrote a series of diary posts titled “Two Weeks in Palestine.”

In his post titled “Sunday,” Taussig promoted a claim that Israel trains wild boars and gazelles to destroy Palestinian farmers’ crops.

He went on to claim that the Jewish National Fund plants pine trees in Israel in order “to conceal the prior existence of Palestinian villages and extend Israeli settlement.”

In his post titled “Monday,” Taussig promoted a claim that Israeli pesticides caused an extinction of bees in the West Bank.

In his post titled “Tuesday,” Taussig quoted a Palestinian writer who wrote that “bridging gaps of understanding” between Israelis and Palestinians “is like having to sit down with my rapist and understand his pain while he is still penetrating me.”

Taussig also suggested, in two different posts titled “Sunday,” that Israelis intentionally kill Palestinian children for sinister reasons: “Soldiers are instructed to fire with real bullets if their lives are deemed at risk. Shooting a kid in the back suggests something else.”

Promoting BDS

In March of 2016, Taussig signed a petition created by a Columbia student initiative to rebrand BDS at Columbia as: Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD). CUAD is comprised of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) members, who joined forces in February 2016.

The group called on Columbia to divest its equity holdings and endowment funds from companies that — in CUAD’s words — “profit from the State of Israel’s ongoing system of settler colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid law.”

CUAD lists eight target companies that it believes “*likely* to be invested in by a university like CU,” without knowing whether Columbia actually had holdings in the corporations.

In June of 2015, Taussig published a personal statement encouraging the American Anthropological Association (AAA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

In his essay, Taussig accused Israel of creating an “open prison apartheid society” in the West Bank. Taussig went on to compare the Israeli separation barrier, which was built to stop Palestinian suicide bombing attacks, to Hamas tunnels built to abduct and terrorize Israelis.

Taussig concluded by accusing Israel of “the unscrupulous use of the holocaust” and a question to his readers: “how could you not” support BDS?

In June 2016, the AAA announced that a resolution to boycott Israeli universities was defeated, but that there are “other actions planned.”

The AAA vote on the anti-Israel resolution took place from April 15 to May 31, 2016, with approximately half of the AAA membership voting on the resolution. Of the half that voted concerning the resolution, 50.4% voted against it, meaning that only one quarter of AAA’s membership — at most — voted in favor of the resolution.

Demonizing Israel at Columbia

In February 2009, Taussig signed a letter calling on Columbia President Lee Bollinger to “make public [his] opposition” to Israeli security measures in the West Bank and Gaza.

The letter was sent one month after Israel’s Operation Cast Lead (OCL), which was launched to stop Hamas weapons smuggling and rocket fire from the Gaza strip targeting Israeli civilians.

During the second intifada, Taussig signed a statement calling on Columbia to “(1) to use its influence — political and financial — to encourage the United States government to suspend its military aid and arms sales to Israel, and (2) to divest from all companies that manufacture arms and other military hardware sold to Israel.”

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.

Social Media and Weblinks

University Website: https://anthropology.columbia.edu/content/michael-t-taussig

Status:: Professor
University:: Columbia

Organizations:: BDS
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Last Modified:: 05/04/2026

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