Asef Bayat
Overview
Asef Bayat is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and signed a 2014 letter demonizing Israel.Bayat has also signed statements of support for disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita.
Bayat is the Catherine and Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
Supporting BDS
Bayat has signed an August 2014 letter titled “Middle East Scholars and Librarians Call for Boycott of Israeli Academia.”In signing this petition, Bayat committed “not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or to attend conferences and other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel.”
During the annual 2014 conference of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Bayat signed a resolution that defended “the right of scholarly associations to boycott Israel” and called on MESA to “provide platforms for a sustained discussion of the academic boycott and foster careful consideration of an appropriate position for MESA to assume.”
MESA is considered the most important association of Middle East Studies.
Bayat also signed a July 2013 letter calling on Iranian Filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf to boycott the Jerusalem International Film Festival and reject an award from the festival. The letter accused Israel of practicing “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing.”
Demonizing Israel
Bayat signed a July 2014 letter addressed to Israeli academics that called for the condemnation of Israel.Israel commenced Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
Defending Steven Salaita
Bayat signed two letters, written in August and September 2014, demanding Professor Steven Salaita’s reinstatement at the University of Illinois (U of I).In 2014, The University of Illinois 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.” In 2017, Salaita posted to Facebook: “People ask if I would go back in time and change anything. I would not…I will die unapologetic.” In February 2019, Salaita stated that he had become a school bus driver in the Washington, D.C., area.
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
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1477907652University Website:http://www.sociology.illinois.edu/people/abayat
- Status:
- Professor
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- Organizations:
- BDS
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- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
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