Ashley Dawson

Overview

Ashley Dawson demonizes Israel as a member of the Organizing Collective of US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), which seeks to implement the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement in the United States.

Dawson has co-edited a book of essays, titled “Against Apartheid: The Case for Boycotting Israeli Universities.”

In his writings, Dawson has accused Israel of practicing “apartheid” and defended BDS.

Dawson has also promoted BDS on Twitter.

Dawson is a professor of English at the College of Staten Island (CSI) and the City University of New York Graduate Center (CUNY GC), where he has participated in several pro-BDS events.

Injecting BDS Into Academia

In 2015, Dawson became a member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) Organizing Collective.

That year, Dawson co-edited a book of essays, titled “Against Apartheid: The Case for Boycotting Israeli Universities.” According to Dawson’s website, the book “powerfully explains why scholars and students throughout the world should refuse to do business with Israeli institutions” and has been dubbed an “intellectual guidebook” for BDS.

The authors of the essays included a number of prominent BDS leaders, including Omar Barghouti, Joseph Massad, Bill Mullen, David Palumbo-Liu, Ilan Pappé, Steven Salaita, Sarah Schulman, Magid Shihade and many others.

During the book’s launch event, Dawson demonized Israeli universities and called for a "campaign of debunking" around Israel. He also accused Israel of practicing "apartheid."

From 2013 to 2014, Dawson served as the editor of the American Association of University Professor Journal of Academic Freedom and included a series of articles supporting BDS in the 2013 issue of Journal of Academic Freedom.

Following heavy criticism, Dawson released a statement defending his decision to publish the essays and accused Israel of practicing “apartheid.”

In 2014, Dawson was an outspoken supporter of the American Studies Association (ASA)’s decision to adopt an academic boycott of Israel. Dawson stated that “college presidents who had denounced the A.S.A. resolution were abrogating the academic freedom of faculty members who supported the boycott.”

Dawson has also signed a resolution urging the Modern Language Association (MLA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

During the annual MLA meeting in January 2017, MLA’s delegate council rejected the BDS resolution and instead voted to support Resolution 2017-1 (2017-1), which urged the MLA to refrain from adopting BDS.

Dawson then signed a statement condemning the MLA’s adoption of the anti-BDS resolution, which it characterized as “support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”

In 2016, Dawson signed a letter calling on the PEN American Center (PEN) to reject sponsorship from the Israeli government and to adopt BDS.

Promoting BDS

On April 9, 2016, Dawson tweeted an article that called on medical anthropologists to adopt BDS.

In November of 2015, Dawson was part of a promotional event at CUNY GC surrounding the release of his book “Against Apartheid: The Case for Boycotting Israeli Universities”.

In April of 2014, Dawson was a member of a panel discussion, titled “BDS and Academic Freedom” held at CUNY GC. The other panel members, as well as the event’s moderator, Christopher Stone, support BDS.

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.