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Brinkley Messick

Overview

Brinkley Morris Messick is a vocal supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement at Columbia University (Columbia), where he is professorof Anthropology and co-founder of the Center for Palestine Studies.

In April of 2013, Messick gave an interview explaining why a number of Columbia professors were campaigning to divest their pension funds from companies doing business in the West Bank. Messick called the campaign  a “moral crusade.”

In 2014, Messick signed the Call by Middle East Studies Scholars and Librarians for the Academic Boycott of Israel. The document encourages academics in Middle East Studies "to boycott Israeli academic institutions," and pledges "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.”

Pushing BDS on Academic Association

Messick has signed a petition encouraging the American Anthropological Association (AAA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions. 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.

Slamming Former Columbia Chancellor’s Reservations About BDS

In December 2012, Messick spoke out against UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, a former vice president of Columbia's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, for raising questions about the BDS campaign at Columbia. In November 2012, Dirks gave an interview in which he implied that a 2002 Columbia divestment campaign was a factor in creating a difficult atmosphere for Jewish students at Columbia.

In response, Messick and a number of faculty members slammed Dirks for “defaming” their department.

Demonizing Israel at Columbia

During the second intifada, Messick 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.”

In February 2009, Messick signed a letter calling on Columbia University 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.

Promoting BDS at Columbia

In March 2009, Messick was a featured speaker in a “teach-in” on boycotting Israel as part of a divestment campaign at Columbia.

The teach-in also featured representatives from Adalah-NY, a BDS advocacy group that defines itself as “The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel.”  

In March 2016, Messick 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.”

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://mesaas.columbia.edu/faculty-directory/brinkley-m-messick/


Brinkley Messick
Status:
Professor
University:
Columbia
Organizations:
BDS

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Marianne Hirsch,

Last Modified:
06/23/2025

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