Bruce Levine

Overview

Bruce Levine has defended disgraced anti-Israel professor Steven Salaita and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Levine is a Professor Emeritasin the Department of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign (UIUC).

Defending Steven Salaita

On November 2, 2014, Levine published an article on the University of Illinois (U of I) faculty weblog, defending Salaita and claiming: “what Prof. Steven Salaita wrote in his famous tweets was not anti-Semitic...at the time of Prof. Salaita's tweets, I was saying and writing much the same thing, if to a much smaller audience.”

Levine also signed a petition, published on September 3, 2014, of “Jewish students, faculty, staff, alumni, and parents of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign... writing to object in the strongest possible terms to the firing of Professor Steven Salaita.”

Signatories of the petition wrote: “Just as we work tirelessly to oppose Israeli ethnic cleansing and displacement of Palestinians taking place in our name, we will ensure that the silencing of Professor Salaita and others like him does not take place in our name either.”

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.

In the same article, Levine alleged: “The Salaita case is part of a much larger, national campaign to repress criticism of Israel.”

In October 2014, Levine authored and reportedly sponsored a resolution slamming U of I Chancellor Phyllis Wise for her decision to withdraw the University’s offer of a tenured teaching position to Salaita.

Explaining his reason for sponsoring the resolution and defending Salaita, Levine was quoted, stating that: “The point is that civility is too easily used as a detour around academic freedoms.”

Following the settlement of the case between Salatia and U of I, Levine commented on a blog post, published on November 12, 2015, again insisting that Salaita’s actions were expressions of “academic freedom.”

In his comment, Levine wrote that “what’s the lasting message that this settlement sends? That a university can fire a scholar for expressing views it finds distasteful and get away with it so long as it’s prepared to pony up some cash.”

Supporting BDS

Levine signed an open letter to former United States President Barack Obama and the American Congress, demonizing Israel and calling for an end to foreign aid.

The July 31, 2014 letter, addressed to former U.S. President Barack Obama and the American Congress, called “to suspend US military aid to Israel, until there is assurance that this aid will no longer be used for the commission of war crimes.”