Christian Haesemeyer

Overview

Christian Haesemeyer is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. He has demonized Israel, defended Imad Ahmad Barghouthi, a Hamas-affiliated activist, and expressed support for disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita. 

Haesemeyer was an associate professor in the mathematics department at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) from 2008 to 2015.

As of October 2019, Haesemeyer was listed as a Professor at the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne, since 2015. He was also listed as Chair of the Postgraduate Committee and Director Postgraduate Teaching.

Supporting BDS

Haesemeyer is a signatory to a list of endorsers of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), on the group’s site.

On February 23, 2014, Haesemeyer published a letter supporting a resolution, by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UCLA, titled: “A Resolution to Divest from Companies that Violate Palestinian Human Rights.” 

Haesemeyer’s letter said “supporting this resolution is a no-brainer, and that it is even necessary to demand this from UCLA, a scandal.” He went on to describe the resolution as an issue of “whether or not one should ignore massive violations of human rights in order to protect the oppression of indigeneous [sic] peoples whose lands are being colonized.” 

Haesemeyer was listed under “Faculty Endorsements” of SJP at UCLA’s Fall 2014 Divestment Endorsement page.

On February 4, 2014, Haesemeyer signed: “An Open Letter on the Anti-Boycott Bills,” which opposed anti-BDS legislation then pending before New York State’s legislature. 

Haesemeyer signed a petition authored by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization calling to “Divest from the Israeli Occupation,” that the group published in June 2010.

The petition called on the investment company TIAA-CREF to “divest from Israeli occupation.” The petition provided a list of Israeli companies from which signatories demanded TIAA-CREF divest its funds, claiming that the companies listed “were “profiting from Israelʼs violations of international law and international human rights standards.”
 
On April 26, 2010, Haesemeyer was one of the faculty members of California educational institutions who signed a statement in support of a divestment bill authored by the Associated Students of the University of California’s (ASUC).

Demonizing Israel

On October 18, 2017, Haesemeyer signed a USACBI statement expressing “utmost solidarity with our comrade and colleague on the Organizing Collective,” Bill Mullen, a national leader within the BDS movement and an advisory board member of USACBI. 

In October 2017, in response to a request to Purdue University President Mitch Daniels to investigate “a series of white supremacist messages on campus,” Daniels reportedly “chose to: (a) reassert the principle of “free speech” for Nazis; and (b) target a faculty member [Mullen] with a long record of antiracist work.” 

The message Daniels sent to Mullen reportedly said: “In the past, I have had to defend your right to speech that was widely interpreted as racist, in the form of that oldest of bigotries, anti-Semitism.” 

The USACBI statement that Haesemeyer signed claimed that Mullen was “at the front lines of the fight against antisemitism” and that this was “perfectly consistent with his support for the Palestinian struggle.”

On March 15, 2015, Haesemeyer signed a statement supporting the University of Southampton, England for “its resolute defense of academic freedom” in hosting a conference questioning Israel's right to exist. 

The conference website said it would “engage controversial questions concerning the manner of Israel’s foundation and its nature” and “the legitimacy in International Law of the Jewish state of Israel.” 

The conference description also said it would explore the link between “the foundation and protection” of Israel to “the suffering and injustice in Palestine” and that speakers “will diagnose the legal position with regard to the nature of Israel.” The conference was organized by professors Oren Ben-Dor and George Bisharat, who support BDS. 

The University of Southampton later withdrew permission for the conference to be held on its campus, reportedly due to security concerns.

Defending Imad Barghouthi

On May 11, 2016, Haesemeyer signed an open letter, authored and published by JVP and USACBI, that called for “the immediate release of Dr. Imad Ahmad Barghouthi from Israeli military custody,” shortly after his detention by Israel.

Palestinian Astrophysicist Professor Imad Barghouthi of Al Quds University was sentenced in 2016 to seven months in prison for incitement to violence.

Barghouthi is a vocal supporter of Hamas's military wing — the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades — and has called for killing and being killed in the name of Islam.

An October 22, 2014 video showed Barghouthi at an Al-Quds university Hamas rally, draped in a Hamas banner, [00:00:33] urging students to design precision guided missiles, and sniper rifles as [00:01:11] “weapons ofthe resistance” to [00:02:35] kill “zionist soldiers” in their bedrooms.

Supporting Steven Salaita

Haesemeyer signed a petition published on August 21, 2014 by the BDS movement titled: “A Call to People of Conscience Not to Speak at the University Of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Until Chancellor Wise Honor [sic] the Contract to Hire Professor Steven Salaita.”  

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.

Haesemeyer also signed an August 26, 2014 “UIUC pledge for scientists and engineers” to “not visit the University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign campus until the Steven Salaita case is equitably resolved.”