Curtis Marez

Overview

Curtis Marez is a leader within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Marez served as president of the American Studies Association (ASA) in 2013. In December of 2013, the ASA — demonizing Israel in a display of modern anti-Semitism — unanimously adopted a resolution singling out Israel for academic boycott.

In a December 16, 2013 interview, Marez did not dispute that many nations, including many of Israel’s neighbors, are generally judged to have human rights records that are worse than Israel’s, or comparable, but he said, "one has to start somewhere." Marez acknowledged in three decades, the ASA had never before called for an academic boycott of any nation’s universities. As of 2016, no other academic boycott of any other nation has since been introduced at the ASA.

On April 20, 2016, ASA members filed a derivative lawsuit against Marez and other ASA officers who advanced the anti-Israel boycott. The plaintiffs have accused the defendants of hijacking the ASA for personal political purposes and perverting their duties as officials of the ASA.

In the interview, Marez went on to misleadingly imply that “Palestinian civil society” initiated the call for BDS. By 2012, Norman Finkelstein had already called into question the composition of the so-called Palestinian Civil Society organizations. In August of 2016, BDS leader Ilan Pappé admitted that BDS was not initiated by a “call” from Palestinian civil society; rather, it was initiated by a small number of radical anti-Israel extremists.

On December 4, 2013, the ASA released a statement falsely maintaining that the ASA boycott would not suppress the academic freedom of individual Israeli academic researchers. Since the ASA boycott, many Israeli academics have been personally shunned by their non-Israeli colleagues and at least one academic journal has refused to publish any article by an Israeli researcher.

Marez has personally endorsed the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).

Marez also signed a 2014 open letter calling on Israeli academics who believed it “urgent” to “act to end the illegal occupation in Palestine” and Israeli “atrocities” to sign a petition. The petition was closed to overseas signers after only 83 Israeli professors signed on.

Marez is a professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He is also the Director of Graduate Studies.

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=3429960

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtis-marez-9b95b673

Academia.edu:https://ucsd.academia.edu/CurtisMarez