Duncan Kennedy

Overview

Duncan Kennedy was a leading participant in a highly controversial conference at Harvard University (Harvard), whose subject was the dissolution of Israel.

Kennedy supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, has accused Israel of apartheid and has compared Israeli laws to Jim Crow.

Kennedy is a professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School.

Participation in Controversial Conference

In March of 2012, Harvard hosted a conference entitled “The One-State Conference: Israel/Palestine and the One State Solution,” whose subject was the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state.

Despite the university’s insistence that it was an entirely student-run initiative and not officially supported by the institution, several professors took leading roles in the planning and execution of the event.

Kennedy was a major participant in the conference.

The controversy that arose in response to the conference stemmed from what many viewed as an ongoing pattern of anti-Israel bias in Harvard classrooms.

Kennedy was specifically identified as a professor who often used his classroom as a platform for spreading anti-Zionism and presenting his students with a biased view of the conflict.

Fellow Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz affirmed these accusations in a speech, delivered at Tel Aviv University in January of 2001.

In his speech, Dershowitz reported that Kennedy’s course on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict“ is completely and totally biased. It’s a pro-Palestinian course which gives no room for any issue from the point of view of the Israelis.”

Demonizing Israel

In an interview, conducted in April of 2014, Kennedy claimed Israeli policies to be racist, stating that “It seems plausible to me to describe the situation in Israel proper as like Jim Crow as modified by some civil rights. It is hard to describe the legal regime of the West Bank… without using the word ‘apartheid’.”

Following this assertion, Kennedy went on to claim all of the ways in which he viewed Israel as being an apartheid state.

Support for BDS

In his April 2014 interview, Kennedy was asked about his sentiments toward the BDS movement. He responded by comparing BDS to activism against the Vietnam War and Apartheid South Africa, ultimately throwing his full support behind the campaign.

This support echoed an earlier interview given by Kennedy on November 1, 2010, in which he stated that “My view is that the primary plausible tactic is pressure on the US government, through a growing civil society based movement for boycott, divestment and international sanctions against the occupation.”

Later in the same interview, Kennedy explained: “I think the only plausible course of action for those supporting the Palestinians is to press the BDS campaign, and develop it in the US in the way it has developed over the last few years in Britain.”

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://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/duncan-m-kennedy/

Status:: Professor
University:: Harvard

Organizations:: BDS
Related Profiles:: J. Lorand Matory,; Steven Caton,; Randa Wahbe,; Mohammad Hamad,; Stephen Walt,; Ajantha Subramanian,; Collin Poirot,; Diana Buttu,
Last Modified:: 05/04/2026

Photos & Screenshots

6 images