Elaine Freedgood

Overview

Elaine Freedgood has expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, demonized Israel and defended disgraced anti-Israel former-professor Steven Salaita.

Freedgood is a Professor of English at New York University (NYU).    

Supporting BDS

Freedgood signed “a divestment resolution inspired by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS),” which was approved by the NYU Student Assembly in November 2018.  

The petition stated: “NYU’s investment in the...mentioned companies plays an active role in funding and perpetuating Israel’s illegal occupation and its violation of human rights, making NYU complicit in these crimes.”

The petition also demanded that “NYU includes on its ‘Prohibited List’ all corporations that profit from ‘the violation of Palestinian human rights, the occupation of Palestine, and the continued spread of settlements declared illegal under international law’.”

In 2016, Freedgood signed an open letter in support of BDS to the Modern Language Association (MLA).

The open letter was addressed to the Modern Language Association (MLA), “calling on the association to pass a resolution endorsing the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.”
Freedgood signed an open letter published on April 19, 2015, expressing support for the cultural boycott of Israel. 

The 2015 letter condemned the decision to feature French intellectual Monique Canto-Sperber as the keynote speaker of a “Night of Philosophy” event, because of her pro-Israel activism.

Signatories of the letter stated that “we find it incumbent upon ourselves to register our profound disappointment and to protest in the strongest terms possible that one of the key people you have selected to promote free speech at your Night of Philosophy has been an open practitioner of denying the same to Palestinians and their supporters.”

In an article published by Electronic Intifada (EI) on May 27, 2015, Freedgood was cited as a supporter of the BDS campaign at NYU. 

The article reported that Freedgood “told The Electronic Intifada that she joined the campaign because she opposes Israeli apartheid” and went on to quote Freedgood, stating that: “Here, at NYU, ever since the students have been running a campaign, I’ve supported them.” 

In March 2015, Freedgood signed another open letter calling for the adoption of BDS by the MLA. 

The letter, signed by members of the MLA, accused Israel of “Detentions without trial, torture and war crimes, and use of deadly force by the Israeli military against non-violent protesters” and called upon Israel to “Honor the right of Palestinian refugees to return.”

Freedgood promoted the MLA resolution for BDS in a tweet, published on January 25, 2015, in which she wrote: “MLA peeps: please consider joining FB group MLA Justice for Palestine!”

Freedgood signed another petition calling on NYU to divest. The petition stated: “NYU must divest itself of any holdings it may have" in Israeli companies. 

NOOP Petition

The petition, written by the NYU Out of Occupied Palestine (NOOP) coalition, claimed that “Israel has turned the impoverished and densely-populated Gaza strip into the world’s largest open-air prison and launched repeated military assaults against it.”
In an article, published by the anti-Israel publication Mondoweiss on April 9, 2015, Freedgood was cited as a professor who supported the NYU divestment campaign. 

The article quoted Freedgood stating: “I support NYU Out of Occupied Palestine because I am opposed to apartheid, and the international boycott of apartheid in South Africa was a significant factor in its demise.”

On July 19, 2014, Freedgood tweeted a graphic, created by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and wrote: “Demand #Congress & #POTUS suspend military aid to Israel.”

Freedgood signed a 2009 letter published by NYU SJP to the President of the investment company, TIAA-CREF, urging him to divest from Israel. 

Demonizing Israel

In July of 2014, Freedgood signed an open letter demonizing Israel.

The letter, addressed to Israeli academics, claimed “The government of Israel, having provoked the firing of rockets by its rampage through the West Bank, is now using that response as the pretext for an aerial assault on Gaza which has already cost scores of lives.”

Signatories of the letter went on to claim: “An atmosphere of hysteria is being deliberately provoked in Israel, and whole communities are being subject to collective punishment, a war crime.”

Defending Steven Salaita

In an article published on August 12, 2014 by the anti-Israel publication, Electronic Intifada (EI), Freedgood was cited as a professor who had led the opposition against Salaita’s termination. Specifically, the article reported that Freedgood had initiated an open letter to University of Illinois (U of I) Chancellor Phyllis Wise, expressing support for 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.

 Freedgood also 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.”  

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.