Frances Harrison

Overview

Frances Harrison is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and has promoted a BDS resolution calling on the American Anthropological Association (AAA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

Harrison has also been a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and has defended SJP on Facebook.

In December of 2015, Harrison wrote a column promoting the AAA BDS resolution and urging the department of Anthropology at Binghamton University (Binghamton) to support the resolution.

Harrison is also a supporter of disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita.

Harrison is an Instructor of Record of Anthropology at Binghamton. She is also an Adjunct Research Fellow at Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania.

Pushing BDS

In December of 2015, Harrison wrote a column in a Binghamton student newspaper titled “Support boycott of Israeli academic institutions.” In her column, Harrison wrote that “As a student of social anthropology and member of Students for Justice in Palestine, it is truly inspirational for me to see a professional organization” take steps towards an academic boycott of Israel.

She added that “my sincerest hope is for my department, conflicting viewpoints and all, to follow in the footsteps of the AAA and endorse this resolution in time for the spring vote... While I do not speak for my department, I personally support the boycott and think the department should too.”

In June of 2016, the AAA announced that the resolution to boycott Israeli universities was defeated but that there are “other actions planned.”

The AAA vote on the anti-Israel resolution took place from April 15 to May 31, 2016, with approximately half of the AAA membership voting on the resolution. Of the half that voted concerning the resolution, 50.4% voted against it, meaning that only one quarter of AAA’s membership — at most — voted in favor of the resolution.

Supporting Steven Salaita

In 2014, Harrison signed a petition in support of disgraced anti-Israel 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.

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.