Jennifer Derr

Overview

Jennifer Derr has expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and demonized Israel.

Derr is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).

Supporting BDS

On August 6, 2014, Derr signed a letter expressing support for the academic boycott of Israel.

The 2014 petition, published in the online magazine Jadaliyya, comprised of “Over 100 Middle East Scholars and Librarians Call for Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions.”

In signing this petition, Darling and others committed “not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or to attend conferences and other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel.”

Derr signed another open letter in 2014 expressing support for BDS

The July 31, 2014 letter, addressed to former U.S. President Barack Obama and the American Congress, called “to suspend US military aid to Israel, until there is assurance that this aid will no longer be used for the commission of war crimes.”

Demonizing Israel

Derr signed a controversial petition submitted to the American Historical Association (AHA) in 2016, which alleged that: “Israel’s restrictions on the movement of faculty, staff and visitors in the West Bank impede instruction at Palestinian institutions of higher learning” and that “Israel restricts the right to lecture or teach at Palestinian universities.”

Derr signed another petition in 2016, demonizing Israeli academic institutions.  

The controversial petition, submitted to the American Historical Association (AHA) in 2015, alleged that “Israel’s restrictions on the movement of faculty, staff and visitors in the West Bank impede instruction at Palestinian institutions of higher learning” and that “Israel restricts the right to lecture or teach at Palestinian universities.”

The petition went on to demand that “the AHA commits itself to monitoring Israeli actions.”

On October 14, 2014, Derr gave a presentation titled: “The History of Palestine: From Colonialism to Occupation,” as a featured speaker at a lecture series whose stated “main goal is to help students and members of the public think in an informed and critical way about different narratives and perspectives associated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jenniferlderr

University Website: https://history.ucsc.edu/news-events/profiles/jennifer-derr.html