Joan Wallach Scott

Overview

Joan Wallach Scott supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and has signed a statement that a boycott of Israeli settlements is insufficient, because Israel must be boycotted entirely.

Scott is professor emerita at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) School of Social Science and an adjunct professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center (CUNY GC).

From 1999 until 2005, Scott was the chair of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure ("Committee A"), which is responsible for the academic freedom guidelines that most colleges and universities follow. Scott remains a member of Committee A.

Encouraging Academic Boycotts of Israel

In 2006, during Scott’s tenure as chair of the Committee, she attempted to organize a conference to discuss the academic boycott of Israel, despite the AAUP releasing a statement rejecting any such boycott. The conference was cancelled and a collection of essays were released in its place, the majority of which concluded that Israel is deserving of an academic boycott.

In 2013, Scott released a statement called "Changing My Mind About the Boycott." Scott recalled her failed attempt to organize an anti-Israel conference and declared her support for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel. In her statement, Scott also claimed that Israel practices “apartheid.”

Defending Terror Supporters

In 2006, Scott published an essay supporting Sami al-Arian, the North American head and chief fundraiser for Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). A former University of South Florida professor, al-Arian pled guilty to conspiring to aid PIJ and admitted to knowing that it used violence to achieve its ends.

PIJ is dedicated to the violent destruction of Israel and the establishment of a sovereign, Islamic state with the geographic borders of the pre-1948 mandate Palestine. It has been reported that PIJ is backed by Iran.

In the same essay, Scott slammed the American State Department’s decision to revoke, under the Patriot Act, a work visa granted to Tariq Ramadan to teach at Notre Dame, based on his connections to known terrorist organizations. The act denies entry to persons who have used a "position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity." Ramadan has also made financial contributions (p. 13) to French charities linked to Hamas.

At a September 2005 panel discussion on “Academic Freedom and Middle East Studies,” Scott defended al-Arian and Ramadan, and reportedly stated that of the incidents the AAUP has tracked since the 9/11 attacks, “all but one have been instigated by the pro-Israel bloc.”

Defending Hate Speech

In May 2015, Scott wrote an article defending Steven Salaita, currently the Edward Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut (AUB).

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.