Junaid Rana

Overview

Junaid Rana has met with and justified the acts of convicted terrorist Ali Jiddah. He has also moderated speaking engagements for anti-Semite Steven Salaita.

Rana is a vocal supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, for which he has advocated for and signed multiple petitions.

Rana is a professor of Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

Justifying Terrorism

On September 12, 2014, Rana wrote an article chronicling a recent trip he had made to Israel.

In the article, Rana stated that “the white supremacy that organizes the United States is parallel to the racism that the nation-state of Israel uses to colonize and subjugate Palestinians.”

Later in the article, Rana went on to describe how he and members of his delegation met with Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) member and convicted terrorist Ali Jiddah. Rana justified Jiddah’s acts, attributing his terrorist activity and involvement in the PFLP as “largely in response to the Six-Day War and Israeli racism.”

Defending Steven Salaita

On October 14, 2015, Rana moderated Steven Salaita’s presentation, “Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom.”

In February of 2016, Rana published an article chronicling his decision to help Salaita and the experience of bringing him onto the U of I campus.

In response to Salaita’s request, Rana recalled thinking “Was this a subversive act? This was a public common, or so I’d been made to believe. It crossed my mind that walking on campus grounds might be interpreted as trespassing. Was a faculty member allowed to escort a colleague with a pending lawsuit against the university across campus? It didn’t matter. We did it anyway.”

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.

Support for BDS

On April 9, 2017, Rana co-authored an article entitled, “Why Voting Matters: The American Anthropological Association’s Upcoming Vote to Boycott Israeli Academic Institutions.”

In the article, the authors accuse Israel of settler colonialism and call upon all members of the AAA to vote in favor of the BDS petition.

Rana was one of the AAA members who submitted the petition to boycott Israeli academic institutions, and later signed his name to the petition, as well.

Rana also signed his name to a petition, published on February 8, 2016, calling for the boycott of an academic workshop at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

The petition’s larger aim was to “urge scholars to boycott any official event hosted by Israeli universities, institutions that are complicit with occupation and apartheid.”

On November 20, 2014, Rana was featured as a speaker at an event entitled, “Palestine and BDS Teach-In.”

On January 12, 2014, Rana attempted to travel into Israel with a delegation of professors and activists, whose purpose was to meet Palestinian academics and “ better understand conditions on the ground.”

Because of their activism in the BDS movement several members of the delegation including Rana were stopped by Israeli security.

It was reported that “Professor Rana was asked whether he had recently signed any petitions regarding Israel, to which he replied that he was a member signatory to BDS resolutions of the AAAS and the ASA.”

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://asianam.illinois.edu/directory/profile/jrana

Status:: Professor
University:: Illinois-Urbana-Champaign

Organizations:: BDS
Related Profiles:: Dunia Ghanimah,; Stephanie Skora,
Last Modified:: 05/04/2026

Photos & Screenshots

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