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Karen Leong
Overview
Karen Leong [Karen J. Leong] is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and has defended disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita.
As of January 2018, Leong was listed on the Arizona State University (ASU) directory as an associate professor in the School of Social Transformation.
Leong has signed her name to a list of individuals endorsing the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).
Leong served as a National Council member and former President of the American Studies Association (ASA) when the Council unanimously adopted a resolution in December 2013, exclusively singling out Israeli universities for academic boycott.
In a December 16, 2013 interview, former ASA President Curtis Marez acknowledged that the ASA never before called for an academic boycott of any nation’s universities, but claimed “one has to start somewhere.” No other academic boycott of any other nation has since been introduced at the ASA.
On April 20, 2016, a lawsuit was filed by ASA members against ASA officers who advanced the anti-Israel boycott. The plaintiffs accused the defendants of hijacking the ASA for personal political purposes and perverting their duties as officials of the ASA.
At the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Annual Conference in April of 2013, Leong signed the proposed resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions which it alleged have “been directly and indirectly complicit in the systematic maintenance of the occupation.”
The petition called for the AAAS to join in “opposing US military occupation in the Arab world and U.S. support for occupation and racist practices by the Israeli state” and went on to call upon the organization to “honor the call of Palestinian civil society for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.”
Leong signed “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” — a petition published by the BDS movement on August 21, 2014.
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.
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by pro-terror activist Omar Barghouti in 2005 to turn “Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.” Barghouti has also called for Israel's destruction and the BDS movement demands would result in that same goal.
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 infiltrating university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments propose resolutions to boycott or divestment from Israel or Israeli-affiliated entities. 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 and pro-terror activism on campus.
