Kenneth Surin
Overview
Kenneth Surin has demonized Israel and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.He has also defended disgraced anti-Israel professor, Steven Salaita and as of January 2020, was a Professor Emeritus of Literature at Duke University (Duke).
Demonizing Israel
On September 10, 2019, Surin retweeted a tweet by fellow anti-Israel professor, Bruce Robbins, claiming that Israel was “not letting Palestinians have the water under their own land. Adapting to climate change under 'water apartheid.'”On January 9, 2017, Surin published an article for the online publication, CounterPunch, in which he referred to the “Zionist apartheid system.” In the same article, Surin compared anti-BDS activists to supporters of Apartheid South Africa.
In an article published on July 3, 2016, Surin suggested that accusations of anti-Semitism are fabricated by Zionists in an effort to deflect attention away from Israeli policies.
Surin stated that: “Israel and these allies have depicted, long and consistently, any kind of opposition to Israel as a Zionist state, and to its concomitant criminal and inhumane treatment of the Palestinians, as a form of antisemitism.”
In an article published on August 13, 2014, Surin referred to “the ruthless dispossession of the Palestinian people that Israel has been undertaking since its inception in 1948.”
Surin went on to charge: “The essential truth of this historic injustice resides in Israel’s long-term objective of emptying the Palestinian territories of their Arab inhabitants.”
Surin then claimed that Israel employs tactics including “deliberate shooting of journalists” and “the use of Palestinians as human shields in military operations.”
Supporting BDS
In 2015, Surin signed an open letter calling for the academic boycott of Israel.The open letter was addressed to the Modern Language Association (MLA), “calling on the association to pass a resolution endorsing the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.”
In January 2017, the MLA Delegate Assembly approved a resolution (2017-1) acknowledging “the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel contradicts the MLA’s purpose” and conflicted with another resolution (2002-1), that condemned boycotts against scholars. Therefore, the Assembly “resolved that the MLA refrain from endorsing the boycott.”
In the article, titled: “When to Take a Stand,” Surin was quoted, referred to himself and his fellow pro-BDS advocates, stating: “Some of us are brawlers and will not be silenced.”
Defending Steven Salaita
On August 22, 2017, Surin tweeted a link to an article authored by Steven Salaita and wrote “Powerful piece by my friend Steven Salaita.”The article shared by Surin, published by the anti-Israel publication Mondoweiss, referred to the “horrors of Zionist colonization” and claiming Salaita “moved to the Middle East to escape Zionism,” but encountered it again when he went to Beirut. Salaita then said: “Some ideologies cannot be evaded, only destroyed.”
In an article published on January 9, 2017, Surin described the withdrawal of an employment offer to Salaita by the University of Illinois (U of I) as “disgraceful.”
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.
Social Media and Weblinks
LinkedIn:http://linkedin.com/in/kenneth-surin-8988a615CounterPunch:https://www.counterpunch.org/author/ksurin0990/
Twitter:https://twitter.com/surinkenneth
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/578852421
University Website:https://literature.duke.edu/people/kenneth-j-surin
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- Duke
- Organizations:
- BDS,
- SJP
- Related Profiles:
- J. Lorand Matory,
- Miriam Cooke,
- Omid Safi,
- Engseng Ho,
- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
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