Kiese Laymon
Overview
Kiese Laymon [Kiese Mekiba Laymon] defended the bullying tactics of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Vassar College (Vassar), in 2014. He is also a supporter of anti-Israel professor Jasbir Puar.As of August 2018, Laymon’s University of Mississippi (UMiss) online profile listed him as the Ottilie Schillig Professor of English and Creative Writing. He was previously an associate professor of English and African Studies at Vassar, and is also a writer and editor.
Defending SJP’s Bully-Tactics
In late February 2014, SJP at Vassar reportedly staged a violent protest — just outside the classroom of a professor who was arranging a class trip to Israel, to examine water issues.The belligerent behavior of the SJP Vassar members, who picketed the class and harassed students entering the classroom, left the professor and her students feeling harassed and intimidated.
On March 3, 2014, Vassar held an open forum to discuss the “ethics” of the class trip to Israel. The meeting was chaired by Laymon, who opened the meeting saying he wanted a dialogue about activism “not to be guided by cardboard notions of civility.”
The event was also attended by Philip Weiss, editor of the anti-Israel Mondoweiss website, who wrote that Layman “seemed frankly on the SJP side.”
Reports from attendees said “Jewish kids who spoke were heckled” and drowned out with a finger-snapping noise and loudly laughed at” and that “rage against Israel was the theme.”
During the meeting, Laymon supported the SJP students, glossing over their belligerent behavior, but stating his concern that students depicted as bullying, intimidating and threatening were chiefly students of color.
He also alleged that the trip’s character had the effect of excluding students of Muslim and Arabic background. An SJP member noted such students they would be barred from entering Muslim and Arab countries if they had “Israel” stamped on their passports.
Endorsing Hate Speech
On February 20, 2016, Laymon signed and shared on Facebook a petition to Vassar President Catherine Bond Hill defending an anti-Israel lecture given by professor Jasbir Puar at Vassar earlier that month, titled “Inhumanist Biopolitics: How Palestine Matters.”Puar began her speech calling for armed struggle against Israel. She went on to suggest that Israelis harvest the organs of dead Palestinians, and claimed that Israel was maiming and “stunting” Palestinians via food restrictions.
Puar also opined that the reason Israeli Jews have not killed Palestinians is “[t]hey need the Palestinians alive in order to keep the kind of rationalization for their victimhood and their militarized economy.”
The petition also cited an October 2015 report that conjured anti-Semitic conspiracies of a powerful Israel lobby controlling the United States government and silencing legitimate criticism of Israel.
The letter claimed this report “reveals the ways in which ‘a network of lobbying groups... funded by, working in coordination with, and/or staunchly supportive of the policies and practices of the Israeli government primarily drives efforts to silence speech on behalf of Palestinian rights’.”
On February 21, 2016, Laymon also sarcastically dismissed a colleague’s Facebook comment reminding petition-signers that Puar had urged Vassar BDS supporters to support a violent third intifada.
SJP
SJP is a student organization engaged in anti-Israel activity on North American college and university campuses.
The first chapter of SJP was founded in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley by Professor Hatem Bazian. Bazian has spread classic anti-Semitism, reportedly promoted religious anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group. In 2004, Bazian called for “intifada” in America.
SJP organizes anti-Israel campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks, often in collaboration with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Muslim Students Association (MSA) campus chapters.
SJP has been a major force in pushing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses. Chapters have initiated dozens of BDS resolutions in student governments, which have been proposed on or around Jewish holidays, a time when many Jewish students are off-campus.
SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, disrupted pro-Israel campus events and demonized pro-Israel campus organizations.
Chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for numerous terrorists and whitewashed terrorism.
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:
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/507550779Twitter:https://twitter.com/kieselaymon
Website: http://www.kieselaymon.com/
University Website:http://www.olemiss.edu/people/kmlaymon
Wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiese_Laymon
_203x172_sPnp8F.jpg "Professor Kiese Laymon")
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- Organizations:
- SJP
- Related Profiles:
- Daniel Sachadonig,
- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
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