Lila Abu-Lughod
Overview
Lila Abu-Lughod is a leader within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. In 2015, she co-authored a BDS resolution at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) calling on the AAA to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
In March 2016, Abu-Lughod released a personal statement in support of BDS on Anthropology News, in which she wrote that “the boycott of Israeli academic institutions is the least we can do” to force Israeli anthropologists “to think even harder about what else they might do about the relative privilege in which they work as academics and live as human beings.”
Abu-Lughod went on to argue that the boycott of Israeli academics institutions actually helps Israel anthropologists because “the boycott gives them a mandate to speak. It also creates the conditions for their voices to be heard.”
In June 2016, the AAA announced that the resolution was defeated but that there are “other actions planned.”
Abu-Lughod is the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University (Columbia).
As of December 2021, Abu-Lughod was married to Timothy Mitchell, who is the William B Ransford Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia. He was also a supporter of the BDS movement, which he promoted at university, and was accused of promoting an anti-Israel agenda in classroom.
Promoting BDS in Academia
In 2014, Abu-Lughod signed the Call by Middle East Studies Scholars and Librarians for the Academic Boycott of Israel.The document encourages academics in Middle East Studies “to boycott Israeli academic institutions” and pledges “not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or to attend conferences and other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel.”
In January of 2014, Abu-Lughod signed a statement praising the American Studies Association (ASA) for unanimously adopting a resolution singling out Israel for academic boycott.
Promoting BDS at Columbia
In March 2016, Abu-Lughod signed a petition created by a Columbia student initiative to rebrand BDS at Columbia as: Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD).CUAD is comprised of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) members, who joined forces in February 2016. The group called on Columbia to divest its equity holdings and endowment funds from companies that — in CUAD’s words — “profit from the State of Israel’s ongoing system of settler colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid law.”
CUAD lists eight target companies that it believes “*likely* to be invested in by a university like CU,” without knowing whether Columbia actually had holdings in the corporations.
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: http://anthropology.columbia.edu/people/profile/347
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila_Abu-Lughod
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- Organizations:
- BDS
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- Last Modified:
- 06/23/2025
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