Roderick Ferguson

Ferguson was also a Professor of race and critical theory in the Department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota (UofM), where he was Department Chair from 2009-2012.  

Supporting a Terrorist

Ferguson signed a petition, authored by the anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada and published on October 24, 2014, expressing support for terrorist Rasmea Odeh. 

The petition claimed Odeh’s conviction for terror activity in Israel “was based on a confession she made in the midst of 45 days of sexual and physical torture while in detention.” 

Odeh was a key military operative [00:02:08]with the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1969, Odeh masterminded a PFLP bombing that killed two college students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate. 

Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated [00:10:53] Odeh as the mastermind. 

In 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States.

On November 10, 2014, a Michigan federal jury convicted Odeh for immigration fraud because she failed to disclose her prior conviction and life sentence on her immigration application. On March 12, 2015, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison. 

In 2017, after an appeal and a lengthy court battle, Odeh admitted to immigration fraud, was stripped of her U.S. citizenship, deported to Jordan and banned from re-entering the U.S.

In March 2015, Ferguson signed an open letter calling for the adoption of BDS by the Modern Language Association (MLA). The letter, signed by members of the MLA, accused Israel of “Detentions without trial, torture and war crimes, and use of deadly force by the Israeli military against non-violent protesters” and called upon Israel to “Honor the right of Palestinian refugees to return.”

In 2016, Ferguson signed another open letter to the 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 that “the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel contradicts the MLA’s purpose” and conflicted with an existing resolution (2002-1) that was passed by the organization, which condemned boycotts against scholars. 

Therefore, the Assembly “resolved that the MLA refrain from endorsing the boycott.”

In December 2013, Ferguson signed a letter to Dr. Eric W. Kaler, the President of the University of Minnesota, condemning him for his statement opposing a BDS resolution that was proposed to the ASA. 

Signatories of the letter wrote: “Israeli institutions that have been complicit and often active participants in Israel’s well-documented violations of international law and universal principles of human rights.”

They went on to claim: “there is no effective or substantive academic freedom for Palestinian students and scholars under conditions of Israeli occupation.” The petition concluded by stating: “We support the American Studies Association’s resolution to boycott Israeli institutions until Israel complies with international law.”

Ferguson also co-authored an article expressing his support for the ASA BDS resolution, as a Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. 

Purporting to speak on behalf of many ASA members who supported the resolution, the authors wrote: “many of us evaluate the Israeli occupation and the treatment of Palestinians as part of our critical observation of the contradictions of nation-states that, on the one hand, espouse democracy and, on the other, evince repression and inequality.”

They went on to say: “Israel has long served as a crucial reference point for U.S. imperial culture and as a laboratory for how a self-declared democracy can perpetuate exclusion, economic precarity, spatial control, and internal security organized around racial and religious difference.” 

The authors then claimed: “Along with the United States’ singular financial and military patronage of Israel, it is this entanglement that encourages many in the ASA to see the academic resolution as an ethical imperative, grounded in significant scholarly research, which calls us to account in full for the ongoing damage wrought by the United States’ ‘special relationship’ with Israel.”

Supporting BDS

In 2015, Ferguson 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.”

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 December 2013, Ferguson signed a letter to Dr. Eric W. Kaler, the President of the University of Minnesota, condemning him for his statement opposing a BDS resolution that was proposed to the ASA. 

Signatories of the letter wrote: “Israeli institutions that have been complicit and often active participants in Israel’s well-documented violations of international law and universal principles of human rights.”

They went on to claim: “there is no effective or substantive academic freedom for Palestinian students and scholars under conditions of Israeli occupation.” The petition concluded by stating: “We support the American Studies Association’s resolution to boycott Israeli institutions until Israel complies with international law.”

Ferguson also co-authored an article expressing his support for the ASA BDS resolution, as a Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. 

Purporting to speak on behalf of many ASA members who supported the resolution, the authors wrote: “many of us evaluate the Israeli occupation and the treatment of Palestinians as part of our critical observation of the contradictions of nation-states that, on the one hand, espouse democracy and, on the other, evince repression and inequality.”

They went on to say: “Israel has long served as a crucial reference point for U.S. imperial culture and as a laboratory for how a self-declared democracy can perpetuate exclusion, economic precarity, spatial control, and internal security organized around racial and religious difference.” 

The authors then claimed: “Along with the United States’ singular financial and military patronage of Israel, it is this entanglement that encourages many in the ASA to see the academic resolution as an ethical imperative, grounded in significant scholarly research, which calls us to account in full for the ongoing damage wrought by the United States’ ‘special relationship’ with Israel.”

 

Defending Steven Salaita

Ferguson signed a petition published on August 21, 2014, by the BDS movement titled: “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.”  

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.

Defending an Anti-Israel Activist

In January 2019, Ferguson signed a petition, published byMondoweiss, expressing support for anti-Israel activist, Angela Davis.

Signatories of the petition expressed their “stance against the policies of the Israeli government, and our own government’s immoral support of those policies.”

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.