Teresa Meade

Overview

Teresa Meade is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and the Florence B. Sherwood Professor of History and Culture at Union College (Union).

Supporting BDS

Meade signed a controversial petition submitted to the American Historical Association (AHA) in 2016. The petition alleged that “Israel’s restrictions on the movement of faculty, staff and visitors in the West Bank impede instruction at Palestinian institutions of higher learning” and that “Israel restricts the right to lecture or teach at Palestinian universities.”

The petition went on to demand that “the AHA commits itself to monitoring Israeli actions.”

Weinstein signed another petition submitted to the AHA in 2014.

The petition, submitted to the American Historical Association (AHA) in 2014, alleged that “Israel arbitrarily limits the entry of foreign nationals who seek to lecture, teach and attend conferences at Palestinian universities, denying both faculty and students the rich experience enjoyed by their peers at Israeli universities and other universities around the world.”

The petition went on to say “that the AHA demands that the U.S. Department of State honor the academic freedom of U.S. citizens by contesting Israel’s denials of entry of U.S. academics who have been invited to teach, confer, or do research at Palestinian universities.”

Meade signed a 2014 open letter calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.

The July 31, 2014 letter, addressed to former U.S. President Barack Obama and the American Congress, called “to suspend US military aid to Israel, until there is assurance that this aid will no longer be used for the commission of war crimes.”

The letter was in response to Operation Protective Edge (OPE), which Israel commenced in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.

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:https://muse.union.edu/history/teresa-meade/