Vernadette Gonzalez

Overview

Vernadette Gonzalez is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and has defended disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita. 

As of November 2019, Gonzalez was an associate professor and director of the Honors Program in the Department of American Studiesat the University of Hawai’i (UH).

Supporting BDS

As of January 2020, Gonzalez was a signatory to a list of endorsers of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI). ”

Gonzalez also signed a petition opposing the passage of a resolution rejecting BDS at the Modern Language Association (MLA).

The petition 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 February 2014, Gonzalez signed an open letter condemning the administration of the University of Hawaii (UH), for expressing its opposition to the American Studies Association’s (ASA) recent endorsement of the academic boycott of Israel.

Signatories of the letter, signed by Gonzalez, charged that opponents of the academic boycott of Israel “support academic institutions that participate in the denial of human rights, including the right to education, experienced by Palestinians who, like Native Hawaiians, live under conditions of occupation.”

Defending Steven Salaita

In 2014, Gonzalez reportedly signed a letter to the Board of Trustees from UH staff, in support of a “boycott of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) until you reinstate Dr. 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.

Social Media and Weblinks

University Website: https://manoa.hawaii.edu/amst/archive/portfolio_page/vernadette-gonzalez/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/profvvg