Jewish-Studies Scholars Condemn List of ‘Anti-Semitic’ Professors

Thirty Jewish-studies professors have released a statement condemning a group that circulated a list of professors in Middle Eastern studies whom it labeled anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic and urged students to avoid. The Amcha Initiative, an activist group whose mission is “to investigate, document, educate about, and combat anti-Semitic behavior on college and university campuses,” published the list, of more than 200 professors, who it said support an academic boycott of Israel.

Calling that publication “deplorable,” the professors write that Amcha’s “technique of monitoring lectures, symposia, and conferences strains the basic principle of academic freedom on which the American university is built. Moreover, its definition of anti-Semitism is so undiscriminating as to be meaningless.”