Academic Boycott on Israel Flexes Its Muscles

WRMEA, August 2010, Pages 44-45

Southern California Chronicle
Academic Boycott on Israel Flexes Its Muscles
By Pat and Samir Twair



Not only is Ariel University situated in Israel’s fourth largest illegal West Bank settlement, but it originally was a satellite campus of Bar Ilan University–until Israel’s Minister of Defense Ehud Barak rushed through its accreditation, without evaluating its academic qualifications.


ISIS claimed that it was being victimized by the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. In response, ISIS member Vida Samiian, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State University, explained: “We tried to present a resolution allowing the general membership to vote on the matter. ISIS leadership blocked this.”

While ISIS did remove “Samaria” as the site of the Ariel institution, it blocked Internet access to Cohen’s paper, titled “The Hojjatiyeh: The Real Bringers of the Islamic Revolution of Iran.” Meanwhile, the chair and three other participants on the “Shi’ism, Clerics and Movements of Revolution and Reform” panel dropped out, leaving Cohen as the sole remaining member.

Finally, days before the conference, three new participants and a chair were announced–too late to review their abstracts for the session renamed “Dialogues and Contentions.”

Incredibly, one of the new panelists was Judea Pearl, a UCLA computer science professor and father of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was murdered by extremists in Pakistan. The title of his paper, “Carving a Dialogue between Muslims and Jews,” was a misleading one for Pearl, who vociferously rants about Islamist violence. He is the polar opposite of Cindy and Craig Corrie, who have responded to Israel’s killing of their daughter Rachel with a message of reconciliation.


[(L-r) Steve Gilula, president of Fox Searchlight; “My Name Is Khan” director Karan Johar; and MPAC”s Noor Khan. (Staff Photo S. Twair)] (L-r) Steve Gilula, president of Fox Searchlight; “My Name Is Khan” director Karan Johar; and MPAC”s Noor Khan. (Staff Photo S. Twair)

“We don’t object to an Israeli participating in the conference,” stated economics professor Sasan Faymazman during the informational May 28 picket. But “why did ISIS include a paper from a settler institution? Why did ISIS block the membership from reading Cohen’s abstract which deals with a so-called nuclear Iran and its ‘threat to the Middle East or maybe to the world?'”



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