Radicalized faculty are the greater danger lurking behind campus protests - opinion

The Hamas-inspired protests gripping US college campuses will soon end as summer break begins and the students depart. 

College administrators will breathe a sigh of relief while hoping that the memory of these disruptions dissipates quickly. 

Nevertheless, now is the time to connect the dots and expose the far more serious threat to academia.

Radicalized faculty are a threat 

 This threat is the organization of radicalized faculty members who will continue to spread venomous pro-Hamas rhetoric in their classrooms, provide cover for Israel-bashing students, promote a vicious boycott of Israeli academics, and ultimately pervert internal university hiring, promotion, and review processes.

With the explosion of student protests since October 7, 2003, the coordinated nature of the disruptions has been duly noted, with the Day of Resistance Toolkit mailed by National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) serving as Exhibit A. 

This “how to” manual, sent to SJP chapters at universities across the country on October 8, 2023 – the day after the Hamas massacres and atrocities and before Israel mounted its response – told students what to do, what to say, and even what placards to display, including a template of a Hamas terrorist on a paraglider with “insert org name” and “organization logos at the bottom” helpfully situated on the graphic.

This direction from above is why all the student tactics – chanting, hunger strikes, calls for divestment, tent encampments – have looked the same; the kids were just doing what they were told. 

What is perhaps less known is that National SJP is not just some grassroots student organization, but is alleged to provide material support to Hamas itself.

While the Hamas kids on campus were having a field day harassing Jewish students and disrupting university operations, a much more threatening development was taking place in the background, with the formation of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP). 

On the surface, FJP is the collection of faculty that provides cover for the protesting SJP-linked students by acting as marshals or observers at protest events, or sending letters without individual signatures to university administrators demanding that students be allowed to act out without consequences.

Probe deeper, and you discover a nefarious network dedicated to boycotting and isolating Israeli academics and associated programs. 

For example, many American universities participate in long-standing study abroad programs that allow US students to attend accredited universities overseas for a semester or year as part of their host university degree program. 

Israeli universities have long participated in such programs, with destinations such as the Hebrew University’s Rothberg International School or Tel Aviv University’s Lowy International School. FJP is actively trying to eliminate such programs at universities across the US. 

FJP also advocates the boycott of Israeli academics. Such boycotts take the form of refusing to host Israeli lecturers or interrupting their presentations regardless of topic, removing journal articles even after they were accepted for publication, or returning requests for reviews of Israeli scholars as part of hiring, promotion or tenure reviews. 

These actions attack the fundamental compact all academics make upon joining a university community, which is promoting the objective search for new knowledge in all academic disciplines along with the free exchange of ideas and information, and would be abhorrent if applied to any identifiable group. 

But by targeting Israel alone, FJP removes all doubt of its willingness to be yet another weapon in the war against Israel.

THERE IS a certain irony at play here. FJP (and their student protesters) rely heavily on internet and social media technology developed by Israeli researchers.  

For example, the first commercially available instant messaging program, ICQ (short for “I seek you”) was developed in 1996 by Mirabilis, an Israeli start-up. It was Israeli medical and public health researchers who demonstrated the effectiveness of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine at the population level. 

Israel has produced 13 Nobel Laureates, a rate exceeding 13 per 10 million citizens, one of the highest such rates in the world. A successful boycott of Israeli academics would deprive the world of research leading to cutting-edge innovations in agriculture, medicine, and technology.

Back on campus, FJP creates extremely serious internal governance problems. While this group has sworn to boycott Israeli academia, its members are asked to participate in university academic processes, including serving on host university hiring, promotion, and tenure committees. 

While university respect for free speech means that professors cannot and will not be censored for their views such as a devotion to boycotting Israeli academics, there is a huge conflict of interest when a professor, committed to boycotting Israeli academics (or any other academics) is allowed to potentially sit in judgment of those they profess to boycott. 

A review candidate with any connections to Israel at all – whether by birth, academic training, collaboration, or affinity – religious or otherwise – is vulnerable to abuse by an FJP reviewer.

This conflict of interest can only be resolved if boycotters are identified and removed from any personnel evaluation committee or voting body. All it will take to trigger a lawsuit is a single Israel-linked academic receiving a negative decision from a committee with an FJP boycotter on board.

This is not hypothetical. At Yale, with the help of data available from the pro-Israel American campus AMCHA Initiative that documents antisemitic activity on US campuses, several faculty members who have outed themselves as supporters of the academic boycott of Israel have been identified. 

Three of these faculty members serve on hiring, promotion, or tenure review committees. We have informed our university leaders of this circumstance and advise colleagues at other universities to do the same.

Although the student protests have received all of the attention over the past several months, they are not the real problem.

Faculty who attack Israel in the classroom, disrupt Israeli lecturers, and boycott Israeli scholars are the greater danger by far.  

The writer is the William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Operations Research, Professor of Public Health, and Professor of Engineering at Yale University.