Pro-Boycott Israel Figures Judith Butler and Rashid Khalidi Push Back
Image by columbia u.
Judith Butler and Rashid Khalidi are circulating a letter objecting to retaliation against those who support boycotts of Israel.
Both Butler and Khalidi recently had events canceled at Jewish institutions after critics raised objections to their views on Israel. Butler, a literary theorist affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley, pulled out of a talk on Franz Kafka that she had been scheduled to deliver in March at New York’s Jewish Museum amid protests over her support for boycotting Israel.
Khalidi, a professor at Columbia University who supports the legitimacy of resistance against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, was disinvited from giving a talk to students at Ramaz, a modern Orthodox high school in New York.
“Whether one is for or against Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) as a means to change the current situation in Palestine-Israel, it is important to recognize that boycotts are internationally affirmed and constitutionally protected forms of political expression,” says Butler and Khalidi’s letter, which has approximately 150 co-signers, including academics and artists.
The letter notes that there is proposed legislation under debate in New York, Maryland and Illinois that threatens academic funding on the basis of criticism of the Israeli government.
“As non-violent instruments to effect political change, boycotts cannot be outlawed without trampling on a constitutionally protected right to political speech,” the letter says. “Those who support boycotts ought not to become subject to retaliation, surveillance, or censorship when they choose to express their political viewpoint, no matter how offensive that may be to those who disagree.”
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
