Yet more bad news for the ASA boycott of Israeli universities

Back on 5 January, the following article was posted (by me). Among other things, that article raised the question of the grasp on the meaning of words by the President of NYU, one John Sexton, especially when he argued that the potential loss of funds from New York State for the support shown for the ASA's BDS resolution would be an attack on NYU's academic freedom.

Now, Richard Behar, Forbes Contributing Editor and NYU Graduate (1982) has written a blistering attack on Prof Lisa Duggan of NYU (and newly elected ASA President) and John Sexton, here. For starters, he "accused NYU President John Sexton of not going far enough, with a “short, terse and quite vanilla” response, suggesting that he was trying “to have his cake and eat it too,” because of the three NYU academics and one PhD student serving on the ASA’s 18-member executive committee". Then he goes on to, quite specifically, excoriate Prof Duggan, because he reveals "Duggan’s support for charges to be dropped against a terrorist named Rasmea Yousef Odeh, who is accused of lying about her past in order to gain U.S. citizenship in 1994." (`The detail is in the 4 or so paragraphs which follow this quote.)

Behar goes on to note "that none of its board members were experts in Middle East studies." He goes on to detail this in quite exquisite detail over the following 7 paragraphs. The rest of the article (and there is quite a bit more) carries the argument against the ASA even further and is even more devastating towards the ASA and NYU. All in all, given the US colleges dropping their affiliations with the ASA and articles like this, I hope that we can count this as a victory for the good guys of common sense.

By Brian Goldfarb.