Cary Nelson (1946), is an American professor emeritus of English and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was president of the American Association of University Professors between 2006 and 2012.
In 1967 Nelson graduated from Antioch College. In 1970, he received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Rochester. His scholarship of the 1970s and 80s worked to expand the canon of modern American poetry.
Since the 1990s he has increasingly focused on issues in higher education. In the words of Alan Wald, "With the appearance of Manifesto of a Tenured Radical in 1997. Nelson became an example of the committed scholar who conceived of the advance of his own career in the context of the amelioration of the rank-and-file of the academic community; more specifically, graduate students, part-time employees, and campus workers." [1]
From 2000-2006 Nelson was the second vice president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). He was elected to a two-year term as president and was re-elected until 2012. In April 2006 Nelson was arrested, along with over 50 others (including Jane Buck, the outgoing president of the AAUP), as part of a unionization effort by New York University's graduate teaching assistants. [2] In October 2015, Nelson stated regarding "frackemia" connections at the Leeds School of Business:"This is an example of complete collusion between the industry and academy that completely eliminates any sense of a university doing independent research. Unless the University of Colorado has a really lousy policy that basically says, ‘there ain’t no such thing as a conflict of interest,’ this is egregious." [3]
He has published or edited twenty five books, including Manifesto of a Tenured Radical and Revolutionary Memory: Recovering the Poetry of the American Left. His academic focus is on modern American poetry. [4] He has also published books criticising boycotts of Israel, including the BDS movement. [5]
This is an example of complete collusion between the industry and academy that completely eliminates any sense of a university doing independent research. Unless the University of Colorado has a really lousy policy that basically says, 'there ain't no such thing as a conflict of interest,' this is egregious.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "strengthen the study and teaching of language and literature". The organization includes over 25,000 members in 100 countries, primarily academic scholars, professors, and graduate students who study or teach language and literature, including English, other modern languages, and comparative literature. Although founded in the United States, with offices in New York City, the MLA's membership, concerns, reputation, and influence are international in scope.
Academic freedom is a moral and legal concept expressing the conviction that the freedom of inquiry by faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy as well as the principles of academia, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without fear of repression, job loss, or imprisonment. While the core of academic freedom covers scholars acting in an academic capacity – as teachers or researchers expressing strictly scholarly viewpoints —, an expansive interpretation extends these occupational safeguards to scholars' speech on matters outside their professional expertise.
The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America is a 2006 book by conservative American author and policy advocate David Horowitz. Contending that many academics in American colleges hold anti-American perspectives, Horowitz lists one hundred examples who he believes are sympathetic to terrorists and non-democratic governments.
Farid Esack is a South African Muslim scholar, writer, and political activist known for his opposition to apartheid, his appointment by Nelson Mandela as a gender equity commissioner, and his work for inter-religious dialogue.
Disinvestment from Israel is a campaign conducted by religious and political entities which aims to use disinvestment to pressure the government of Israel to put "an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories captured during the 1967 military campaign." The disinvestment campaign is related to other economic and political boycotts of Israel.
Norman Gary Finkelstein is an American political scientist and activist. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D. in political science at Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007.
David Lloyd is a poet and professor of literature living in the United States though born in 1955 in Dublin. He holds a B.A. (1977), an M.A. (1981), and a PhD (1982) in Literature and Colonialism, all from Cambridge University. Lloyd has been Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, and at the University of Southern California after previous appointments at Scripps College, Claremont, and the University of California, Berkeley. He became Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside in 2013.
The Ontario wing of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) has supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel since 2006. Their stance has encountered opposition from the Canadian Jewish Congress and parts of the press but also widespread support from university professors, Independent Jewish Voices, Palestine House, Canadian Arab Federation and labour unions. In 2009 the CUPE Ontario university workers' committee proposed to extend the campaign to boycott any joint work with Israeli institutions that carry out military research. That resolution became the focus of extensive controversy and was modified in response to pressure from the CUPE national president; the amended version was brought before the CUPE Ontario conference in May 2009 and passed with a 2/3 majority.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement promoting boycotts, divestments, and economic sanctions against Israel. Its objective is to pressure Israel to meet what the BDS movement describes as Israel's obligations under international law, defined as withdrawal from the occupied territories, removal of the separation barrier in the West Bank, full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and "respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties". The movement is organized and coordinated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee.
The University and College Union (UCU) is a British trade union in further and higher education representing over 120,000 academics and support staff.
The AMCHA Initiative is a pro-Israel American campus group that seeks to undermine BDS activities on campuses. AMCHA was founded in 2012 by University of California Santa Cruz lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and University of California Los Angeles Professor Emeritus Leila Beckwith. The term Amcha is Hebrew for "your people" or "your nation."
Boycotts of Israel are the refusal and calls to refusal of having commercial or social dealings with Israel in order to influence Israel's practices and policies by means of using economic pressure. The specific objective of Israel boycotts varies; the BDS movement calls for boycotts of Israel "until it meets its obligations under international law", and the purpose of the Arab League's boycott of Israel was to prevent Arab states and others to contribute to Israel's economy. Israel believes that boycotts against it are antisemitic.
The current campaign for an academic boycott of Israel was launched in April 2004 by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) as part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The campaign calls for BDS activities against Israel to put international pressure on Israel, in this case against Israeli academic institutions, all of which are said by PACBI to be implicated in the perpetuation of Israeli occupation, in order to achieve BDS goals. Since then, proposals for academic boycotts of particular Israeli universities and academics have been made by academics and organisations in Palestine, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries. The goal of the proposed academic boycotts is to isolate Israel in order to force a change in Israel's policies towards the Palestinians, which proponents argue are discriminatory and oppressive, including oppressing the academic freedom of Palestinians.
Reactions to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) refer to the views of international actors on the BDS movement.
Anti-BDS laws and resolutions oppose boycotts of Israel. The name comes from the BDS movement, which calls for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel to pressure Israel to meet what it describes as Israel's obligations under international law. Anti-BDS laws are designed to make it difficult for people and organizations to participate in boycotts of Israel while anti-BDS resolutions are symbolic and non-binding parliamentary condemnations, either of boycotts of Israel or of BDS itself. Generally, such condemnations accuse BDS of being antisemitic and are often followed by laws targeting boycotts of Israel.
The American Studies Association's boycott of Israel is an ongoing boycott of Israeli educational institutions by the American Studies Association (ASA). ASA's decision to begin boycotting Israel in December 2013 was controversial because it was the first major American scholarly organization to do so and it was heavily criticized. In April 2016, four ASA members aided by the pro-Israeli Brandeis Center sued ASA but the lawsuit was dismissed in 2019 when the judge ruled that plaintiffs lacked standing.
The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) is a document meant to outline the bounds of antisemitic speech and conduct, particularly with regard to Zionism, Israel and Palestine. Its creation was motivated by a desire to confront antisemitism and by objections to the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism, which critics have said stifles legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and curbs free speech. The drafting of the declaration was initiated in June 2020 under the auspices of the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem by eight coordinators, most of whom were university professors. Upon its completion the declaration was signed by about 200 scholars in various fields and released in March 2021.
