We’ve reported on the movement on college campuses to apply boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against entities that invest in the state of Israel. As well, we’ve shown the anti-Semitism in this campaign.
Now, a former intern of ours has connected the dots and shows that you are paying for the BDS campaign in federal taxes. “In October 2014, more than $3.3 million of federal grant money was awarded to Middle East ‘National Resource Centers’ (NRCs) at 16 universities throughout our nation under a statute called Title VI of the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA),” Jennifer Dekel writes in The Weekly Standard. “More than $13.4 million will be awarded to 19 Middle East NRCs for the entire 2014-2018 cycle.”
Jennifer is the director of research and communication at The Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET). “Out of the 19 directors of the Title VI-funded Middle East studies Centers, eight of them have expressed public support for BDS, according to a 2015 report from the AMCHA Initiative, which monitors anti-Semitic behavior on college campuses. (Five of them endorsed an academic boycott of Israel),” Dekel relates. “The report also shows that 45 out of a total of 111 speakers who participated in 81 Israel-related events sponsored by Title VI-funded Middle East programs during the 2014-2015 academic year endorsed BDS.”
One could say that the fish rots from the head down. “In addition to the directors, a considerable number of faculty members at Title VI-Middle East Studies Centers support BDS,” Dekel reports. “For example, of the 54 faculty listed on Columbia University’s Title VI-funded Middle East Institute website who teach Middle East courses, 14 have signed a petition calling on Columbia University to divest from Israel, and ‘divest from corporations that supply, perpetuate, and profit from a system that has subjugated the Palestinian people for over 68 years.’”
“At Georgetown University, 19 faculty members have endorsed the call to boycott Israeli academic institutions. Of those, 10 are faculty members of Georgetown’s Title VI National Resource Center on the Middle East and North Africa.”
