‘Who’s Behind the Hate at NYU?’ Asks New Ad Campaign
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by Joshua Levitt
TIP ad highlighting NYU Professor Lisa Duggan. Photo: Screenshot.
A new ad campaign appeared online on Wednesday, drawing attention to the New York University faculty member who heads the American Studies Association that is calling for an academic boycott of Israel.
Advocacy group The Israel Project funded the campaign.
The ad was delivered by Google AdWords on news sites and went to a landing page entitled Peace Not Hate.
The campaign asks, “Why is NYU supporting academic bigotry?”
“Last year, the American Studies Association (ASA) joined the hate-campaign against Israel by voting to boycott Israeli professors,” it said.
“NYU should have immediately pulled their funding of the group, like other universities. But NYU has continued to fund its ASA chapter.”
“By steering university funding to a group that fuels academic bigotry, NYU is betraying its students and its own commitment to academic openness.”
The webpage linked to a petition before exhorting readers, including alumni who might be worried about the school’s “good name.”
It said, “Don’t let a fringe group of haters and extremists demonize Israel and dirty the good name of NYU.”
“Tell NYU to live up to its highest principals. Add your name and email to tell NYU: Honor truth. Stop funding hate.”
While New York University’s president and provost have condemned the ASA’s boycott. the group’s new president, NYU Social and Cultural Analysis Professor Lisa Duggan, was pilloried for her stance, and muddled arguments, by Forbes Investigative Journalist Richard Behar, in a 15,000-word exposé.
The saga continued when Duggan, a lesbian, accused the veteran reporter of homophobia by noting that rather than any expertise in the Middle East, Duggan teaches ‘Queer Historiographies and Constructions of Whiteness in the United States.’
On Tuesday, Behar was awarded the ‘Story of the Year Award,’ along with The Observer‘s Ken Kurson, by the publishers of The Algemeiner.
Despite the negative publicity she drew to NYU, Duggan moved forward with a conference on campus where supporters of Israel were not invited.
TIP described the event online as “an anti-Israel conference of hate and bile against the Jewish state. The secretive conference was filled with groups and organizations dedicated to the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.”
The campaign also named the two other NYU academics on the 18-member ASA board.
