Including the infamous Steven Salaita and Jasbir Puarhttps://www.thecollegefix.com/post/38942/
After four professors beat back the American Studies Association’s attempt to get their lawsuit dismissed this spring, they discovered a trove of evidence that confirmed their fears about the power and reach of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
Nearly 17,000 documents belatedly turned over by current and former ASA leaders show that BDS supporters waged a campaign to “covertly” take control of the ASA and use it to support the BDS movement, according to a revised version of the lawsuit submitted Thursday.
The plaintiffs – current and former ASA members – told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia they have new claims for breach of contract and “acts in violation of specific [ASA] bylaws,” and have added “discrete counts and detailed factual allegations” in response to the court’s March ruling.
They also added four new defendants who serve on the “Organizing Committee and/or Advisory Committee” of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, known as USACBI.
Two have national reputations: Steven Salaita (inset), who was ousted by the University of Illinois before he was formally hired owing to his “venomous” anti-Israel tweets, including one that “liked” an offhand death threat to a Jewish journalist; and Jasbir Puar, a Rutgers University “queer theory” professor who has accused Israel of conducting scientific experiments on Palestinians and harvesting their organs.
“This case is about the illegal, hostile takeover of a non-profit, academic association by leaders of an anti-Israel group,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Jennifer Gross of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law, whose mission is to fight antisemitism on college campuses.
She said in a Thursday press release that the USACBI activists violated ASA’s own rules to get and abuse “positions of trust” so they could “exploit the assets of the ASA to advance the agenda of the BDS movement.”