- Anti-Israel, anti-war organization of university professors
- Calls for international boycott against institutions of higher education in Israel
- Strongly supports anti-Israel professor Norman Finkelstein
- Member of United For Peace and Justice antiwar coalition
Academics For Justice (AFJ) is an organization of more than 1,000 college and university professors whose stated mission is: “to work for justice and human rights, to defend academic freedom of speech and association, to educate the public, and to help bring about peace with justice.” Ranking high on AFJ’s current list of priorities are: opposition to American involvement in the Iraq War, and opposition to Israeli policies regarding the Palestinians. To protest what it considers Israeli-perpetrated injustices against the Palestinian people, AFJ has composed a petition calling for an international boycott against institutions of higher learning in Israel. This document condemns Israel’s “decades of debilitating occupation, . . . [its] continuing atrocities, its campaigns to disrupt Palestinian educational and other civil institutions, its breaches of international law and of humanitarian standards, as well as the general discriminatory nature of its system.” Among the signers listed on the AFJ website are Hamid Dabashi and Joseph Massad of Columbia University. To view a complete list of the signatories, click here.
AFJ makes no mention, anywhere in its petition, of Israel’s repeated attempts to negotiate for peace with its Arab neighbors, nor of the relentless Palestinian terror campaigns of recent decades.
One of AFJ's co-founders is Yale University professor of genetics Mazin Qumsiyeh, who characterizes Israel as an apartheid state. Qumsiyeh also co-founded the group Al-Awda, a.k.a. the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.
AFJ members spread their anti-Israel message in a number of ways: organizing teach-ins, speaking tours, and divestment campaigns on U.S. college campuses; accessing the media via letters to the editor, op-eds, and paid advertisements; creating petitions and collecting signatures; directing financial aid to the causes it supports; producing educational materials such as fact sheets and other resources for instructors; maintaining a web page to post action alerts and timely information; and establishing a chat group to discuss future actions and strategies.
AFJ strongly supports the views of Norman Finkelstein, the DePaul University political science professor and Holocaust denier. The organization exhorts Americans to contact their local bookstores to voice their support for Finkelstein’s book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. AFJ further encourages people to invite Finkelstein to be a guest speaker at their schools, community centers, and houses of worship.
AFJ is a member organization of United For Peace and Justice, the large antiwar coalition led by the longtime, pro-Castro communist activist Leslie Cagan.
On its website, AFJ provides links to the homepages of numerous likeminded organizations, including Al-Awda, the International Solidarity Movement, Jews Against the Occupation, Stop US Tax-funded Aid to Israel Now (SUSTAIN), the Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. AFJ also provides links to the divestment-campaign websites of a number of American universities.
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