Synopses & Reviews
In Apartheid Israel: The Politics of an Analogy, eighteen scholars of Africa and its diaspora reflect on the similarities and differences between apartheid-era South Africa and contemporary Israel, with an eye to strengthening and broadening today's movement for justice in Palestine.
Sean Jacobs is an assistant professor of international affairs at The New School in New York City and the founder of Africa is a Country.
Jon Soske is an assistant professor of modern African history at McGill University and the author of Boundaries of Diaspora: African Nationalism and the Indian Diaspora in 20th century South Africa.
Review
"This book is a tour de force: a must read that belongs on the nightstand of every decent human being on this earth concerned with peace and justice. Superbly edited, it brings together the most powerful and cogent cases ever made for BDS: the now widely global, non-violent civil disobedience that Palestinians and their supporters have launched against the vicious monstrosity of Zionist theft of their homeland. BDS is the civilized peoples response to the barbarity of Israeli colonial occupation of Palestine and Against Apartheid provides a relentlessly persuasive body of brilliant scholarship to prove the point. Do not miss it!"
Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in the City of New York
"Voices resound through this book with the reasoned argument that Israeli apartheid must be ended - and the way for intellectuals and artists to participate in this struggle is to boycott Israeli institutions that participate in and benefit from the occupation of Palestinian lands. This is an intellectual guidebook for the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement."
Vijay Prashad, editor, Letters to Palestine: Writers Respond to War and Occupation
"A specter is haunting Israelthe specter of a new anti-apartheid movement, working to end occupation, home demolitions, illegal settlements, detentions, relentless state violence, and the complicity of its most respected institutions in the brutal subjugation of the Palestinian people. Against Apartheid is its text, its manifesto. It is at once a powerful indictment of Israeli apartheid and the universitys role in designing, maintaining, and protecting the system, and an inspiring history of how Palestinian activists, artists, and intellectuals turned a global appeal into a global movement."
Robin D. G. Kelley, Gary B. Nash Professor of U.S. History at UCLA
"The explosive growth of the BDS movement on US campuses has been one of the sparks that is firing the critical exit of business from Israels illegal West Bank settlements, and it owes much of its weight to many of the writers of this book. There is already a sea change in attitudes around the world to Israels decades long record of impunity for the violent dispossession of Palestinians, the assassinations of their leaders, the deaths of their children, the theft of their land and water, the denial of dignity and hope in their shameful refugee camps across the region. Key to this books intervention is its demonstration of the silent complicity between Israeli universities and the military establishment. This alone is enough to force a rethink for those who still think boycotting Israeli universities is an issue of freedom of speech."
Victoria Brittain, author, Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women of the War on Terror
Synopsis
This is the first book to spell out why academic boycott of Israeli Universities is critical to dismantling Israeli apartheid.
Synopsis
Focusing on the complicity of Israeli universities in maintaining the occupation of Palestine, and on the repression of academic and political freedom for Palestinians, Against Apartheid powerfully explains why scholars and students throughout the world should refuse to do business with Israeli institutions. This rich collection of essays is a handbook for scholars and activists.
Synopsis
A timely and incisive handbook that argues academic boycott is a vital component of the struggle against Israeli Apartheid
About the Author
Ashley Dawson is Professor of English at the City University of New Yorks Graduate Center and at the College of Staten Island/CUNY. He is the author of the forthcoming book Capitalism and Extinction (PM Press), The Routledge Concise History of Twentieth-Century British Literature (2013) and Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (Michigan, 2007), and co-editor of three essay collections: Democracy, the State, and the Struggle for Global Justice (Routledge, 2009); Dangerous Professors: Academic Freedom and the National Security Campus (Michigan, 2009); and Exceptional State: Contemporary U.S. Culture and the New Imperialism (Duke, 2007). He is former editor of Social Text Online and of the AAUPs Journal of Academic Freedom.
Bill V. Mullen is Professor of American Studies and English at Purdue University. He is a member of the Advisory Board for USACBI (United States Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) and faculty advisor for Purdue Students for Justice in Palestine. In 2012 he was a member of a USACBI delegation to Palestine. He is the author of Un-American: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Century of World Revolution, Afro-Orientalism, and Popular Fronts: Chicago and African American Cultural Politics, 1935-1946. His writing on Palestine and academic boycott has appeared in Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, Social Text and International Socialist Review. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana.