It seems there are fissures within the ranks of those organizing this week’s National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) conference at the University of Pennsylvania due to the inclusion--and later, withdrawal--of a video that inconveniently betrays the radicalism behind the BDS movement. Even outspoken anti-Israel Middle East studies professors such as Penn’s Ian Lustick and Columbia University’s Rashid Khalidi are keeping their distance. As Asaf Romirowsky, adjunct scholar at the Middle East Forum and acting executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, aptly puts it, “This is not a scholarly debate.”
Winfield Myers is managing editor of the Middle East Forum and director of its Campus Watch project, which reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North American universities. He has taught world history and other topics at the University of Michigan, the University of Georgia, Tulane, and Xavier University of Louisiana. He was previously managing editor of The American Enterprise magazine and CEO of Democracy Project, Inc., which he co-founded. Mr. Myers has served as senior editor and communications director at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and is principal author and editor of a college guide, Choosing the Right College (1998, 2001). He was educated at the University of Georgia, Tulane, and the University of Michigan.
