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Should College Professors Who Signed BDS Pledges Be Teaching Classes About Israel?
North Carolina State University. Photo: Wiki Commons.
Community members have reached out to express concerns regarding the North Carolina State University course, “History of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict,” which is scheduled to be taught by Kristen Alff this spring. Classes begin Jan. 12.
Alff signed Palestine and Praxis: Open Letter and Call to Action —using her “NC State University” credentials — which characterized Israel as a “settler colonial state.”
The letter affirmed, “In the classroom and on campus, we commit to pressuring our academic institutions and organizations to respect the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions [BDS] of Israel by instating measures that remove complicity and partnership with military, academic, and legal institutions involved in entrenching Israel’s policies.”
Alff also signed a “Statement on Palestine from North Carolina Academics,” which said, “We acknowledge our complicity in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians” and “[We] reject the prevalent ‘two-sides’ narrative.”
NC State is a public university and part of the University of North Carolina (UNC) System. It is required by State law and the UNC equality policy to be institutionally neutral “on the political controversies of the day.”
What rationale could NC State possibly have for selecting an instructor who has signed a letter that publicly pledged to advocate for BDS against Israel, “in the classroom and on campus,” to teach a course focused on Israel?
I reached out to Dean Deanna Dannels, copying her executive assistant, inquiring, “Do you have any concerns about institutional neutrality and this course?” I received an automatic “out of office” reply. Additionally, I received an “out of office” message from Traci Brynne Voyles, who is Head of the History Department.
In late December, I asked Alff, “Do you use your classroom at a North Carolina public university to advocate for BDS?” She responded, “I absolutely do not advocate for BSD [sic] in my classroom nor at the university level.”
I asked why she signed the BDS pledge. Alff responded, “I anticipate my students’ thinking to change throughout the semester and their lives. I too am open and change my mind over time.”
I then asked if she was planning to request her name be removed as a signatory from the BDS pledge. Alff did not respond, and her name continues to be included as a signatory.
NC State philosophy student PJ Shaw told me, “The most harmful way for antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment to be spread is in the classroom. Because, if it is coming through a professor, it is perceived to be the most reputable path.”
Shaw suggested how the university should respond: “It shouldn’t be a ‘wait and see how she does’ situation. It should be a red flag immediately and the school should say, ‘OK, even if you think you can do a neutral job with this, we’re going to find someone else who hasn’t publicly signed a [BDS] pledge.’”
On Dec. 2, the university denied my public records request for Alff’s syllabus, stating, “NC State University considers syllabi to be the intellectual property of our faculty members and protected from disclosure under federal copyright law.”
On Dec. 19, the UNC System issued a new syllabi policy that will take effect in the 2026-27 academic year, following the completion of Alff’s course.
It mandates that instructors include a “list of all course materials (physical and/or electronic) that students are required to purchase” on their publicly available syllabus.
However, many instructors depend on free course materials that can be accessed at no cost through the university. This new policy will permit instructors to have one version of their syllabus for students and a second, redacted version, for the public. This is ridiculous and will continue to allow instructors to hide the content of their courses, biases, and radicalism from the public.
Let’s examine a syllabus from 2021 to further understand how little UNC’s new syllabi policy will help.
In 2021, I reported that UNC-Chapel Hill’s recurring course, “The Conflict over Israel/Palestine,” was being taught by Kylie Broderick, even though she publicly promoted the view that Israel should not exist. At the end of teaching the course, she publicly said, “The notion of objectivity is a tool of colonizers and one that we must completely reject.” Broderick also signed the BDS pledge and later became known for tweeting “F—k Israel.”
I was leaked a copy of Broderick’s syllabus which I reported on extensively at the time.
I do not see a single assigned reading or podcast on Broderick’s 2021 syllabus that indicates it is a required purchase. Under the new UNC syllabi policy, a significant number, if not all, of the materials assigned by Broderick could have been redacted from the publicly accessible version of her syllabus because they did not require a purchase.
I contacted UNC System President Peter Hans about the new syllabi policy he issued. He did not respond. The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal wrote to Hans, suggesting the new syllabi policy be changed to include “all required readings and materials, regardless of cost.”
The UNC System has lost the public trust by disregarding institutional neutrality and choosing radical anti-Israel instructors to teach courses about Israel.
It is essential now for the North Carolina General Assembly to intervene and pass a simple bill requiring that all course syllabi be made publicly available without omissions or redactions. The public has the right to be fully informed about what our public universities are teaching.
Peter Reitzes writes about antisemitism in North Carolina and beyond.
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A quiet diplomatic shift in the Middle East, with monumental consequences for Israel
Something significant is happening between Israel and Syria, and it deserves more attention than it is getting.
With the backing of the United States, Israeli and Syrian officials have agreed to create what they call a “joint fusion mechanism” — a permanent channel for coordination on intelligence, de-escalation, diplomacy and economic matters — during meetings in Paris. It appears to be the beginning of institutionalized contact between two countries that have formally been at war since 1948.
If this process continues, it will count as a genuine foreign-policy success for President Donald Trump’s administration.
To understand how profound that change would be, it is worth recalling the two countries’ shared history.
Israel and Syria — which the U.S. struck with a set of targeted attacks on the Islamic State on Saturday — have fought openly or by proxy for decades. Before 1967, Syrian artillery positions in the Golan Heights regularly shelled Israeli communities in the Hula Valley and around the Sea of Galilee. After Israel captured that region in 1967, the direct shelling stopped, but the conflict did not.
Syria remained formally committed to a state of war; Israel entrenched itself in the Golan Heights; both sides treated the frontier as a potential flashpoint to be managed carefully. After Egypt and Israel made peace in 1979, Syria became Israel’s most dangerous neighboring state.
A 1974 disengagement agreement created a United Nations-monitored buffer zone, which mostly ensured peace along the border, but did not resolve anything fundamental. In Lebanon, Israel and Syria backed opposing forces for years, and their air forces clashed briefly during the 1982 Lebanon War. Later, Iran’s growing role in Syria and Hezbollah’s military buildup added new threats. The Syrian civil war then destroyed basic state capacity and created precisely the kind of militia-rich environment Israel fears along its borders.
Now, with the dictator Bashar al-Assad gone and the former rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa in power, Syria is a broken country trying to stabilize. Sharaa’s past associations, disturbingly, include leadership of jihadist groups that were part of the wartime landscape in Syria. But today he governs a state facing economic collapse, infrastructure ruin and a population that needs jobs and basic services. His incentives are simple and powerful: ensure the survival of his regime, invite foreign investment, and secure relief from isolation and sanctions. Those goals point toward the U.S. and its partners, including Israel.
The Trump administration has made it clear that it wants to see new Syrian cooperation with Israel, with the suggestion that progress with Israel will become a gateway to international investment, and to a degree of political acceptance that Syria has lacked for years. Al-Sharaa’s willingness to engage is therefore not a mystery.
Israel’s motivations are also straightforward. After the Gaza war, Israel is facing a severe reputational problem. It is widely viewed abroad as reckless and excessively militarized. The government is under pressure over not only the conduct of the war but also the perception that it has no political strategy and relies almost exclusively on force. A diplomatic track with Syria allows Israel to present a very different picture: that of a country capable of negotiations with ideologically opposed neighbors, de-escalation, and regional cooperation.
There are significant security incentives, too.
Israel wants to limit Iran and Hezbollah’s influence in Syria. It wants a predictable northern border. It wants assurances regarding the Druze population in southern Syria — brethren to the Israeli Druze who are extremely loyal to the state, and who were outraged after a massacre of Syrian Druze followed the installation of al-Sharaa’s regime. It wants to ensure that no armed Syrian groups will tread near the Golan. A coordinated mechanism supervised by the U.S. offers a strong diplomatic way to address these issues.
The U.S. will benefit as well. The Trump team is eager to show that it can deliver lasting diplomatic achievements in the Middle East after the success of the Abraham Accords in Trump’s first term. A meaningful shift in Israel–Syria relations would be a very welcome addition, especially as the U.S.-brokered ceasefire in the Gaza war faces an uncertain future.
The main questions now are practical. Can the “joint fusion mechanism” function under pressure? What will happen when there is, almost inevitably, an incident — a drone downed, a militia clash, a cross-border strike? Will the new system effectively lower the temperature, or will it collapse at the first crisis?
Will Iran — facing its own profound internal political crisis — accept a Syria that coordinates with Israel under U.S. supervision, or will it work to undermine al-Sharaa? How will Hezbollah react if Damascus appears to move away from the axis of “resistance” and toward a security understanding with Israel?
How would an Israel-Syria deal impact Lebanon’s moribund efforts to dismantle Hezbollah’s military capacity? Al-Sharaa has already helped significantly by ending the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah from Iran through his territory. Might he also actively help with the disarming of the group?
No one should expect a full peace treaty soon. The question of possession of the Golan Heights probably remains a deal-breaker. Public opinion in Syria has been shaped by decades of official hostility to Israel, and Israeli politics is fragmented and volatile.
But diplomatic breakthroughs can confound expectations. They usually begin with mechanisms like this one, involving limited cooperation, routine contact and crisis management.
If this effort helps move the border from a zone of permanent tension to one of managed stability, that alone would be a major shift. It would also send a signal beyond the region: U.S. engagement still matters, and American pressure and incentives can still change behavior.
The post A quiet diplomatic shift in the Middle East, with monumental consequences for Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s Netanyahu Hopes to ‘Taper’ Israel Off US Military Aid in Next Decade
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published on Friday that he hopes to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.
Netanyahu has said Israel should not be reliant on foreign military aid but has stopped short of declaring a firm timeline for when Israel would be fully independent from Washington.
“I want to taper off the military within the next 10 years,” Netanyahu told The Economist. Asked if that meant a tapering “down to zero,” he said: “Yes.”
Netanyahu said he told President Donald Trump during a recent visit that Israel “very deeply” appreciates “the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here too we’ve come of age and we’ve developed incredible capacities.”
In December, Netanyahu said Israel would spend 350 billion shekels ($110 billion) on developing an independent arms industry to reduce dependency on other countries.
In 2016, the US and Israeli governments signed a memorandum of understanding for the 10 years through September 2028 that provides $38 billion in military aid, $33 billion in grants to buy military equipment and $5 billion for missile defense systems.
Israeli defense exports rose 13 percent last year, with major contracts signed for Israeli defense technology including its advanced multi-layered aerial defense systems.
US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Israel supporter and close ally of Trump, said on X that “we need not wait ten years” to begin scaling back military aid to Israel.
“The billions in taxpayer dollars that would be saved by expediting the termination of military aid to Israel will and should be plowed back into the US military,” Graham said. “I will be presenting a proposal to Israel and the Trump administration to dramatically expedite the timetable.”
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In Rare Messages from Iran, Protesters ask West for Help, Speak of ‘Very High’ Death Toll
Protests in Tehran. Photo: Iran Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law, via i24 News
i24 News – Speaking to Western media from beyond the nationwide internet blackout imposed by the Islamic regime, Iranian protesters said they needed support amid a brutal crackdown.
“We’re standing up for a revolution, but we need help. Snipers have been stationed behind the Tajrish Arg area [a neighborhood in Tehran],” said a protester in Tehran speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. He added that “We saw hundreds of bodies.”
Another activist in Tehran spoke of witnessing security forces firing live ammunition at protesters resulting in a “very high” number killed.
On Friday, TIME magazine cited a Tehran doctor speaking on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital recorded at least 217 killed protesters, “most by live ammunition.”
Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Setare Ghorbani, a French-Iranian national living in the suburbs of Paris, said that she became ill from worry for her friends inside Iran. She read out one of her friends’ last messages before losing contact: “I saw two government agents and they grabbed people, they fought so much, and I don’t know if they died or not.”