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‘Scholasticide’ Is Creating Divisions, Not Solving Them
Graphic posted by University of California, Los Angeles Students for Justice in Palestine on February 21, 2024 to celebrated the student government’s passing an resolution endorsing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Photo: Screenshot/Instagram
With the Jewish community still reeling from the recent violent assaults on Jewish individuals in Washington, DC, and Boulder, Colorado, it is deeply troubling to see ongoing efforts by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) to partner and forge coalitions with the very groups who have been fueling a broader climate of incitement against Jews and Israel.
As Jewish educational professionals who have worked in academia, we are deeply disturbed by the AAUP’s decision to not only embrace anti-Israel groups, but to give them a seat at the table — to the exclusion of Jewish voices.
The latest development on this front is the AAUP’s launch of its “Organize Every Campus” campaign, including a Summer Institute at Morehouse College in Atlanta in July. While details remain vague, the exclusionary tone of earlier events, such as the April 17 “National Day of Action,” which promoted a disturbing range of anti-Israel activity, raises doubts that these programs will be welcoming to Jewish members.
At over 200+ campuses nationwide, the AAUP has turned protests against what it described as government overreach into events that marginalized its own Jewish members, many of whom view their connection to Israel as very important.
In the name of protecting academic freedom, the AAUP has partnered with organizations whose rhetoric and activism drives Jewish and pro-Israel faculty and students to the margins.
How exclusion is being built into AAUP’s machinery
Exclusion is being manifested in AAUP’s structure in several ways. First, the organization made a formal retreat from its decades-long taboo on academic boycotts.
Last summer, the AAUP abandoned its categorical opposition to boycotting academic institutions and scholars — an about-face that implicitly validated embargoes on Israeli academics and on anyone unwilling to denounce Israel. The reversal risks eroding intellectual exchange across higher education and further exacerbates the shunning of Israeli scholars.
Second, the group has presented one-sided programming that demonizes Israel. On March 6, the association promoted a webinar titled “Scholasticide in Palestine,” charging that Israel aims to eradicate Palestinian education.
Five mainstream Jewish and academic bodies — ADL, AEN, AJC, Hillel, and JFNA — wrote to the AAUP leadership, urging them to host a balanced follow-up program and to train staff on antisemitism. Ten weeks later, there has not even been a courtesy acknowledgment of the letter’s receipt.
Third, AAUP is partnering with groups — including JVP, the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, and Faculty for Justice in Palestine — whose record is openly hateful to Israelis and their supporters. In its recent campus campaign, the AAUP has demonstrated that it is only interested in engaging with virulently anti-Israel groups that, ironically, work against the very academic principles of open inquiry and academic freedom that the AAUP and its “National Day of Action” claims to champion.
AAUP placed its own logo beside these anti-Israel groups’ logos on every flyer, giving them and their stances legitimacy. The downloadable toolkit from the campaign’s website urged professors to chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” stage “die-ins,” and “target any senator” deemed friendly to Israel.
Faculty who believe in Israel’s right to exist — or who simply oppose its demonization and delegitimization — were told, implicitly but unmistakably, to stay away. What’s coming this summer and fall could be even more divisive if the AAUP refuses to heed these concerns and continues down a path that sidelines Jewish voices rather than includes them.
Why this matters for scholarship
In our experience engaging with many faculty and staff members on US campuses, we have debated ideas that we strongly disliked — it was this intellectual exchange, not boycott, that has sharpened our thinking.
Israeli academics — drawn from a country of roughly 10 million people in a Middle East–North Africa region of about 500 million, barely two percent of the area’s population — contribute indispensably to physics labs, philosophy colloquia, and medical breakthroughs. Silencing their voices and preventing US-based academics from working and exchanging ideas with them impoverishes us all.
The AAUP once stood sentinel against such suppression. Today it risks becoming just another ideological guild, one that blesses intellectual embargoes as long as the target is Israel.
A constructive way forward for the AAUP would be to:
- Acknowledge the growing alienation of its Jewish and Zionist members and respond publicly to the March 6 coalition letter.
- Revisit its recent policy change regarding academic boycotts and provide opportunities for its many members who oppose these tactics to highlight how academic boycotts violate the freedom, intellectual exchange, and open inquiry that the AAUP was founded to defend.
- Better vet and screen potential coalition partners: no group that equates Zionists with Nazis or calls for Israel’s destruction should be featured alongside the AAUP masthead.
- Offer robust antisemitism education for staff and chapter officers.
Academic freedom can never truly be advanced when one community is forced to check its identity at the door to participate.
If the AAUP truly stands for intellectual freedom, it must stop enabling the ideological silencing of Jewish and Zionist faculty.
Andrew Goretsky is the Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League – Philadelphia. Raeefa Z. Shams is the Director of Communications and Programming at the Academic Engagement Network.
The post ‘Scholasticide’ Is Creating Divisions, Not Solving Them first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Argentina’s Milei Brands Iran an ‘Enemy,’ Reaffirms Unwavering Support for Israel Amid Escalating Conflict
Argentine President Javier Milei speaks during a Plenum session of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, in Jerusalem, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Argentine President Javier Milei has branded Iran “an enemy” of his country, reaffirming Argentina’s support for Israel amid its ongoing conflict with the Islamist regime in Tehran.
On Thursday, Milei — who has broken with decades of Argentine foreign policy to firmly align with Israel and the United States — condemned Iran’s attacks on the Jewish state.
“Iran is an enemy of Argentina,” the South American leader said during a new interview on the La Nación+ news channel.
| Milei recordó los atentados a la AMIA y a la Embajada de Israel y afirmó que Irán es un enemigo de la Argentina: “114 muertos. Es un enemigo de Argentina. Cristina va a tener que dar explicaciones a la Justicia por el Memorándum con Irán, y no sé si constituye traición a… pic.twitter.com/MKUgMmyr9p
— La Derecha Diario (@laderechadiario) June 20, 2025
According to local media, Milei spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to express his “support and solidarity” as the war continues to escalate.
In a statement issued last week, the Argentine leader denounced “the vile attack perpetrated by the Islamic Republic of Iran against the State of Israel, through the mass launch of missiles and drones directed at civilian populations.”
He also said that Israel is “saving Western civilization” and accused Iran of trying to destroy the country.
During his interview on Thursday, Milei held Tehran responsible for two terrorist attacks in Buenos Aires: the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy and the 1994 attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center.
The latter was the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history, in which 85 people were killed and more than 300 wounded.
Earlier this year, the lead prosecutor in the 1994 AMIA bombing case petitioned Argentina’s federal court to issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, over his alleged involvement in the deadly terrorist attack. Milei has also activated Interpol red notices in connection with the case.
In the same interview, Milei suggested that former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — may have committed treason by signing the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Iranian authorities, which was presented as a cooperation agreement to investigate the AMIA bombing.
“Cristina is going to have to give explanations to the courts about the memorandum with Iran. I don’t know if it constitutes treason, but they planted two bombs in Argentina. That’s key,” the Argentine leader said.
In 2006, former prosecutor Alberto Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the 1994 terrorist attack and Iran’s chief proxy, the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, for carrying it out.
Nine years later, he accused Kirchner of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in exchange for Iranian oil, with the alleged cover-up reportedly formalized through their MoU.
Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.
During his latest interview, Milei also noted that his administration has officially designated Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations — making Argentina the first Latin American country to do so, with Paraguay joining the effort in April.
Since taking office over a year ago, Milei has been one of Israel’s most vocal supporters, strengthening bilateral relations to unprecedented levels.
This month, during his 10-day international tour, Milei was awarded the $1 million Genesis Prize in Jerusalem in recognition of his unwavering support for Israel and commitment to Jewish values.
During his three-day visit to the Jewish state, Milei announced that Argentina will move its embassy to Jerusalem next year, joining the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Paraguay, and Papua New Guinea in doing so and recognizing the city as Israel’s capital.
The Argentine leader also signed a “Memorandum of Understanding for Democracy and Freedom” with Netanyahu to strengthen cooperation against terrorism and antisemitism.
The post Argentina’s Milei Brands Iran an ‘Enemy,’ Reaffirms Unwavering Support for Israel Amid Escalating Conflict first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Warns Hezbollah After Terror Group Defies Lebanon’s Calls to Stay Out of Iran War
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Friday warned the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah against joining Iran’s war on the Jewish state, after the Iranian proxy threatened to take action in support of Tehran’s campaign — defying the Lebanese government’s demands to keep the country out of the conflict.
“The Hezbollah Secretary-General [Sheikh Naim Qassem] has not learned the lessons of his predecessors and is threatening to act against Israel at the direction of the Iranian dictator,” Katz wrote in a post on X, referring to former leaders of the terrorist group who were killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during last year’s war.
“I advise the Lebanese proxy to be cautious and understand that Israel has lost patience with terrorists who threaten it. If there is terrorism — there will be no Hezbollah,” the Israeli defense chief wrote in a Hebrew post.
מזכ”ל החיזבאללה לא לומד לקח מקודמיו ומאיים לפעול נגד ישראל בהתאם להוראת הדיקטטור האיראני.
אני מציע לפרוקסי הלבנוני להיזהר ולהבין שישראל איבדה את הסבלנות כלפי טרוריסטים שמאיימים עליה.
אם יהיה טרור – לא יהיה חיזבאללה.
— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) June 20, 2025
Last fall, Israel decimated much of Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive, which ended with a ceasefire that concluded a year of fighting between the Jewish state and the Iran-backed terror group.
On Thursday, Qassem reaffirmed Hezbollah’s support for the Islamist regime in Iran in its war against Israel, following a week in which Iran suffered heavy losses from Israeli strikes. He also renewed accusations that the United States is complicit in facilitating the Israeli offensive.
Hezbollah is “not neutral, and therefore we express our position alongside Iran, its leadership and its people, and we will act as we see fit in confronting this brutal Israeli-American aggression,” the terror group’s leader said in a statement on Telegram.
“Tyrannical America and criminal Israel will not be able to subjugate the Iranian people and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” Qassem continued. Hezbollah has a duty “to stand by Iran and provide it with all forms of support that contribute to putting an end to this tyranny and oppression.”
Qassem’s latest remarks came just a week after the Iran-backed terror group announced it would refrain from launching retaliatory strikes against Israel in support of Tehran, following a warning from the Lebanese government not to drag the country into a broader conflict.
According to the Saudi news outlet Al-Arabiya, Lebanese authorities informed the Iranian terrorist proxy that it would not tolerate its involvement in Tehran’s response against Israel, warning it would bear responsibility for dragging the country into war.
“The time when the organization bypassed the state in deciding to go to war is over,” the terrorist group was told, according to the report. “The decision of war and peace is exclusively in the hands of the Lebanese state.”
Last week, Israel launched a broad preemptive attack on Iran — dubbed Operation Rising Lion — targeting military installations and nuclear sites across the country in what officials described as an effort to neutralize an imminent nuclear threat.
The ongoing Israeli strikes killed several of Iran’s top military commanders and nuclear scientists and dealt a major blow to the country’s retaliatory capabilities, destroying not only much of its ballistic missile stockpiles but also crippling its launch platforms.
Meanwhile, US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack, who is currently visiting Beirut, met with Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a close Hezbollah ally, and cautioned him against involving Lebanon in the escalating Israeli-Iranian conflict.
“I can say on behalf of President Trump … that would be a very, very, very bad decision,” Barrack said.
The post Israel Warns Hezbollah After Terror Group Defies Lebanon’s Calls to Stay Out of Iran War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iranian Missile Strikes Haifa Mosque, Injures Muslim Clerics While ‘Firing Indiscriminately at Civilians’
A man walks near broken windows at a mosque that was damaged following Iran’s missile strike on Israel, amid the Iran-Israel conflict, in Haifa, Israel, June 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Rami Shlush
A mosque in the Israeli city of Haifa was hit by a ballistic missile launched by Iran on Friday morning and Muslim clerics were among those injured in the attack.
Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar said Iran’s barrage of missiles targeting Haifa struck the Al-Jarina Mosque in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood and clerics inside the mosque sustained injuries. Haifa is a port city in the north that has a mixed Arab and Israeli population.
“The Iranian regime is targeting Muslim, Christian, and Jewish civilians, as well as civilian sites. These are war crimes,” said Sa’ar in a post on X. He also shared a video of the mosque that was hit in the missile attack.
The Iranian regime launched a missile attack on Haifa and struck the Al-Jarina Mosque in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood. The missile attack injured Muslim clerics who were in the mosque.
The Iranian regime is targeting Muslim, Christian, and Jewish civilians, as well as civilian… pic.twitter.com/aG9JRfyLP7— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) June 20, 2025
Sa’ar later arrived at the scene of the strike and gave a statement to the press.
Photos shared on social media show the mosque’s broken windows and other damage to the religious site, all as a result of the Iranian strike.
Haifa mosque was indeed hit in the last ballistic missile attack. pic.twitter.com/m0AUN8IPrY
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 20, 2025
“The Iranian regime is firing indiscriminately at civilians — with zero regard for who they hit,” read a post on Israel’s official X account about the missile attack in Haifa.
Iran launched around 20 to 25 ballistic missiles at Israel on Friday and at least 19 people were wounded from the strikes in Haifa, local authorities said.
A spokesperson for Israel’s national emergency response service, Magen David Adom (MDA), said its teams treated and evacuated injuries civilians that include a roughly 40-year-old man in serious condition, a 16-year-old boy in serious condition with shrapnel in his upper body, and a 54-year-old man in moderate condition with shrapnel in his lower limbs.
Friday marks one week since the start of the Israel-Iran war, which began with the Jewish state launching pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear and military targets in a campaign known as Operation Rising Lion. MDA said that since the war began on June 13, its paramedics and EMTs have treated at least 1,007 people, including 23 who have died.
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