Princeton University (campus pictured) has been identified by the AMCHA initiative as one of the universities with faculty members who have signed a petition to boycott Israel. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – The AMCHA Initiative, an organization dedicated to investigating and combating anti-Semitism at academic institutions, has released a list of 218 professors identifying as Middle East scholars who have called for a boycott of Israel.

In August, about 200 professors on more than 100 U.S. campuses signed a petition calling “to boycott Israeli academic institutions,” and refuse “to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or to attend conferences and other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel.”

In addition, faculty members at 16 of 20 universities that received federal grants supporting Middle East studies signed the anti-Israel petition. Those schools are Columbia University, Duke University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Harvard University, New York University, Princeton University, University of California Berkeley, University of California Los Angeles, University of Chicago, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington Seattle and Yale University.

“How can professors who are so biased against the Jewish state accurately or fairly teach students about Israel or the Arab-Israel conflict?” asked Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, the AMCHA Initiative’s co-founder and a faculty member at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “Students who wish to become better educated without subjecting themselves to anti-Israel bias, or possibly even anti-Semitic rhetoric, may want to check which faculty members from their university are signatories before registering.”